[Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[Dave Taht]

I remember experimenting with "homeRF". I cannot remember for the life
of me what it was like.

and to me, why wifi took off was that it had a strong investment by
apple AND heavy interest from the geek community, with a couple
drivers that actually worked, and because of the coffee shop
phenomenon....

Shure, everything else here was important, too:

https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
-- 

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[David P. Reed]

This is a strange, strange article. It focuses on the WECA as if that organization really mattered (other than coming up with the name WiFi for an existing widely used technology).

Now I do understand the value of a consortium as a market stabilization mechanism. And the products being developed as 802.11b needed some standardized choice of interoperable options (such as a pragmatic definition of what an "access point" should support in terms of association protocol options, of which there were *many* in the 802.11b spec).

And I do understand the value of a common branding (WiFi soon replaced 802.11b which was what all of us hackers called it for a long time). Again, a business thing.

But, 802.11a and 802.11b hardware was out there and used long before WECA was created.

So, I find this "anniversary" quite strange. It seems to be an after-the-fact attempt to claim credit for an invention that was not actually done 50 years ago. It seems like WIRED is being incredibly lazy, taking a press release from the WiFi alliance and printing it as if it were Factual.

Note: the so-called 50th anniversary of the Internet is also a strange idea that's happening this fall. The idea of "internetworking" did not get sorted out in 1969. Yes, the birth of ARPANET was arguably in 1969.  But the idea of Internetworking came years later. The original ARPANET was exciting for many reasons: packet networking at scale, demonstrating that a network based on packets could deal with outages in a decentralized way, ... But no, Virginia, the Internet was not born when ARPANET was born. The Internet we have now was born in the mid 1970's, focusing on the problem of interoperation of diverse networks (not the ARPANET, which was deemed not suitable for internetworking.

It's becoming very popular to revise history by convenient omission of facts that few remember anymore. This makes me sad, because I remember, and my memories are being rewritten to satisfy the egos of companies and organizations who seem to be uncomfortable with the idea that there were many diverse roots of these technologies.


On Monday, September 16, 2019 6:46pm, "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com> said:

> I remember experimenting with "homeRF". I cannot remember for the life
> of me what it was like.
> 
> and to me, why wifi took off was that it had a strong investment by
> apple AND heavy interest from the geek community, with a couple
> drivers that actually worked, and because of the coffee shop
> phenomenon....
> 
> Shure, everything else here was important, too:
> 
> https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
> --
> 
> Dave Täht
> CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> http://www.teklibre.com
> Tel: 1-831-205-9740
> _______________________________________________
> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[David Lang]

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I had some homerf devices, they were signficantly slower than 802.11b but they 
were also far cheaper (they were ~$150 for a card where 802.11b were ~$800 each)

a few years later the 'junk' vendors started producing 802.11b devices, the 
prices dropped, and they caught on.

David Lang



On Mon, 16 Sep 2019, Dave Taht wrote:

> Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:46:38 +0100
> From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> To: Make-Wifi-fast <make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Subject: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi
> 
> I remember experimenting with "homeRF". I cannot remember for the life
> of me what it was like.
>
> and to me, why wifi took off was that it had a strong investment by
> apple AND heavy interest from the geek community, with a couple
> drivers that actually worked, and because of the coffee shop
> phenomenon....
>
> Shure, everything else here was important, too:
>
> https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
> -- 
>
> Dave Täht
> CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> http://www.teklibre.com
> Tel: 1-831-205-9740
> _______________________________________________
> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[Bob McMahon]

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For what it's worth, Teresa Meng (founder of Atheros) said in 2004

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=984469

"TM: There are three basic ingredients in the technology. The first is
definitely signal processing. In the past two decades a lot of research and
industry achievements have made it possible for us to understand how to
transmit signals through a wireless medium, based on sophisticated signal
processing algorithms.

Second, in the late ’90s, it became possible to implement gigahertz RF
circuits using digital CMOS technology—the predominant technology that
people have been using for implementing microprocessors and memory.

The third ingredient is the opening up of the unlicensed band. Before 1997,
for example, a carrier would have to pay a lot of money—in the
billion-dollar range—to the government to have the right to use a bandwidth
of several megahertz for their cellphone service. In 1997, the U.S.
government opened up the 5GHz UNII band that allows unlicensed
users—everybody in the United States—to use up to 550 megahertz of
bandwidth, as long as they follow the rules.

With the availability of wide bandwidth and CMOS technology being advanced
enough to process the bandwidth at this frequency, and with the signal
processing know-how—all this created what I call the “wireless revolution”
that freed us from the previous notion that wireless communication is
expensive, inherently constrained by a low data-rate, and is scarce.
Bandwidth used to be a very scarce commodity, which is not true anymore
with the opening up of unlicensed bands. This is the path Atheros would
like to lead: to change people’s view of wireless service from
tele-communication to more of a data-communication notion where equipment
can be updated very quickly and inexpensively, and basically provide a
level field for competition."

Bob

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:33 PM David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:

> I had some homerf devices, they were signficantly slower than 802.11b but
> they
> were also far cheaper (they were ~$150 for a card where 802.11b were ~$800
> each)
>
> a few years later the 'junk' vendors started producing 802.11b devices,
> the
> prices dropped, and they caught on.
>
> David Lang
>
>
>
> On Mon, 16 Sep 2019, Dave Taht wrote:
>
> > Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:46:38 +0100
> > From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> > To: Make-Wifi-fast <make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> > Subject: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi
> >
> > I remember experimenting with "homeRF". I cannot remember for the life
> > of me what it was like.
> >
> > and to me, why wifi took off was that it had a strong investment by
> > apple AND heavy interest from the geek community, with a couple
> > drivers that actually worked, and because of the coffee shop
> > phenomenon....
> >
> > Shure, everything else here was important, too:
> >
> > https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
> > --
> >
> > Dave Täht
> > CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> > http://www.teklibre.com
> > Tel: 1-831-205-9740
> > _______________________________________________
> > Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> > Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast
> _______________________________________________
> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast

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Re: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[Dave Taht]

Great article, bob, thx!

People *wanted* wireless freedom. Everybody had a laptop and a modem,
and a pcmcia slot. One business model that lasted only briefly was
coffee shops renting pcmcia cards.....


On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 12:10 PM Bob McMahon <bob.mcmahon@broadcom.com> wrote:
>
> For what it's worth, Teresa Meng (founder of Atheros) said in 2004
>
> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=984469
>
> "TM: There are three basic ingredients in the technology. The first is definitely signal processing. In the past two decades a lot of research and industry achievements have made it possible for us to understand how to transmit signals through a wireless medium, based on sophisticated signal processing algorithms.
>
> Second, in the late ’90s, it became possible to implement gigahertz RF circuits using digital CMOS technology—the predominant technology that people have been using for implementing microprocessors and memory.
>
> The third ingredient is the opening up of the unlicensed band. Before 1997, for example, a carrier would have to pay a lot of money—in the billion-dollar range—to the government to have the right to use a bandwidth of several megahertz for their cellphone service. In 1997, the U.S. government opened up the 5GHz UNII band that allows unlicensed users—everybody in the United States—to use up to 550 megahertz of bandwidth, as long as they follow the rules.
>
> With the availability of wide bandwidth and CMOS technology being advanced enough to process the bandwidth at this frequency, and with the signal processing know-how—all this created what I call the “wireless revolution” that freed us from the previous notion that wireless communication is expensive, inherently constrained by a low data-rate, and is scarce. Bandwidth used to be a very scarce commodity, which is not true anymore with the opening up of unlicensed bands. This is the path Atheros would like to lead: to change people’s view of wireless service from tele-communication to more of a data-communication notion where equipment can be updated very quickly and inexpensively, and basically provide a level field for competition."
>
> Bob
>
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:33 PM David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
>>
>> I had some homerf devices, they were signficantly slower than 802.11b but they
>> were also far cheaper (they were ~$150 for a card where 802.11b were ~$800 each)
>>
>> a few years later the 'junk' vendors started producing 802.11b devices, the
>> prices dropped, and they caught on.
>>
>> David Lang
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 16 Sep 2019, Dave Taht wrote:
>>
>> > Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:46:38 +0100
>> > From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
>> > To: Make-Wifi-fast <make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> > Subject: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi
>> >
>> > I remember experimenting with "homeRF". I cannot remember for the life
>> > of me what it was like.
>> >
>> > and to me, why wifi took off was that it had a strong investment by
>> > apple AND heavy interest from the geek community, with a couple
>> > drivers that actually worked, and because of the coffee shop
>> > phenomenon....
>> >
>> > Shure, everything else here was important, too:
>> >
>> > https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
>> > --
>> >
>> > Dave Täht
>> > CTO, TekLibre, LLC
>> > http://www.teklibre.com
>> > Tel: 1-831-205-9740
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Make-wifi-fast mailing list
>> > Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast_______________________________________________
>> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
>> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast



--

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[David P. Reed]

A small correction/enhancement to the note from Teresa Meng. Maybe it is because I'm much older than her.

The U-NII band opening up in 1997 was NOT the first move by the USG to create open communications. The first move was the creation of enhancements to Part 15, and the allowance of spread-spectrum modes (FHSS and DSSS) on 2.4 GHz ISM band under Part 15.

The core person involved in that Part 15 expansion was Dr. Michael Marcus (a good friend of mine) who at the time worked for the FCC in its Office of Engineering and Technology. (his website is here http://www.marcus-spectrum.com/).

Dr. Meng was not around at the time, so I'm not surprised she isn't aware of the history before she became involved in her work.  FHSS and DSSS modes didn't require the advanced digital modulation mechanisms she refers to, which enabled OFDM (OFDM requires the fourier transform, which can only practically be done algorithmically).

The U-NII band (5 GHz) was the result of major efforts, led mostly on the political side by Apple Computer Inc. and in particular Jim Lovette, an engineer in Apple's advanced engineering, many years earlier, in 1990. Jim, along with others at Apple, and even with some support from Lotus, where I was VP and Chief Scientist, made the case that we needed much more open and freely usable spectrum than the 2.4 GHz and 900 Mhz spectrum that was already in use.  (https://books.google.com/books?id=GTwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT5&ots=CAM_c7p1qh&dq=Jim%20Lovette%20Apple%20radio&pg=PT5#v=onepage&q=Jim%20Lovette%20Apple%20radio&f=false)

I knew many of the folks who built 802.11b (prior to U-NII band) and prior to the creation of the WiFi "cartel" who created the brand name WiFi. This is why I'm annoyed at the attempt to make 1999 its "birth". That's just false. It was NOT created by an industry cartel. 



On Thursday, September 26, 2019 6:32pm, "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com> said:

> Great article, bob, thx!
> 
> People *wanted* wireless freedom. Everybody had a laptop and a modem,
> and a pcmcia slot. One business model that lasted only briefly was
> coffee shops renting pcmcia cards.....
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 12:10 PM Bob McMahon <bob.mcmahon@broadcom.com> wrote:
>>
>> For what it's worth, Teresa Meng (founder of Atheros) said in 2004
>>
>> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=984469
>>
>> "TM: There are three basic ingredients in the technology. The first is definitely
>> signal processing. In the past two decades a lot of research and industry
>> achievements have made it possible for us to understand how to transmit signals
>> through a wireless medium, based on sophisticated signal processing algorithms.
>>
>> Second, in the late ’90s, it became possible to implement gigahertz RF
>> circuits using digital CMOS technology—the predominant technology that
>> people have been using for implementing microprocessors and memory.
>>
>> The third ingredient is the opening up of the unlicensed band. Before 1997, for
>> example, a carrier would have to pay a lot of money—in the billion-dollar
>> range—to the government to have the right to use a bandwidth of several
>> megahertz for their cellphone service. In 1997, the U.S. government opened up the
>> 5GHz UNII band that allows unlicensed users—everybody in the United
>> States—to use up to 550 megahertz of bandwidth, as long as they follow the
>> rules.
>>
>> With the availability of wide bandwidth and CMOS technology being advanced enough
>> to process the bandwidth at this frequency, and with the signal processing
>> know-how—all this created what I call the “wireless revolution”
>> that freed us from the previous notion that wireless communication is expensive,
>> inherently constrained by a low data-rate, and is scarce. Bandwidth used to be a
>> very scarce commodity, which is not true anymore with the opening up of
>> unlicensed bands. This is the path Atheros would like to lead: to change
>> people’s view of wireless service from tele-communication to more of a
>> data-communication notion where equipment can be updated very quickly and
>> inexpensively, and basically provide a level field for competition."
>>
>> Bob
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:33 PM David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
>>>
>>> I had some homerf devices, they were signficantly slower than 802.11b but they
>>> were also far cheaper (they were ~$150 for a card where 802.11b were ~$800 each)
>>>
>>> a few years later the 'junk' vendors started producing 802.11b devices, the
>>> prices dropped, and they caught on.
>>>
>>> David Lang
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, 16 Sep 2019, Dave Taht wrote:
>>>
>>> > Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:46:38 +0100
>>> > From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
>>> > To: Make-Wifi-fast <make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>> > Subject: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi
>>> >
>>> > I remember experimenting with "homeRF". I cannot remember for the life
>>> > of me what it was like.
>>> >
>>> > and to me, why wifi took off was that it had a strong investment by
>>> > apple AND heavy interest from the geek community, with a couple
>>> > drivers that actually worked, and because of the coffee shop
>>> > phenomenon....
>>> >
>>> > Shure, everything else here was important, too:
>>> >
>>> > https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
>>> > --
>>> >
>>> > Dave Täht
>>> > CTO, TekLibre, LLC
>>> > http://www.teklibre.com
>>> > Tel: 1-831-205-9740
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > Make-wifi-fast mailing list
>>> > Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast_______________________________________________
>>> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
>>> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Dave Täht
> CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> http://www.teklibre.com
> Tel: 1-831-205-9740
> _______________________________________________
> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast

Re: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi

[Bob McMahon]

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Hi David,

Thanks for sharing this information. I find it interesting.

Bob

On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 6:14 PM David P. Reed <dpreed@deepplum.com> wrote:

> A small correction/enhancement to the note from Teresa Meng. Maybe it is
> because I'm much older than her.
>
> The U-NII band opening up in 1997 was NOT the first move by the USG to
> create open communications. The first move was the creation of enhancements
> to Part 15, and the allowance of spread-spectrum modes (FHSS and DSSS) on
> 2.4 GHz ISM band under Part 15.
>
> The core person involved in that Part 15 expansion was Dr. Michael Marcus
> (a good friend of mine) who at the time worked for the FCC in its Office of
> Engineering and Technology. (his website is here
> http://www.marcus-spectrum.com/).
>
> Dr. Meng was not around at the time, so I'm not surprised she isn't aware
> of the history before she became involved in her work.  FHSS and DSSS modes
> didn't require the advanced digital modulation mechanisms she refers to,
> which enabled OFDM (OFDM requires the fourier transform, which can only
> practically be done algorithmically).
>
> The U-NII band (5 GHz) was the result of major efforts, led mostly on the
> political side by Apple Computer Inc. and in particular Jim Lovette, an
> engineer in Apple's advanced engineering, many years earlier, in 1990. Jim,
> along with others at Apple, and even with some support from Lotus, where I
> was VP and Chief Scientist, made the case that we needed much more open and
> freely usable spectrum than the 2.4 GHz and 900 Mhz spectrum that was
> already in use.  (
> https://books.google.com/books?id=GTwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT5&ots=CAM_c7p1qh&dq=Jim%20Lovette%20Apple%20radio&pg=PT5#v=onepage&q=Jim%20Lovette%20Apple%20radio&f=false
> )
>
> I knew many of the folks who built 802.11b (prior to U-NII band) and prior
> to the creation of the WiFi "cartel" who created the brand name WiFi. This
> is why I'm annoyed at the attempt to make 1999 its "birth". That's just
> false. It was NOT created by an industry cartel.
>
>
>
> On Thursday, September 26, 2019 6:32pm, "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> said:
>
> > Great article, bob, thx!
> >
> > People *wanted* wireless freedom. Everybody had a laptop and a modem,
> > and a pcmcia slot. One business model that lasted only briefly was
> > coffee shops renting pcmcia cards.....
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 12:10 PM Bob McMahon <bob.mcmahon@broadcom.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> For what it's worth, Teresa Meng (founder of Atheros) said in 2004
> >>
> >> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=984469
> >>
> >> "TM: There are three basic ingredients in the technology. The first is
> definitely
> >> signal processing. In the past two decades a lot of research and
> industry
> >> achievements have made it possible for us to understand how to transmit
> signals
> >> through a wireless medium, based on sophisticated signal processing
> algorithms.
> >>
> >> Second, in the late ’90s, it became possible to implement gigahertz RF
> >> circuits using digital CMOS technology—the predominant technology that
> >> people have been using for implementing microprocessors and memory.
> >>
> >> The third ingredient is the opening up of the unlicensed band. Before
> 1997, for
> >> example, a carrier would have to pay a lot of money—in the
> billion-dollar
> >> range—to the government to have the right to use a bandwidth of several
> >> megahertz for their cellphone service. In 1997, the U.S. government
> opened up the
> >> 5GHz UNII band that allows unlicensed users—everybody in the United
> >> States—to use up to 550 megahertz of bandwidth, as long as they follow
> the
> >> rules.
> >>
> >> With the availability of wide bandwidth and CMOS technology being
> advanced enough
> >> to process the bandwidth at this frequency, and with the signal
> processing
> >> know-how—all this created what I call the “wireless revolution”
> >> that freed us from the previous notion that wireless communication is
> expensive,
> >> inherently constrained by a low data-rate, and is scarce. Bandwidth
> used to be a
> >> very scarce commodity, which is not true anymore with the opening up of
> >> unlicensed bands. This is the path Atheros would like to lead: to change
> >> people’s view of wireless service from tele-communication to more of a
> >> data-communication notion where equipment can be updated very quickly
> and
> >> inexpensively, and basically provide a level field for competition."
> >>
> >> Bob
> >>
> >> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:33 PM David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I had some homerf devices, they were signficantly slower than 802.11b
> but they
> >>> were also far cheaper (they were ~$150 for a card where 802.11b were
> ~$800 each)
> >>>
> >>> a few years later the 'junk' vendors started producing 802.11b
> devices, the
> >>> prices dropped, and they caught on.
> >>>
> >>> David Lang
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, 16 Sep 2019, Dave Taht wrote:
> >>>
> >>> > Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:46:38 +0100
> >>> > From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> >>> > To: Make-Wifi-fast <make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> >>> > Subject: [Make-wifi-fast] 20 year anniversary of wifi
> >>> >
> >>> > I remember experimenting with "homeRF". I cannot remember for the
> life
> >>> > of me what it was like.
> >>> >
> >>> > and to me, why wifi took off was that it had a strong investment by
> >>> > apple AND heavy interest from the geek community, with a couple
> >>> > drivers that actually worked, and because of the coffee shop
> >>> > phenomenon....
> >>> >
> >>> > Shure, everything else here was important, too:
> >>> >
> >>> > https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
> >>> > --
> >>> >
> >>> > Dave Täht
> >>> > CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> >>> > http://www.teklibre.com
> >>> > Tel: 1-831-205-9740
> >>> > _______________________________________________
> >>> > Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> >>> > Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> >
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast_______________________________________________
> >>> Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> >>> Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Dave Täht
> > CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> > http://www.teklibre.com
> > Tel: 1-831-205-9740
> > _______________________________________________
> > Make-wifi-fast mailing list
> > Make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast
>
>
>

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