Subject: RE: Who wants seamless handovers anyway? was RE: [seamoby] draft -iet f-seamoby-ct-reqs-02.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 15:26:30 +0200

Hi Phil,

> Sensitivity: Confidential

Any reason I need to treat this as confidentional?

> > Doesn't this all boil down to the applicability AAA, CT, MIP, NSIS
> > for seamless inter-operator, vertical handovers?  :)
> 
> Hopefully not.  There is a small but growing movement to make 
> better use use of the unlicensed bands (with high bits/Hz/sq meter) 
> MAC protocols. The ISP model is more appropriate, i.e. you pay for 
> access but that's it.  The IP pipe to the big I is the "service", i.e. 
> no Telco/cell-like operator needed.

I think we've been down this road before :)  Anyhow, I think that 
telcos will soon need to move to your model.  Remember, at the begining
of the 90's ISPs used a similar metered approach to charging.

> Question: Who want's seamless handovers anyway?  
> Question: Between what AND what?

I think the folks that will want seamless handovers will be 
the service providers who want to provide a service.  Users
will usually take what they can get.  

> > Rather, I think getting about 10 smart engineers in a room
> > together for a couple of months could get a pretty impressive
> > demo together.
 
> Its been done.  Its been shown and demoed.  Now what do we do?

Take what we've learned and see if it is useful.  Standardize
the pieces that are useful and patent the rest!

John

---

From: "Gary Kenward" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 10:55:06 -0500

The issue is not simply the charging model.
France Bouygues has announced a FF95 wireless Internet access
service that they hope will displace wireline Internet access
in France. 

It is based upon GPRS, and will work well with short messaging.
But there is much missing.

As for inter-network, inter-technology roaming: the one reason the
big operators (not all are telcos btw), are the major players in
wireless is that by the time an organization roles out a nationwide 
network, it has to end up looking like a "big operator", and it is
desperate for revenue to pay the bills.

The reason that why very wide area networks are required is that 
wireless = mobility. No on has sold a wireless service simply on
the value of displacing wires. If you need evidence, look at the
history of fixed wireless access; look at Metricom.

Networks that support mobility in small areas inevitably limit the
user population. Only those who derive great value in using a
service in a restricted geographical area will pay for the service.

So the real issue, if Phil's "internet rebellion" is to take place,
is how to connect a bunch of smaller wireless networks together - which,
if implies seamless inter-network handover. And, if you want to free
up the operators to use competitive technology (and free up the user
to use the most cost effective service), then inter-technology handover
would be very useful.

There are other, engineering reasons, for inter-network/inter-technology
handover: there is no one wireless technology that does it all. Satellites
provide excellent rural and open-water coverage, but are not very good for
urban cores or indoors. Terrestrial towers give wide area coverage for
the suburbs, and other low density areas, but are generally too expensive
and too cumbersome for urban coverage, and do not provide good indoor 
coverage. 

Wireless LANS - well, great for indoor, high density campus outdoor
coverage.
But the limited range means many base stations are required. Take the
coverage area of 802.11 and calculate the number of base stations required
to cover Manhattan and you will see the point. Just finding the real estate
is an ominous problem (one of the problems that killed telepoint in the US
was the churn on base station real estate; one estimate I heard was 15% per
month). And if real estate can be found, what about all the backhaul that
would be required to connect these base stations together?

I am not a Ludite, but there are real problems to be solved, and as yet,
no one has come up with the magic wireless networking solution. Every
technology has it's strengths and weaknesses, and to me, the solution has
always been the need to stitch these solutions together, seamlessly 
(and how's that for stretching a metaphor).

Gary

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: November 27, 2001 08:27
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: Who wants seamless handovers anyway? was RE: [seamoby]
> draft -iet f-seamoby-ct-reqs-02.txt