🚀 go-pugleaf

iBook users, take note:

If a geek comes up to you and offers to buy "that lame Airport thing you
don't use", tell them to buy their own iBook.

In recent articles in both the Wall Street Journal [1] and Salon
Magazine [2], the sudden explosion of wireless ethernet is discussed in
some detail. In several cities across the world, homebrew hackers are
putting together city-wide internet WANs based on the newly-approved
802.11b ethernet standard which operates in the 2.4 GHz range. What is
surprising is that a lot of this homebrew information is coming from
Australia [3].

These budding airwave jockeys are, for the most part, Windows and linux
tinkerers, even though Apple's iBook was one of the first computers with
basic wireless ethernet as a standard feature. The Airport system Apple
use is essentially technology licenced from research giant Lucent, who
offer it to all comers as well as making their own range of
Intel-flavoured and stand-alone products.

For city-wide WANs, however, more power is needed to cover the greater
ranges required, and can still cost US$800 or so per user. What used to
be a large part of the cost of setting up a wireless connection was a
once-rare item called an "antenna connector" - now all they have to do
is gut an Airport-ready iBook or desktop G4 unit.

If someone offers to buy _your_ Mac's antenna connector, politely refuse
and say that if there's a wireless WAN going up in your area, you want
to be a part of it.


[1] http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/12/01/wireless_ethernet
    /index.html (re-flow so it's one line)
[2] http://public.wsj.com/sn/y/SB975000515459708837.html
[3] http://www.air.net.au/


Geoffrey

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