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Wireless Networking Education Hardware

Students Use 802.11g To Save Cable Industry 169

Posted by michael from the in-your-dreams dept.
LiquidFun writes "Business undergraduates at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business have written an e-business case for one of their case competitions that describes how to use 802.11g wireless technology to distribute cable content, both interactive and broadcast, throughout the home. They mention features like video-on-demand, cable gaming, etc. and even provide enough of the technical specifications necessary to start believing that this could work. They even make available their PowerPoint presentation that they presented to judges from both Cisco & Deloitte Consulting. I'd say a pretty good job for third-year undergrads."
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Students Use 802.11g To Save Cable Industry More

Students Use 802.11g To Save Cable Industry

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  • This seems like just another technology that's neat, but not very usefull. Sure on some campuses it would be helpfull, but other than that, i see no End User marketability. Not many people want to broadcast their own TV. Neat technology though...
    • Um, did you even read the article? It talks all about End User marketability, specifically for home users with broadband. I don't know where you get the campuses thought from, cept maybe because a bunch of college students came up with this idea. Personally, I think that this is just the kind of killer-app that makes broadband viable. I especially like the idea of video-streams-on-demand. An application like this might also make a fiber-to-home product viable, along with a later-generation wireless technol

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:27PM (#5989083)
    Students bring peace to the Middle East, and an end to war and world hunger in a single session at the Mock UN.

    No film as 11 because we all to happy to watch TV

  • I prefer cable (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:27PM (#5989084)
    I don't want all my porn to be picked up by some alien Seti project.
    • Yeah, I can just hear NASA now:

      "I don't know what planet this is, but goddamn the women are hot! Send a probe *snicker* immediately!"

      This might actually be a good thing. Once Congress saw "the evidence" tape, they'd be clambering for more manned space missions. How much do you want to bet they'd all be trying to do John Glen-like space junkets --

      "My fellow Americans, It's my patriotic duty as a Senator to be the first embassador to Planet Porn. I take this sacrifice on my self for my love of boo..uh,

  • Sing with me now.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by marcushnk ( 90744 ) <senectus@nOSPam.gmail.com> on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:29PM (#5989094) Journal
    "Radio killed the video star"

    :-P

  • Future (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tuba_dude ( 584287 ) <tuba.terry@gmail.com> on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:30PM (#5989097) Homepage Journal
    The 'future of cable' seems pretty neat, but with the people currently in charge, how long would it take before it's regulated and the consumer products have encryption (or some other way to keep you out and keep them in control) built-in?

    • Re:Future (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tenebrious1 ( 530949 )
      How long? They already do, DVD players and CSS for one. Lexmark printers are another.

      If this becomes popular, I forsee xbox hackers running linux and snort not only to leech bandwidth, but to steal cable- it's an ideal platform to do it.

      And I doubt MS would be too upset that you're stealing from (and thus lowering the revenue of) AOL-TW...

  • Good thing they're just students... (Score:5, Informative)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:30PM (#5989099)

    Using the huge infrastructure and bandwidth muscle to eliminate satellite TV from the urban and suburban areas by adding more content-rich and interactive features beyond the bandwidth that satellite TV is capable of handling.


    Lines like these might perk the interest of regulators.

    Ryan Fenton

  • Text incase of Slashdotting (Score:3, Informative)

    by acposter ( 673722 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:31PM (#5989103)
    Introduction
    This project is a plan to incorporate the three primary uses of the existing nationwide cable network, voice, data and video, into one convenient and easy-to-use package that will satisfy most consumers' communication needs at a
    fair price.

    The long term goal of this project is to maximize shareholder return by becoming the standard by which both urban and suburban American people access these communications mediums. In the short term, the goal is to maintain and increase existing market share by creating a competitive advantage over competitors with overlapping markets using the existing infrastructure.

    Detailed Background of Subject

    Much money and time has been invested in setting up the infrastructure for a nationwide, high-speed cable network. However, market share has been fragmented between many competitors. Today, the cable industry is fighting a battle with the satellite TV, high-speed DSL internet access, and telco phone service companies. Most of these competitors are more formidable in size and financial health.

    Currently, cable is the only medium that can simultaneously offer all three means of communication whereas every other competitor is only able to offer one or two means of communication using its existing infrastructure. Therefore, the cable infrastructure has enormous potential. Despite the possible marketing alliances between satellite television and internet (dial-up and DSL services) companies to provide all three services in conjunction to the consumer, they are still unable to provide these services through a single infrastructure. However, the virtual bundling of these services offered by cable competitors still poses a threat to existing cable market share.

    Detailed Problem Explanation
    If the cable industry were to continue in its current ways, it would face high churn and a relatively shrinking customer base. Furthermore, the cable industry would lose its opportunity to create a competitive advantage. Factors that contribute to this problem include:

    DSL will continue growing twice as fast as cable modems.

    Satellite TV would continue convincing cable customers to switch over with more attractive packages.

    Cable would never enter the telephone industry due to the customer being used to their existing regional phone services.

    While cable operators can expect steep competition from satellite and telecom vendors, Cable currently is the only network architecture of its kind capable of offering not only digital video, high-speed data, and telephony, but other interactive services such as home networking, remote home security monitoring, video conferencing, interactive TV/games, and others. With millions already invested in cable and plant upgrades, many believe that Cable operators are positioned for success if the right decisions are made.

    Cable companies must recognize the fact that their infrastructure already contains large amounts of unused capital. This, in effect, translates into a "free" investment, that is, it can use all this extra bandwidth that it has to offer great services at a very low marginal cost.

    Competitors have reduced prices of packages which then, combined with free equipment promotions, free installation promotions, and multi-receivers, are compelling packages that are eating up more market share.

    Objectives

    We envision...

    Using the huge infrastructure and bandwidth muscle to eliminate satellite TV from the urban and suburban areas by adding more content-rich and interactive features beyond the bandwidth that satellite TV is capable of handling.

    Delivering cable TV, high-speed internet access, telephone with video conferencing, static-free radio, on-demand games and movies, and more through one single medium. Essentially, the cable line becomes the only link needed between the home and the outside world for all cable subscribers.

    Offering a local wireless network within each household by which content is distributed, e
    • What makes cable gaming different from existing gaming networks is that with existing gaming networks, all processing is done locally on the user's own machine. With cable gaming, the required processing is done by the company's machines. This minimizes the actual amount of bandwidth required to travel along physical cable lines, as well as negates the need for a game processor on the consumer end (i.e. a game console; Xbox, Playstation, etc.). The only additional hardware required on the consumer's end is

    • Re:Text incase of Slashdotting (Score:5, Informative)

      by LarsG ( 31008 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @06:55AM (#5990382) Journal
      Under the 802.11g wireless standard, which is capable of transmitting data at a rate up to 54mpbs

      No, it isn't. Without any interference from other 2.4GHz devices, you can't really expect more than 22Mbps. And that is shared bandwidth - once you have two way connections between the AP and several client devices, they all share the bandwidth. If you have hidden node issues (one client can't hear one of the other clients talking to the AP) you have to go to RTS/CTS mode to avoid collisions which also decrease the effective throughput. There is also no proper QOS in 802.11/b/g, first come first served - on a wireless segment with moderate to heavy load, you can experience lag spikes if several stations wish to transmit at the same time.

      The router will also broadcast a connectionless stream under the UDP/IP protocol to devices such as televisions. This connectionless stream will be broadcasted in real-time, continuously, whether a device is "listening" or not, so several devices (e.g. televisions) can simply listen in when they are turned on without having to send a special signal to the box.

      Hold on. Will the cable box translate MPEG2 streams received from the cable side to video frames and broadcast those to 802.11g enabled TVs, or will it just broadcast the MPEG2 stream?

      In scenario one - have they done the math on how much bandwidth this will require? Not to mention the cost of upgrading your TV to receive raw video frames over 802.11g?

      In scenario 2 - have they considered the cost of adding the MPEG2 and 802.11g hardware to the TV? What about MPEG2 artifacts if some frames are lost?

      When broadcasting over wireless, you have to take into account the maximum speed of the client with worst signal quality. You can't expect to use 54Mbps modulation if you want the TV at the other end of the house to receive the signal with low packet loss. You can't rely on always being able to use 54Mbps (22Mbps throughput) if you want reliable broadcast to other devices in the household.

      What makes cable gaming different from existing gaming networks is that with existing gaming networks, all processing is done locally on the user's own machine. With cable gaming, the required processing is done by the company's machines. This minimizes the actual amount of bandwidth required to travel along physical cable lines, as well as negates the need for a game processor on the consumer end (i.e. a game console; Xbox, Playstation, etc.). The only additional hardware required on the consumer's end is a minimal amount of Random Access Memory (RAM) onboard the digital cable box that acts as buffer memory to ensure a smooth, seamless gaming experience.

      Sending complete video frames through the cable net is somehow less bandwidth consuming than sending UDP packets containing the state of the game? Even assuming an MPEG2 video stream, I don't buy that without seeing hard numbers. I would also worry a bit about latency.

      The idea to use available bandwidth on the cable to provide new services is intriguing, and should definately be explored. But I think that the engineering needed to make something like this work is a bit higher than what the paper assumes.
    • "DSL will continue growing twice as fast as cable modems." - not true (though I like DSL).

      a) You can't "translate the entire cable signal into 802.11g connections and transmit those signals throughout the house." I suspect they meant to say they'd translate a single cable channel into 802.11g. The entire cable signal is circa 700MHz for most systems (and uses 256-QAM for encoding). A single standard-definition channel (digital!) is circa 2-4Mbps, an HD channel is 12-19Mbps.

      b) UDP over 802.11anything

  • Impressions... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kr3m3Puff ( 413047 ) * <me@@@kitsonkelly...com> on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:31PM (#5989104) Homepage Journal
    Well, it is good to see we are at least producing students that can actually put something together. Working in the consulting field myself, I seldom see people actually able to pull together a presentation.

    On the other hand, 802.11g, like all wireless standards are cooperative shared bandwidth. From what I saw, there was a lot of bandwidth need in the presentation.

    Also, with any technology that you are going to drop into the home, there are lots of hidden costs, support, hardware, etc as well as distributing and developing the devices necessary to enable not only wireless but VoiP, VOD, etc, etc... so I would say the cost model is a bit flawed.

    Also, 802.11g is overkill for current cable modem speeds (upto 800Mbp/s is what I understand). I am not sure you can get that much more over cable at current cable quality (most houses are RG56 and not even RG8, which is what is recommended).

    Also, there is a desire (altough draconian) for cable to use cable and telco to use copper and so on and so on...

    Keep up the good thoughts though!

    • Re:Impressions... (Score:5, Informative)

      by dnoyeb ( 547705 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:37PM (#5989127) Homepage Journal
      I agree, nice to see the thought and work put into this, but their are some obvious issues.

      1st, cable and DLS are equal once within the house. This would not give cable any advantage over DSL.

      2nd, this does not affect those who use Satellite because cable is unwilling to service them, not incapable.

      3rd, security will not exist. Remember, the demand for hacks will skyrocket once you put it into each house. plus its wireless. Thats just asking to be hacked... Cable companies will have to spend MUCHO $$$ to prevent this on a yearly basis. You know, like they did with the cable box upgrades every 2 years, only much more agressively.

      4th, 802.x works nice in a ranch house, but it will not like going through floors. It will loose lots of bandwidth there.

      If you ignored competition, I think this would be an excellent idea, but I do not see it as a competitive one.
      • Agreed..and some of the technical hurdles, while not insurmountable, introduce their own plethora of vulnerabilities.

        For example, they mention VoD, but really it's ALL television broadcasts on demand. I mean, presumably the first service of a cable company is television programming. Their system implies that all broadcasts be streamed over IP. Which means some server out there is hosting every digital broadcast available all the time. This server instantly becomes the most hacked at system ever. Not on
        • Start digging around in your Digital cable receiver and you'll see it has an MPEG decoder and an IP address. Digital Video is mpegs streamming over IP. The current video on demand system work the same way.

          I don't think the server will be any more of a target then they are now. Remember, just because it has an IP address does not mean that the system is connected to the Internet. They can take care of bandwidth issues, because the entire network is private.

          • Re:Impressions... (Score:3, Informative)

            by Kr3m3Puff ( 413047 ) *
            While I can agree with the MPEG decoder (and only certain channels are encoded, vs satallite where are channels are encoded at different rates) the IP address thing is wrong. Essentially every channel is allocated a certain bandwidth on the cable which is then decoded by the receiver. While two way communication can happen, it isn't TCP/IP as we know it.

            So while there is bandwidth there to supply it, how are you going to maintain the bandwidth used for Analog channels, plus existing Digital Cable, plus D
    • RG8 is used for old school ethernet networks and is 50 ohm while RG6 is 75 ohm. Television equipment in the U.S. is tuned for 75 ohms so you definitely don't want to use RG8, you'd actually weaken your signal.
    • I think you mean RG6 (outdoor and long distance) and RG58 (indoors/intercomponent).

    • Re:Impressions... (Score:2, Informative)

      by SJ ( 13711 )

      Also, 802.11g is overkill for current cable modem speeds (upto 800Mbp/s is what I understand). I am not sure you can get that much more over cable at current cable quality (most houses are RG56 and not even RG8, which is what is recommended).
      You are confusing 802.11g with IEEE1394b. 802.11g only runs at 54Mbs, which while still lower than 1394, it is greater than what cable can provide. (Oh... and 1394 isn't wireless yet.)
    • most houses are RG56 and not even RG8, which is what is recommended

      FYI, those cable types are not compatible with each other. Television cable has a nominal impedance of about 75 ohm. It is the common TV and Video impedance. RG8 on the other hand is used by Ham Radio operators and CB'ers. It is 50 ohm. It is also the same impedance as it's skinny cousin used in 10 base ethernet RG58. I have seen RG8 used in place of RG58 because it has lower loss and can be used to stretch the ethernet spec for the

    • Re:Impressions... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Kwiik ( 655591 )
      I think you've missed the point on bandwidth.

      Consider this case: currently there are four TVs using cable, two computers both on cable internet, and these are all running off of the same coaxle connection to the house (how many houses have multiple lines going out of their house for coaxle, to get more bandwidth?)

      Now, considering the source states that coaxle bandwidth limitation is at 34mbps. If Wireless-G is rating at 54mbps, this means that the the 34 mbps can easily be incapsulated within the 802

      • Re:Impressions... (Score:3, Informative)

        by LarsG ( 31008 )
        Now, considering the source states that coaxle bandwidth limitation is at 34mbps. If Wireless-G is rating at 54mbps, this means that the the 34 mbps can easily be incapsulated within the 802.11g connection.

        54Mbps is the fastest possible modulation. To get the real throughput, you also have to take into account stuff like inter-frame pauses, packet header/trailer, etc. The real-world maximum speed is more like 22Mbps when you have good signal strength and there are no hidden nodes, interference or multipa
    • Yeah, I agree with you. I noted in their text that they discussed the inability of cable to have voice. Bull, I have digital cable, digital phone, and a cable modem all coming through my cable. The biggest problem, however, with only one connection is that if you lose it, you're sunk! This could work right now with off-the-shelf components (sure it's a little shoddy) but I'm wary of wifi due to the complete disregard for security.
    • Yes, at least they don't waste all their time building tiny robots.

  • case study? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:33PM (#5989116) Homepage
    you have to write a case study to do that? isn't that like general knowledge?
    • I agree - no great inovation here. As I sit here hacking my neighbors Linksys box because his channel was too close to mine (he didn't change the password, he didn't turn on WEP....) what a dumbass..

      The problem with this scheme is that if every house had 802.11G the 2.4 GHz spectrum would be a mess of broadband noise...

      Try again business students...

      • The problem with this scheme is that if every house had 802.11G the 2.4 GHz spectrum would be a mess of broadband noise...

        I didn't think the range of 2.4GHz was enough to interfere that much. And if it became so, you could always just turn down the power.

    • Re:case study? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "you have to write a case study to do that? isn't that like general knowledge?"

      Don't underestimate the power of PowerPoint presentations. When you dumb down a scenario with logically flowing pictures, you can convince people that a business is viable. I'm not being sarcastic here, I've seen it happen. It's sort of like the psychology behind statistics.

  • Call me a skeptic born of dot-com failure but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shoten ( 260439 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:37PM (#5989126)
    I'm inherently distrustful of the ability of Berkeley students to grasp the hard realities of the real-world when it comes to business. I went to a less idealistic (and more politically/culturally moderate) business school, and I didn't grasp them well enough until I had a few years of reality under my belt. The technology might all be there, but that's rarely ever been the problem with any business.
  • pleeez....they're business majors. the presentation is just screaming the obviousities

  • Is it really feasible? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eric2701 ( 231977 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:45PM (#5989156) Homepage
    What about in denser neighborhoods, or apartments. Where could be many different channels being watched , and open internet connections at the same time. Seems like the "54Mbps" would be used up pretty quickly.

    And is it really even 54 Mbps? I seem to recall that the actual transmission rate is much lower.
  • They want to have the cable companies to combine with the telephone company and game companies and assign everyone a unique ID.

    Ya know, a business case is always gonna look good if you're advocating a total media monopoly. Yes, if one company controls every possible communications mechanism we have, they will make lots of money.

    This is an evil idea. Regulatory committees exist solely to prevent this from ever happening as it would destroy our way of life.
    • You know, I'm as anti monopoly as the next guy, but c'mon. Cable companies already provide internet and television. They're just throwing in telephony too. Likewise, most telephone companies already provide internet service via DSL. Some (like BellSouth), provide all three already! If anything, this puts all the big dogs on even ground because you can get all your digital connectivity from any of the players. So, now your erstwhile phone co's compete with your erstwhile cable co's.

      Really, the insig

    • so true, plan is stupid as well as evil. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @12:14AM (#5989449) Homepage Journal
      From the report:

      This project is a plan to incorporate the three primary uses of the existing nationwide cable network, voice, data and video, into one convenient and easy-to-use package that will satisfy most consumers' communication needs at a fair price.

      Business school translator: turn cable internet into propriatory equivalent of cable TV and pay per minute phone service. Don't believe me? Read on.

      # A better infrastructure in the future that will act as a stronger barrier to entry for new and existing competitors.

      No competitors, self explanatory. I suppose they mean monopoly rape when they say "fair price".

      Also built into the new digital cable box is a small camera which would allow for video conferencing, perhaps with other cable customers, over the cable network.

      Ha Ha [min.net] we will be seeing more of these clowns, I'm sure.

      Phone service will also be delivered through the cable network. The existing cable network can easily accommodate the added bandwidth for several voice-data devices, such as telephones, which currently operates over an RJ-45 line. With a nationwide network, the cost of providing long distance phone calls for consumers is greatly reduced. Essentially, calls to anywhere inside the US would essentially be "local calls" as it would not cost anymore on the side of cable companies to offer the service. However, cable companies can still charge competitive rates for local and long distance calling.

      What a grasp of technology they have. Voice over IP paid by the minute, just like the expensive antiquated system it will replace. Let's pay for infrastructure we don't have!

      Oh yeah, they want to own internet gamming too. I wonder if they recomend only letting xbox connect? No, not that smart, they recomend developing IR joy sticks.

      I love their mathematical proof of profit. Was a large business venture ever launched without such promisses? As Ikaos pointed out, a total media monopoly would make money. It's just funny to see them write it out they way they did without considering operating costs! The great power point using brains who thought this up would probably recomend M$/intel to hit the estimated cost of $650/house. Way to go guys.

      Here's a clue stick: all of the above services are available now at no additional cost besides privately owned equipment. Figure out ways to offer these services without fucking your customers, who you so deridingly call "consumers" of the shit you would like to push.

      PS, Star Office can save your M$ presentation as HTML and your .DOC paper in PDF or HTML so that anyone can look at it and you won't have to rewrite your work in Front Page. It's cheaper than all that monopoly priced Micro$oft stuff too.

  • The proposal has everything on the cable sent over 802.11g all the time, so even TVs that aren't on will receive the signal. Well, lessee, a cable can support about a hundred (depending on the plant) downstream channels, which digitized are around 30 mbps apiece, so that's 3 Gbps... sure, that'll fit into 802.11g, not.

    And the 2.4 GHz band is already congested. It's home of the microwave oven, for one thing, so reception would be mighty bad while the corn is popping. The last thing it needs is a wideband
    • Uh, Digital CATV uses similar-to-DVD bitrate MPEG2 encoded streams. They are not 30Mbps. They are more like 6Mbps. They still won't fit into 802.11G, but not by the factor that you suggest.

      Incidentally, analog cable channels are 8MHz wide. Not that it's part of this discussion, but DOCSIS cable uses that 8MHz and gets max theoretical peak speeds of 45Mbps. Just for comparison.

      • They still won't fit into 802.11G, but not by the factor that you suggest.

        Um, no. 802.11g has a raw bitrate of 54 Mbps, which should give around 30Mbps effective TCP throughput. Plenty of bandwidth even for MPEG2.

        And I can already stream divx over 802.11b, it only takes 2 Mbps or so for the standard 700 MB movies.

      • Re:Missed bandwidth by a few orders of magnitude (Score:4, Informative)

        by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @09:26AM (#5990906)
        The students' proposal was for broadcasting unused, as well as watched, channels over the 802.11g. What you suggest is more sensible, but would require the cable box to act as a smarter server. I was pointing out that the student paper did not address this issue appropriately.

        In North America, channels are 6 Mbps wide; 8 Mbps is European-standard, both video and DOCSIS. Digital Cable takes a 6 Mbps channel, runs QAM in it to get about 20 Mbps, and then feeds about ten MPEG streams through it (bit rate of each can be adjusted depending on content).

        Real cable is typically a mix of analog and digital channels. Digitizing is costly, so putting analog channels onto digital wireless would take some effort.
        • How is digitizing costly? I don't know anything about the hardware THEY use, but for example a box from Sony to convert S-Video (I know, I know, not quite on par with the level of quality we're looking for) to a DV/1394 stream is $500 and works in realtime. I'm sure someone else makes them cheaper. Hell, that functionality is available in a $450 camcorder. I therefore presume the cost for pro gear to perform similar functions should be under $5000 per stream and be 1U rackmountable, which would make it fit
          • The stuff that cable head ends use costs around $10k/channel. Or more, depending on the model. Yeah, I know it is sometimes done cheaper, but broadcast-grade gear isn't cheap. I think it could be done (at consumer grade) cheaply enough in a cable box, if it were for say one channel at a time, and mass-produced.

            My original point was that the students didn't take everything they should have into account.
    • You wouldn't need to send the entire cable signal through wireless, only the channels being used at the time.
    • Operating costs! Wiizzz-bang!

  • Cable companies are too slow; wireless threatening (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PenguinOpus ( 556138 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @10:52PM (#5989193)
    My experience with the cable industry has been that they have huge opportunity, but are too risk-averse technologically to make these things happen. They are still, today, ham-strung by the GI/SA encryption duopoly that has made their settop boxes an embarassment in the CE industry.

    Wireless doesn't provide the cable industry with any competitive advantage over a telco/satellite alliance. Both can offer the same improved services w/ or w/o wireless. Wireless scares both cable and DSL providers because it will make sharing of broadband that much easier, so they will make efforts to delay its deployment (although I doubt they can have much effect there).

    Finally, offering "remote game-play terminals" as suggested in the ppt slides seems like an interesting idea, but ignores the bandwidth/compression costs of 30fps 1920x1080 low-lateny gaming that will be prevalent by the time this idea is executed. HDTV streams are 13-19Mbit/sec, but compressed-on-the-fly game content will be much higher bandwidth. It will also be continuous for the hours of game console usage/day. There's a good reason to put a powerful computer or a game console on the other end of the wire: 3D graphics are a GREAT compression mechanism.
    • PenguinOpus wrote: My experience with the cable industry has been that they have huge opportunity, but are too risk-averse technologically to make these things happen

      Actually, Cox cable in Southern California already packages up the three main services (cable, phone, and internet) and sells them to you at a discounted price. AND with a set top box with digital cable.

      It's happened already. Just not wireless yet.

  • Piracy? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mogorman ( 618512 )
    So now I dont need to go out to the switchbox or build a complicated cable descrambler, just airsnort and get to work on cracking encryption ^_^
  • I wonder how secure is their system is for thier cable system over the wi-fi system I think it would be funny if you and your friends can access free porn off a local wi-fi network. Since their is a great demise to the cable black box people have to look for alternitives besides paying your local cable operator.

  • Where do these numbers come from? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    DSL is growing 2x as fast as cable modems? Says who?

    Satellite offers more attractive packages? Like?

    Cable is already into telephony, both older Circuit Based RF Telephony and newer Voice Over IP using DOCSIS.

  • huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by siliconwafer ( 446697 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @11:00PM (#5989225)
    good job for third year undergrads? What's that supposed to mean? I hope they didn't mean that in terms of creativity and ideas. College kids are certainly creative in their ideas; some of the best ideas come from students.
    • yes, college students are certainly creative in their ideas, but MOST of them also tend to have the most naive and miscontrued vision of the world as well. and before you press that damn reply button...I just graduated with my degree today.
  • I don't have 802.11g. I wonder if I can somehow use my cable modem connection to download this "cable content".

  • Lame. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by methangel ( 191461 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @11:14PM (#5989267)
    The PowerPoint presentation is amateur at best. I hope they had a lot to say when they actually presented it.

    This is just a bunch of hoo-ha-hullably that will blow over much like Fiber to the door or Internet via power outlets.

    Besides, how would this type of cable service be managed? Illegally reconnecting your wireless cable would really end up being illegal! This due to that fact that it would require 'hacking' and not simply reconnecting a coax cable.
  • Personally I think the matrix code background says professional much louder than words like "monotonic", "inelastic" and "valuation".

  • This is Good? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @11:18PM (#5989280)
    "Students Use 802.11g To Save Cable Industry"

    With the current batch of state-mandated monopolies abusing their customers with captive-audience pricing, I'd rather not see the cable industry saved, thank you very much...

  • An Open Source app for streaming DVDs over 802.11g (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ross Finlayson ( 17913 ) on Sunday May 18, 2003 @11:18PM (#5989283) Homepage
    ...and other high-bandwidth LANs: vobStreamer [live.com]
  • uCentric [ucentric.com] has built their business doing this. They've already tested 802.11g over cable & recently launched a trial with Comcast, both of which are
  • Does it work with linux?

    ...yet?

  • Cable fails the reliability factor (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ignoring when some idiot contractor decides to dig through the wire (which usually is not either the cable or phone companies fault), when is the last time you picked up your phone and didn't get dial tone?

    Now consider how often your cable goes out?

    Personally, I can't recall when I last had to call the phone company, yet I find I am calling the cable company at least 6 times a year because either the cable is out or the reception so bad nothing works (and lets not even talk about the number of times the c
  • A compressed MPEG-2 HD stream requires anywhere from 10 to 19.2Mbit/s. So at most I could fit only two HD streams on 802.11G. If you figure that with TVs all over a large house, you'd probably be running the system at 36Mb/s for 48mbit/s. Still not a lot of BW for HD content.

  • This Isn't New... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ignipotentis ( 461249 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @12:13AM (#5989443)
    The Moxi Media Center [digeo.com] is an old idea. It was designed to use 802.11a. The only difference is these students switched the .a to the .g...

    Why are we supposed to be impressed again?
  • Problem 0: Packet Loss on 802.11

    Packet loss rates for 802.11 can become atrocious when you do something as simple as close a door. It might not be so great if every TV in the house needed line-of-sight to the 802.11 transmitter to get decent picture quality.

    Problem 1: UDP and Congestion

    One of the benefits of using a protocol like TCP is that congestion control can (and has been) added in. UDP, on the other hand, has no means of congestion control. The morale of the story is that all programs in your entire neighborhood using TCP could grind to a halt if your neighbor decides to use all 3 of his TVs at the same time.

    Problem 2: Privacy

    So, now anyone with a 802.11-equipped laptop and a packet sniffer can figure out what I'm watching? Even if it's "encrypted" as they say it is, what algorithms are they using? How are they handling key distribution?

    Problem 3: Security/Theft

    "Security is taken into account to ensure that no bandwidth that consumers pay for is stolen. The signal broadcasted by the wireless router to all devices would be encrypted to the receiver. Each receiver would have a unique identification address that associates it with a specific receiver. Therefore, if one receiver is reported missing by a customer, that receiver is able to be deactivated before the cable company replaces it. For computers, a closed Access point could easily be setup to ensure that data bandwidth is not misappropriated. This security system makes certain that only paying customers have access to appropriate content."

    What in God's name does the above mean? Once the signal is out over wireless, anyone can grab it. And, once it's over ip, you can tunnel it to any of your neighbors.

    Also, what if someone packet spoofs the video server with your address to start sending a new channel? How could you even detect that this was happening? Or, if someone wants to DoS you, they can just spoof a request for a whole bunch of channels.

    Some of these problems are sovable, but there is not nearly enough "technical detail."

    Blatant Fallacy: Cable Gaming

    Move all the processing to the server and just broadcast the image? In the current model, server and client exchange minimal information about the state of the world in very compact formats. In their model, the client sends minimal information and server sends streaming video! This is hardly more efficient, especially since the cable company now has to have a gaming-class computer sitting in their office for every single customer who wants to play games at the same time! Oh, and what about lag? Do you really want to wait 100ms-1s for the command to be sent, processed and sent back? The lag would be horrific. I'm afraid that with current prices and technology, distributing tasks like graphics rendering are cheaper.

    Grar, I can't stand these guys who dream up this crap and then pretend its possible.

    • Problem 1 is just the beginning (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Read again, they say they would broadcast the channels, whether anyone is listening or not. So your neighbor turning on or off their TV makes no difference. It also means that you cannot use TCP, as you cannot broadcast a point-to-point protocol.

      This solution is unworkable.
    • Problem 1: UDP and Congestion

      Um, no. TCP's congestion control doesn't get used in single-hop connections such as between nodes on a LAN. If there is overlap in the coverage of the 802.11 access points, they will share the air by nature of the collision avoidance mechanism in the MAC layer. If everyone is blasting UDP at full speed, they should get equal shares of the medium (for some definition of "equal," har har).

  • Cable is dying because of its own GREED! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @12:37AM (#5989519)
    The cable industry's problems are of their own making. The consolidators (Time Warner, Comcast, Charter, etc.) WAY OVERPAID for the systems they own and now they can't afford to run (or even maintain) them. Add the Rigas greed of Adelphia to the recipe too. Now they try to pass their bad business decisions off onto their consumers? I don't think so! Here in Santa Monica, CA you will pay over 40 bucks a month for basic analog service. Over half the channels on this service are over the air stations. Dish TV offers more 'premium' (that is not over the air channels) then cable does...for about HALF the price! So, I pay 50 bucks for an antenna one time, 22 bucks for 55 channels of Dish, and say SCREW CABLE! Not only that, cable's big advantage used to be that you got a better picture with their product. Not any more! Their picture SUCKS, with herringbones and left sided ghosts (both a result of bad system design and especially maintenance) on over half the channels (including HBO). They put out a lousy product at an overinflated price and I shall not shed a single tear when they all go into bankruptcy. Look, if I pay $250,000 for a house that's worth $50,000 that's MY problem. If I try to make it my tenants' problem, they'll leave...which is exactly what's happening with cable.
    • They put out a lousy product at an overinflated price and I shall not shed a single tear when they all go into bankruptcy

      Unlikely that will happen. For example: Time Warner/AOL looks like it is struggling, look at their books, and notice that just about every single division of Time Warner is profitable, while AOL's performace has been horrid. Dump AOL, and they are in suprisingly good financial shape

    • They'll never go bankrupt. I'm sure our conservative republican government would gladly pay their bills so us poor Americans can keep our cable TV. We know how precious our TV is to each and every one of us.
  • *yawn* This is a business case and not even the one that won. Possible reasons: unrealistic bandwidth assumptions, overly techy powerpoint background, setting in an idealistic world. In any case, this isn't even a very interesting topic. Must be a slow news day.
  • Your idea does not make hbo/intel/AOLTW/sony /RIAA/MS/at&t/comcast/HP/etc etc etc happy, plus your planned 'eliminated' satellite companies won't be happy with ur idea. All in all it sounds nice but you'll kill yourself trying to do everything at once over cable, don't forget all the abovementioned companies run various amounts of your government so good luck getting yourself off the ground. da!!as

  • 802.11g isn't NEARLY fast enough (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It speaks of broadcasting channels with UDP whether someone is listening or not. This is impossible. There is over 1gbps of video data alone coming over your cable-TV cable. So that's WAY too much data for 802.11g. 802.11g can only transmit at 27mpbs (each way).

    Never underestimate the data capacity of a cheap coaxial cable.

    This is the typical psuedo-science breakthrough we see far too often on this "news for nerds" site.

    Would it be asking too much for some actual technical editors to filter the articles?

  • Berkeley undergrads (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hello, I am a Cisco certified individual who witness first hand the concepts that were presented by the Berkeley undergrad team. I was personally impressed and very excited to see such elite people among already intelligent folk. They surely do stand out against the rest of the crowd.

  • The first bit made sense: Students Use 802.11g To Save Cable. After that it went downhill a little.

  • less here than meets the eye (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alizard ( 107678 ) <alizard&ecis,com> on Monday May 19, 2003 @04:25AM (#5990064) Homepage
    There's a telco that's using VHDSL to push the kind of phone/TV service bundle they're discussing to end users.

    There's a cable company that's doing the same.

    I'm sure either could bundle gaming and/or a 801.11g wireless access point if they felt like it.

    However, they didn't ask the most important question, why do people pick DSL over cablemodem when both are available in the same area, and the more technically knowledgable they are, the more likely they are to pick DSL?

    The cable company is too interested in telling people what we can and can't do with our bandwidth, and even that restricted-use bandwidth is shared between all the cablemodem users in a neighborhood, putting users at the mercy of their neighbors when trying to get the download speed one is paying for.

    The business model discussed here is one I'd be even less likely to buy as an end user than the current one.

    The other obvious point is. . . while I can imagine using broadband for VoIP local toll and LD calling and probably will when I am in an area where DSL is available, I can't imagine it as my only telephone access, if the cable breaks down and takes my phone out with it, just how am I going to report the problem to the cable company?

    Cable is less reliable than phones are and putting all my electronic communication ability in one basket doesn't really appeal to me.

    Not bad for a bunch of college students, I guess, but while I could imagine this getting funded and those kids becoming the new suits at a new startup, one would hope that VCs have more sense now.

  • Using 802.11g to save cable industry? 802.11g... wireless... saving cable... no, it must be a joke.
  • ... although Apple, Linksys, Netgear, and everybody else on the planet has released their own version of same.
  • this is going to hit my karma, but-

    surprise! young people are smart! YES THEY ARE - for anyone so say, "not bad for a group of third year undergrads" is to BELITTLE their intelligence. they can do it - don't belittle them with your lowsy expectations.

    why was this piece even posted? so some bright students read a bunch of hype material from the wireless industry and did an excellent job actually anayzing and developing the idea - this isn't what business economics majors do every semester?


  • My wonderful 8e6 X-Stop won't let me see the site:
    http://www.magmafrog.com/misc/tripleplay.ppt

    Just love how well these filters work!
  • 802.11b/g is amazing in its variability. Turn on a microwave in the house, and you're in trounble.

    So, how do you send video over wireless? My employer (ViXS www.vixs.com) has a solution. Jump on over to www.vixs.com and have a look.

    Ratboy
  • I think this was an exercise in business and powerpoint presentation. I don't think it was for the technical stuff IN IT guys. As far as the technicals is concerned, it's obviously riddled with holes. Just enough to LOOK like they knew what they were talking about, but not quite enough to convince the /. crowd I see.

    The scarey thing is the reason why alot of our technology is bungled by the time we get it is precisely because projects acquiring management approval in this manner. Scare, E.

    The presentation

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