[LINK] Wireless Broadband for Regional Australia

[Paul Brooks]

On 20/12/2013 8:34 AM, Tom Worthington wrote:
> On 18/12/13 11:40, Paul Brooks wrote:
>
>> ... FTTdp model in the Strategic Review ... distribution
>> point) is a pit at the bottom of the driveway - or more likely,
>> attached to the side of a nearby power pole ...
> If most householders are accessing their broadband via WiFi and Mobile 
> Broadband, could you use it as the link from the distribution point (DP) 
> in the street into the household?  That way no extra equipment would be 
> needed in the house and a service could be provided to mobile users in 
> the street, as well as households.

Sure you could add some form of femto-cell function for augmenting the mobile cellular
broadband networks, to serve nearby homes and walking-by pedestrians - but I suspect
you'll have real problems with phones in cars driving by due to the extremely rapid
cell-switching that would occur every few seconds. Phones in cars wouldn't finish the
handshaking with one cell before moving into the next.


I distinguish very separately household networks (generally cabled and WiFi), and
public networks (cellular mobile broadband) - and it goes a lot further than the link
technology. Household WiFi is generally a private network, with no bandwidth/volume
charges, relatively secure (on the household side of the firewall), and often relies
on functions within the WiFi router to facilitate non-trivial apps such as NAT, port
forwarding, VoIP proxies, multicast proxies, etc - which you lose in that model.
A model such as you propose here (no extra equipment needed in the house) would:
* be effectively forcing everyone (and every device) into the same security model as
WiFi access at McDonalds, coffee shops, etc;
* be useless for devices with cabled ports and not WiFi (think printers,
set-top-boxes, DVD players, smart TVs etc),  and high-bandwidth devices such as NAS
storage.

So you'll still need a wired hub for these cabled devices, while forcing all access
from one of your devices to the files on your NAS through a double-WiFi hop
(remembering that WiFi is only half-duplex). If the data charging model was similar to
mobile broadband, it would be unworkable.

Most devices with just WiFi connectivity tend to assume there is a firewall/NAT device
located on the other end of the WiFi hub - which would be missing in this instance -
and you don't want to have to force your wifi-connected photo frame to have to jump
through the web-based captive portal hoops that a tablet or laptop has to go through
accessing coffee-shop/airport-lounge wifi systems.

You lose the compartmentalisation that is important for home networks in limiting the
scope of network broadcasts, particularly server advertisements. Imagine using the
network browser to find a shared drive, and having to wade through all the services,
servers, shared drives, network printers, DLNA sources and displays, etc etc located
in all of the neighbourhood's homes! (and the security problems that might bring).

The alternative might be to keep the WiFi-enabled broadband router in the home to keep
the firewall and broadcast containment functions, with the uplink being also WiFi, or
cellular mobile broadband to the pole outside - with all the performance limitations
that brings.

Personally, I think the initial assumption (most people are accessing their broadband
via WiFi and Mobile Broadband) is an incorrect starting point. At home, people don't
'access broadband', they use broadband to 'access devices/servers/content' - its the
same sloppy thinking that conflates "broadband" with "the Internet". In a home
context, to an increasing degree much of those devices/servers/content is also located
in their home and is not accessed over a public broadband link, and would have their
utility killed if they were forced to be.
Paul.