Wireless Internet Future

Wireless Internet Future
By:
Onno W. Purbo

Around the year 1992, Indonesia established an Internet-based radio packet 1200bps speed. It's very slow going, but Internet radio technology (wireless) has proven himself as an alternative that can not be made to play games. This paper rather technical smell, with the aim of my friends that readers get a wireless network built its own high-speed Internet 2-11Mbps is not something impossible - shot is easy & much better than the existing telecom infrastructure at this time.

On this day (towards the end of 2000), wireless Internet technology alternatives that need to be taken into account by telecom operators & Indosat. Today telecom 2Mbps lease its lines for Rp. 10 million / month - but by using wireless Internet equipment on the market, we can operate the 11Mbps speed channel with an investment of around Rp. 20 million of the cost of license a frequency of about USD 2 million of a year. Even on this day more and more WARNET in various cities (Bandung, Medan, Yogyakarta, etc.) begin to build networks among its WARNET using wireless technologies such. Not to mention the influx of satellite operator (also wireless) in Indonesia such as the Internet arena Pacific Satellite Nusantara (PSN), Darting (from Infocom), PalapaNet (from Satelindo), Telkomnet Turbo (from Telkom) to add wireless Internet infrastructure boom in Indonesia - a ultimately allow us to build low-cost Internet access for the people of Indonesia. More detailed discussion about the wireless Internet a lot done in asosiasi-warnet@egroups.com & ybnet-l@itb.ac.id.



Key equipment required is a WaveLAN card on the day that is generally shaped like a PCMCIA card shown in the picture on the side. Some sites on the Internet that contains a lot of information this WaveLAN tengang include http://hydra.carleton.ca, http://www.wavelan.com, http://www.wavelan.net. In my image card ORINICO show made by Lucent is working on 2.4GHz frequency speed 11Mbps IEEE 802.11b protocol is modulated using a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) so that at the same frequency can be worked multiple channels at once. If there are problems in the links, the Orinoco will conduct speed automatic fallback to 5.5Mbps, 2Mbps & 1 Mbps in order to keep good performance. Orinoco follow standard WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance) Wi-Fi 'wireless fidelity' standard. Transmit power of the WaveLAN cards are usually very low around 25mW course. What is important also to note is that WaveLAN card rates, typically ranging from about U.S. $ 250-300-an / card in the U.S. it - so much cheaper if we can buy the card they will just WaveLAN, most just add import duties.


To increase the distance to reach the required emission WaveLAN external antenna (which is placed outside the building). Generally for the distances of 5-10 km can be achieved by using the external antenna. Price antenna approximately U.S. $ 60-70-an. The main problem was because the WaveLAN card is generally a low-power about 25 mW of, the distance between WaveLAN card with the antenna it can not be too far so that the signal is not lost in the coax cable connecting the WaveLAN card with the antenna. Usually, the connecting cable (50 ohm coax a good), is limited less than 10 meters away. So do not be surprised, if we will see computers (PCs) in Lay on the roof-WARNET WARNET interconnected using this WaveLAN media, because inevitably the PC must be on Lay on the roof so that the distance between the card to the antenna can be made a minimum below 10 meters.

In order to save investment costs are usually my friends just bought his WaveLAN card only from Lucent, PT. Asaba, friends in Wahid (http://www.wahid.com or aulia@wahid.com), and then install it on PCs that functioned as a router. If you buy all this equipment WaveLAN router's built-up from abroad, prices outside of his country alone was U.S. $ 3000 a her, not to import duties etc. etc. therefore be very expensive if bought from abroad all directly .

After Card WaveLAN & Antenna goes well, the next strategy is to find out how so we can use a lot of PC market to function as a router. Usually when we buy a WaveLAN card in the provided software driver for the Windows operating system. Unfortunately Windows is not good if used for the router in the Internet, different from either UNIX Linux & FreeBSD much better for applications in Internet routers. On this router we attach two (2) network interface, which one is the WaveLAN card 2-11Mbps for long distance communication is another form of an ethernet card to connect a local area network (LAN) from WARNET, school or local office in the building / room .

His art is how to convince your ISP to connect to where we are willing to be associated with WaveLAN. Some ISPs would gladly use the WaveLAN interconnected, but there are some ISPs, especially from the telecommunications monopoly that is not willing to connect with the WaveLAN. The problem is really just a matter of frequency license & pay the ISP for 24-hour access to dedicated high-speed.

There are quite a lot of information on the Internet that allows us to run a PC as a gateway / router WaveLAN. All you need do is to install Linux / FreeBSD on your computer that wants to be a router, then install the appropriate drivers with WaveLAN cards that we use to connect to the Internet. I believe English is not a problem for most readers of the few sites on the Internet that carry information about the WaveLAN these include:

http://www.fasta.fh-dortmund.de/users/andy/wvlan/ - andy's website which contains software for the WaveLAN drivers in Linux kernel version 2.3.x.
· Jean's web page that contains Tourrilhes about Linux & Wireless LANs in http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/. You almost can dipasti will find lots of information about Linux & WaveLAN here.
· Collection on Linux PCMCIA drivers collected by David Hind on http://pcmcia.sourceforge.org/.
· Very good information about the WaveLAN / IEE on Linux by Harald Roelle in http://www.roelle.com/wvlanPPC/.
· Web's Justin Seger who maintain WaveLAN / PCMCIA drivers in http://www.media.mit.edu/ ~ jseger / wavelan.html

Some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) & HOWTO files that might help us to develop with Linux WaveLAN can be found at:

· Http://linux.grmbl.be/wlan/ - an FAQ which dimaintain by Dries Buytaert.
· Http://www.rage.net/wireless/wireless-howto.html - a description of how to use Linux WaveLAN.
· Http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/ - explains how to link the network from home to home using WaveLAN.

Clear here that in fact the documentation of the WaveLAN & Linux quite a lot, sometimes even too much so. So a little confusing if we can not do that, especially with his transparent & open her knowledge of the use of WaveLAN on the Internet.

Another advantage obtained by using Linux & FreeBSD is we do not violate copyrights even if we download the software free of charge / free on the Internet. More crazy it again, in Linux all software was open to the source code to be very good for developing human resources information technology in Indonesia.