Related link: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-03-287A1.pdf

There was a great deal of fanfare in late 2003 when the FCC freed up 255 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz range. The World Radiocommunication Congress 2003 (WRC-03) recommended making a single frequency band available worldwide, and adopted a resolution to make the 5.470-5.725 GHz frequency band available throughout the world for the use by wireless LANs. The WRC is an advisory body, and therefore an FCC decision was required to implement the recommendation and allocate the spectrum in the United States. I recently had to look up the actual text of the rule, and I had a hard time finding it. The rules were released on November 18 as part of FCC Report & Order 03-287. The text of the actual rules appears in Appendix B of the document. The core of the rules state that dynamic frequency selection (DFS) and transmit power control (TPC), as described by 802.11h for wireless LANs, are required to use the harmonized band. The report identifies existing services that might be affected, and discusses how 802.11 spectrum management services can mitigate negative effects.

Although the order is now over a year old, I do not know of any devices allowed to use the harmonized wireless LAN band in the United States. The reason is revealed in the order. Radio devices must be tested for compliance to FCC rules, and the test and certification procedures took quite some time to develop. (The proposed schedule is in Appendix D of the FCC report.) A final report was originally scheduled to be submitted to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in January 2005, though I have not looked to see if that milestone was met.

When I travel, GPRS is my lifeline. My trusty Nokia 6600 acts as the uplink “modem” for my laptop by emulating a dial-up connection to the operating system. The phone connects to the laptop in one of two ways: an IR connection, or a Bluetooth connection. My laptop is a couple of years old, so I use a Belkin USB-Bluetooth adapter (model number F8T001).

Although I would prefer to use Bluetooth exclusively, it seems to be much less reliable. When using Bluetooth, the phone will sometimes spontaneously restart or it just quits sending data through the GPRS connection. The problem does not occur with IR. It is so bad that it is rare to get more than 1.5 megabytes of data through the Bluetooth connection before I have to restart the phone, or it inexplicably reboots itself for me.

Whenever possible, I use IR as my first-choice connection method simply because it is much more reliable. Multi-megabyte transfers over IR just work, but Bluetooth connections freeze up before two megabytes.

I am on the road right now, but when I get more solid connectivity, I’ll have to search out updated software. I am still using the software that came with the adapter (1.4.2 build 10), so there might be an update. It is also possibly a problem with the Bluetooth firmware (version 525). Of course, I may be placing too much faith in a software update to solve my problems…

How does the reliability of your Bluetooth connections compare to other methods such as IR?

Related link: http://news.com.com/Motorola+to+use+Wi-Fi%2C+VoIP+to+move+cell+calls+to+Net/2100…

A lot of geek types are going Ga-ga over Skype because of what a great desktop application it is. But these ordinarily-skeptical GNU-loving beatnicks (myself included) aren’t asking themselves the question that’s been on my mind lately–would I still love Skype so much if it was a Microsoft product?

Somehow, I don’t think Skype would have the same support from the free software community.

If you visit Microsoft’s ‘online museum‘, you’ll see that their webmaster has conveniently left out all of their early business deals in order to make us think that Microsoft’s product history starts and ends with Windows. As if Bill and Paul really made their first million selling Altair BASIC.

Before I get too far into a Microsoft rant, let me re-focus. After all, this article is also about Skype, not just Microsoft. Just stay with me, if you don’t mind.

In 1982, the Commodore 64 came with Microsoft BASIC. So did the TRS-80, the Commodore 128, and the Apple II. Even that decade-too-soon Amiga computer ran a Microsoft BASIC. In the years that followed, Microsoft bought CP/M, turned it into MS-DOS, and inked a deal with IBM to develop a next-generation operating that eventually, a lawsuit or two later, became Windows. In the early 1990s, Microsoft deftly overtook Apple as the desktop operating system vendor of choice, sealing a 2-decade legacy of arguably competition-free market dominance that not even Ralph Nader and Bill Clinton’s justice department could dampen.

Now, fast-forward to 2003. A small European software company called Skype has been optimizing their simple, peer-to-peer VoIP tool, an instant messaging application that looks and feels rather like Yahoo Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger. Offering better sound quality and bandwidth economy than competing VoIP products, Skype quickly becomes the instant messaging client of choice for folks who need to make voice calls on the cheap.

In 2004, Linux and Macintosh are added to the roster of Skype’s supported desktop operating systems, and the Skype network grows exponentially. Skype releases their API for Windows, and handy add-on applications begin showing up. Now, Skype can answer your calls while you’re away, and even be bridged with other sound-generating or sound-recording apps. Using Skype’s public telephone gateway service, called SkypeOUT, you can even call your mom on her landline phone. A few months later, SkypeIN is added, and people can call your Skype client using a regular phone number.

Some observers dismissed Skype as a software fad, overlooking the network that underlies the Skype system–a network which rides on the Internet and permits secure, encrypted, essentially free, voice calls and conference calls between users of all stripes. A network derived from the killer peer-to-peer topology employed by the uber-successful file-sharing program Kazaa. This network could conceivably replace the public telephone network in large part, just as Microsoft’s domination of desktop computing devastated an entire vibrantly-competing market of 8-bit and 16-bit also-rans in the 80s and early 90s. It seems odd to most people that a peer-to-peer freeware system could replace Ma Bell, but there it is. Most people couldn’t conceive of a Microsoft-dominated computer industry back in the days of Amstrad and Sinclair.

Consider the similiarities between Microsoft and Skype. Both had to create and license less-than-ambitious specialty products in order to finance their long-term goals. In the case of Microsoft, it was BASIC and the like. In Skype’s case, it was the Skype IM client. That’s just where the similarities begin.

Both Microsoft and Skype had (or have) a smart bunch of people looking for ground-floor entrances into a burgeoning new market that most people don’t yet realize is out there. In Microsoft’s case, it was desktop computing. In Skype’s case, it’s global packet telephony.

Both built proprietary technologies to solve problems that had already been dealt with by standards. In Microsoft’s case, they avoided Unix in favor of MS DOS. They avoided internetworking in favor of simpler (and more limited) NetBEUI broadcast networking. Skype on the other hand created a peer-to-peer VoIP call-routing and signaling system when other, arguably superior, methods exist: most notably Session Intiation Protocol and Real-time Protocol. But, like Billy Boy, Skype has found the standards less than acceptable for what they’re attempting to do. This, to me, is a clear indicator of what their long-term ambitions are. But the resemblance doesn’t end there.

Just as Microsoft started to build its own developer tools to allow creative thinkers to subscribe to the Windows platform vision (and buy in to a proprietary development style), Skype has released its Skype API to encourage developers to jump onto their platform. This means that VoIP-interested developers may be less likely to learn SIP and more likely to learn the Skype API. Echos of Borland C resound: Visual C programs only ran on Windows, just as Skype API programs only run on the Skype network. Standards be damned.

Like Microsoft, Skype is using partners’ devices to extend their distribution channels. So far these devices include the i-Mate and Motorola cell phones. Just as Microsoft fanned out its distribution base for Windows by inking “no-win” deals with PC makers, Skype has undoubtedly marked a bit of firmware memory on every cell phone in the first world as fair target territory. Instead of Bill Gates’ old addage “Microsoft software running on every computer”, Skype may be thinking, “Skype firmware running on every phone and broadband router”.

Right now, Skype’s technology appeals to cell-phone makers like Motorola because it has the potential to free them from the contractual bondage of Cingular and Nextel. Cell-phone makers want a value-added feature that lessens their dependence on proprietary, closed-access cell networks. The Internet–and Skype–enable that feature. But, as time goes own, the debt of servitude will shift to Skype instead, just as PC makers looking for a low-cost OS to help sell their iron eventually became shackled by Windows. This is the “devil in the details”.

With a high-layer Skype peer-to-peer mesh between 3G wireless networks, the Internet, WiFi and WiMax links, and home phones, a single, cohesive call-signaling technology will exist–and flourish–for the first time ever. But there’s one catch–and it’s a mighty big one: Skype will control the whole thing, from the signaling technology all the way up to the content.

To illustrate this idea, imagine Skype and Microsoft traded names:

Your cell-phone boots up and logs in to a Microsoft super node using the local WiFi connection. At this point Microsoft knows your IP address, your phone number, your user name, your password, and your rough geographic location. And that’s all without you even calling anybody on your cell-phone yet. Now, let’s say you call dear old Grandma. Using Microsoft’s 256-bit encryption, nobody can listen in on your call–which is great… except when you consider that Microsoft controls the network and the encryption algorithm. Once the FCC gets wind that the FBI can’t tape Skype calls, Microsoft will be legislated into permitting your calls to be monitored. Not feeling quite as secure now, are you? Let’s hope Grandma doesn’t tell you any trade secrets during that call. Oh, and by the way–you called Grandma using the MicrosoftOUT gateway–so that’ll cost you three bucks. Payable to, you guessed it, Microsoft.

Now, for the knock-out punch in this near-conspiracy theory. Bill Gates has often outlined a vision of Microsoft becoming an “information utility”, the nerve center of a Microsoftian infrastructure network where people subscribe to computing power (think “grid”) the way they subscriibe to electric power, cable television, or–you guessed it–telephone service. Skype’s startling vision of a future telephone-over-Internet network is probably closer to creating the infrastructure of utility computing than even Bill Gates himself is prepared to admit.

Remember the days when Bill Gates refused to acknowledge the importance of the Internet? And that was an uncoordinated, almost random sudden adoption of vendor-neutral networking technology. Skype is an orchestrated attempt to utterly replace a the global telephone network, driven by a small army of cash-armed tech warriors who are as success-driven and shrewd as Gates himself was as an ugly, gawky teenager in the 1970s. If I were Microsoft, or SBC, or Nextel, I’d be watching Skype very closely right now, as I’m sure they are.

Would you use Skype if Microsoft ran the Skype network?

Related link: http://www.billglover.com/blog/archives/000109.html

An interesting press release on new technology for tracking lab samples.

Maxell Corporation of America has announced the demonstration of its RFID embedded sample storage tube products for scientific and medical laboratories. The RFID-based demonstration was developed by Maxell with Kobe Bio Robotix and Tsubakimoto Chain in Japan. The demonstration shows how the pharmaceutical industry and academic institutions, for example, can use RFID for the management of high-value samples and stores of compounds. With 2D coding having already superseded linear barcodes for identification purposes, Maxell and its partners see RFID as a next-generation technology that could also transform how laboratories track and trace their specimens. Maxell’s family of products includes single sample tubes and full systems for a standard sample tube rack. Specimen tubes include either a removable bottom (which encapsulates a rewritable RFID chip) or a permanently attached encapsulated RFID chip.

Imagine what a system like this could do for reducing human errors in lab tests by automating sample tracking.

This product could help reduce errors in everything from blood tests to forensic evidence. Can you think of some drawbacks to this kind of tracking for lab samples?

Related link: http://www.billglover.com/blog/archives/000108.html

Ronald Quirk, Jr. and Stacia Borrello have written a white paper, “RFID: Rapid Deployment and Regulatory Challenges,” identifying serious regulatory issues that, if ignored, could impede implementation of even the most carefully designed RFID systems.

Just more proof that where technology leads, regulators will follow… bearing torches.

What kind of regulation makes sense for RFID?

Related link: http://www.billglover.com/blog/archives/000107.html

SUTTER, Calif. — The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children’s privacy.
The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan.

How is this better/worse than a student ID card?

Related link: http://andykessler.com/wsj_sbcatt_16_cents_a_month.html

Last Wednesday, Andy Kessler wrote in the
Wall Street Journal that telephone service costs 1.6 cents per month to provide:

A phone call is just 16K of data bandwidth. The math is easy. Based on current gigabit fiber line monthly fees, the value of phone service is 1.6 cents per month. That’s it. Amazingly, SBC charges $18-$22 per month and complains that’s below their costs! (By the way, that’s what AT&T does for business today–runs data lines of fiber to bypass SBC and lower corporate phone costs.)

Although it is quite attractive to be told that I should be paying cents per month instead of dollars, there are a few basic problems with this line of argument, which should be easy for any network engineer to appreciate.

The Gigabit Volume Discount

Comparing voice bandwidth to gigabit fiber bandwidth is like comparing the per-unit cost of something at Costco to a restaurant. Smaller packages cost more in every other business, Internet service included. Gigabit fiber is buying bit transmission service at wholesale rather than retail. The argument is that bit transmission service costs 0.1 cents per Kbps. (If 16 Kbps is 1.6 cents, then 1 Gbps is $1,000.) To get the wholesale price, though, you have to buy the whole package. I’d love to get phone service for 1.6 cents, but not if I have to pay $1,000 for the privilege! Companies can afford gigabit fiber, because they can use the entire capacity.

Voice bandwidth & QoS

With the digitization of the telephone network, telephone calls are carried as bits. Calls made using traditional telephone service take 64 Kbps, not 16 Kbps. Compression techniques may squeeze that 64 Kbps into something smaller, but voice quality suffers as compression ratios increase. Many VoIP service providers are using codecs that use more than 16 Kbps. (Once, VoicePulse, allows you to change your codec, which is a neat feature.)

Providing acceptable service quality is also a non-trivial task. Comparing gigabit data service with best-effort delivery to a smaller guaranteed channel is facetious. At low loads, the gigabit network will be able to offer quality service simply because it is massively overprovisioned. As load increases, though, it is harder to assure that voice traffic will get the high-priority treatment it deserves. Network equipment can make efforts to improve service quality, but it costs more money. It is relatively easy to build network equipment that moves data fast. It is much harder to have that equipment move traffic in a particular order.

Furthermore, prioritizing voice in both directions is quite difficult. I expect that I’ll have more problems with my VoIP service in the downstream direction because I have no control over traffic priority flowing down my DSL line to me. (My firewall can prioritize traffic in the upstream direction.) Speakeasy offers a VoIP service called OneLink, and one of the key selling points is that they can provide that quality down to you.

Start-up Costs

I don’t know what the price to start up a gigabit fiber link is. Gigabit fiber equipment is relatively expensive, especially compared to the alternatives. Telephones are cheap. Gigabit interfaces cost hundreds of dollars, and the switches they live in cost thousands. Again, business that can use the entire capacity of the gigabit fiber are in a much better position to bear the cost.

Taxes & Fees

Finally, it’s only fair to note that of the $18-$22, only about half actually goes to the phone company. My telephone bill comes out to approximately that much because my advanced services come from providers other than the telephone company. The cost of my line is $10.69 per month, with the remainder of the $20 as taxes and fees. Admittedly, I don’t know what portion of the taxes and fees go through to the phone company’s bottom line, if any. The penchant to saddle utilities with taxes and fees is a separate issue from whether or not the bill is highway robbery, though.

I was recently traveling in Hong Kong, and I had to repeatedly work around the hotel telephone service. There was a $6 fee to connect an international call, which cost almost $1/minute after that. The alternative was my mobile phone, which was able to roam on to networks in Hong Kong at the cost of $1.49/minute. At one point during my stay, I participated in a conference call by making a short call to the United States so that one of the other participants could call me in my hotel room halfway across the world.

Enough is enough. At the end of that trip, I decided to sign up with voice over IP service. By finding a provider that would support my travels, I could cut down on international telephone bills dramatically. As I searched out a provider, I looked for two main features. One was the ability to take the phone anywhere and have it work, and the other was a provider that would allow me to use a soft phone. Eventually, I settled on BroadVoice because they will give you SIP credentials, which means that you can use any device or software you want. BroadVoice also offers a “bring your own device” option that saves on the activation fee. By purchasing a device ahead of time, I could offset the cost with the savings on the activation fee. I decided on a Sipura SPA-2100, since it has a built-in router. In hotels that lock down Internet access to a single MAC address, I’ll be able to use both VoIP and generic IP data.

Setup of the service was easy, once I worked through problems with my own network. (My DHCP server quit assigning addresses, which took me for a while to find.) BroadVoice supplied directions that walked through resetting the device to defaults and pointing it to BroadVoice’s gateway. It downloaded upgraded software, connected up through NAT without a hitch, and started making calls. If I take out all the problems I had with my own network, it took about ten minutes to get running.

Once I had calls flowing, I had to prioritize them. VoIP is time sensitive, unlike uploading huge multi-megabyte presentations. I can prioritize upstream traffic at the edge of my network, but I have no control over downstream traffic. For now, I have to hope that I have enough capacity in the downstream direction to provide good voice quality. (This is one of the major selling points to getting VoIP from your Internet provider. In theory, they can prioritize the downstream direction, too.) Prioritization required three major steps:

• A static IP address in the DHCP server for the telephone adapter. I want the telephone adapter to use DHCP so it can migrate from network to network, but I need a constant address on my network to prioritize traffic from.
• New service definitions: UDP ports 5,060 to 5,063 for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP); UDP ports 10,000 to 20,000 as the high-numbered ports to carry the call data; and a group that lumps both together as “VoIP”.
• A new firewall rule that prioritizes traffic using the “VoIP” umbrella service from the address of the telephone adapter. Call quality suffered at a 64 Kbps reservation, so I bumped it up slightly. (BroadVoice also wants UDP 69, TFTP, allowed. I assume this is for software upgrades, so I didn’t prioritize it.)

Prioritization appears to be working quite nicely. I experimented on family & friends over the weekend, and I’m told that the quality of my voice when I run a line-saturating speed test is better than many conversations I’ve had with them from my mobile phone.

In an amusing postscript to the story, the local phone company sent an insert in my bill which claims that our telecommunications laws are outdated and need to be modernized because the local phone companies want to bring me the future faster. I couldn’t help but borrow a phrase from William Gibson: The future is here. It’s just not being distributed by the telephone companies yet.

How do you prioritize VoIP on your home network?

Related link: http://www.apple.com/macmini

It occurred to me that “Apple Sauce” would be a great way to title my two recent quarrels with Apple, but only after I realized that my wife’s shiny new Mac Mini, which turned her 2.2. GHz Windows PC into eBay fodder, was not really “Mini” in price after all.

Now, before the rabid IADL (Irrational Apple Defense League) springs to opposition to this post, hear me out. Let’s get the obligatory Apple compliments out the of the way first.

One: A consumer Mac that sells for what consumer PCs sell for is, by and large, a fantastic idea. Those of us who like Apple’s products are glad that Steve finally got close to it. I say close because, by the time you add ample RAM, a keyboard, and a mouse to the 1.42 GHz model, you’re into the $700-$800 neighborhood anyway.

Two: The Mac Mini’s form factor alone makes it super-cool. The coolest thing about looking at the Mac Mini, sexy though it may be, is that I can tuck it away and NOT have to look at it. ‘Nuff said.

Now, on to the complaining.

Stingy on Memory

Why, oh why, doesn’t Apple use some of that good-old American purchasing power, call up a buddy over at Micron or Viking, and put a realistic 512 MB of RAM in the Mac Mini instead of shipping it with a crippled 256 MB? I do most of my research on a G4 Powerbook with 256 MB of RAM, flipping back and forth between Safari, Microsoft Word, Terminal, and Skype. So I know about the pain associated with low RAM (Yes, I’ll soon be adding more RAM to my Powerbook!). The last thing Apple wants is Joe Six Pack saying, “This Mac Mini is way slower than my PC” because his PC came with 1 GB of RAM.

You just can’t cope with OS X and 3 or 4 applications running at once with so little RAM–especially the “bread and butter” apps like iPhoto and Garageband. Not to mention World of Warcraft, the fastest selling Mac/PC game of all time, which was introduced nearly 2 months before the Mac Mini, requires exactly double the amount of RAM the Mini ships with. Take a queue from Blizzard, Apple. You can’t appeal to the digital lifestyle without addressing the original digital lifestyle activity: video games. The answer is simple–more RAM.

And don’t give me all the “shipping more RAM will raise the price” stuff. If the Mac Mini isn’t a loss leader, it should be. Even still, it could have plenty of margin with 512 MB of RAM. How much does a stick of Viking 512 MB cost, wholesale–30 bucks? With a big contract from Apple to buy down the cost of RAM, the price of the Mini could stay right where it’s at.

Now then, don’t even get me started on the paltry 32 MB of video memory. The argument is basically the same anyway.

No Audio Line In on the Mini!!

This one has already been beaten to death, so I’ll keep it short. How are you going to use Apple’s bread and butter apps iChat and Garageband without an Audio Line In or Microphone, without which both are gimpy? Combine that with the fact that 3 or 4 dozen pre-existing PCB assemblies exist with 1 Mic, 1 Line In, and 1 Line Out. All Apple has to do is pick an assembly, poke 2 more holes in the back of the Mini, and voila! I’m just scratching my head on this one.

Now, last, and probably least:

Why Can’t Apple Add new Products to their Online Store Without Downtime?

With all the staging and content management solutions on the market, why does it always seem to take Apple anywhere of 4 to 12 hours of downtime to get a new product online?

I’ll let you answer this one, cause I’m not a web expert. Rather, I’m just a casual observer who thinks, “If we can put a man on the moon,” why can’t Apple put a new Powerbook on their store without an embarrassing Under Construction logo?

What’s your best conspiracy theory regarding the lack of a line in on the Mac Mini?

Related link: http://www.pbs.org/saf/1502/

I spent a fair amount of time in my car driving around the Bay Area, and the 511 system is a lifeline. When you call, you can get information on traffic conditions, road closures, and even transit times. It’s a wonderful tool, with one persistent flaw for me. I often ask it about traffic conditions on Interstate 280, but the voice recognition system often hears “Cotati” instead of “two eighty.”

I frequently use I-280 to get home. It runs from San Francisco to San Jose, which is nowhere near Cotati. Cotati is generally irrelevant to my travels–I’ve only been near it three or four times in the past eight years. I’ve found that asking about “two-eight-zero” often helps the 511 voice recognition system sort itself out, but I usually ask it for “two eighty” first, since that’s what everybody around here calls the highway. Certainly, “280″ sounds similar to “Cotati,” but I have never had a problem making myself understood, even over the telephone with others. Context may be a component of the answer, but the sounds are different enough that I thought perhaps there might be more to the story. 511’s voice recognition has always confused the two, in spite of its generally excellent performance.

Last night, a January episode of Scientific American Frontiers provided a hint. In the third segment of the program, which can be conveniently watched on-line, Alan Alda visits a researcher at IBM who is designing a “virtual passenger.” Although the voice recognition is quite good, it sometimes fails due in part a phenomenon called the McGurk effect. Discovered by Harry McGurk in 1976, the effect occurs because there are certain sounds for which the visual appearance is an important part of the perception of what is heard. (The program video available at the PBS site includes a demonstration; other demonstrations are available here and here.) While watching the show, I rewound the program to listen to the pronunciation with my eyes closed, versus watching the tape. Sure enough, I heard one sound with my eyes open, and another with my eyes closed. The researchers on the program speculated that future in-car voice recognition would probably use a camera to augment the microphone, though that option isn’t available for a system like 511.

Related link: http://www.billglover.com/blog/archives/000105.html

I’ll be at RFID World March 1st through 5th. I’m not speaking this time, but I’m looking forward to the exhibitiion floor. If you take one of the tours to the Sun test center, I may see you out there as well.

Are you going to be at RFID World? What are you most interested in there?