Travel Technology - Car service with WiFi

We are changing car service companies, and apparently one of the new ones has WiFi in its cars. I am fascinated by this. How does that work in a moving car? Is it something like EVDO with a router in the car?

There are both EVDO and UMTS-to-WiFi bridges available. I bet they just stuck one of those in the trunk on an unlimited data plan. Pretty cool idea. :)

There is a commuter bus that runs between Denver and Colorado Springs that has WiFi installed on all of their buses. It's contracted through Sprint.

http://www.frontrangeexpress.com

Starting now, there are entire cities being covered with WiFi. So you can use your WiFi laptop anywhere in the city, even when driving. Tempe, AZ is one of the first.

Starting now, there are entire cities being covered with WiFi. So you can use your WiFi laptop anywhere in the city, even when driving. Tempe, AZ is one of the first.

Just keep in mind that Wi-Fi in its native form does not offer mobility (soft/hard hand-offs). A Wi-Fi access point in a mobile environment must be connected to another wireless network in order to provide full mobility. The only exception to this that I am aware of would be a mesh-enabled architecture but this type of network is typically deployed in public-safety / govt. / mil. applications.

Starting now, there are entire cities being covered with WiFi. So you can use your WiFi laptop anywhere in the city, even when driving. Tempe, AZ is one of the first.

Tempe is gettng WiFied -- when did this happen? Sounds like a brilliant plan right up there with the light rail project.

-Vincent

Little CRP has been WiFied for quite some time now. Citywide access doesn't guarantee indoor coverage with a laptop, however. Depending on where you are, you may need a repeater with an antenna aimed at the AP or at worst a card with an external antenna. Some locations are close enough to an AP that indoor coverage is available (my house is marginal, with an antenna I can pick up the network and sometimes without).

Just keep in mind that Wi-Fi in its native form does not offer mobility (soft/hard hand-offs). A Wi-Fi access point in a mobile environment must be connected to another wireless network in order to provide full mobility. The only exception to this that I am aware of would be a mesh-enabled architecture but this type of network is typically deployed in public-safety / govt. / mil. applications.

Wifi in it's native form absolutely supports mobility. In fact it works quite well but only at low speeds. That's because there is no standard yet for how you choose when to roam. So by default, it generally doesn't work perfectly above 20mph or so. However at slow speeds and walking, roaming works quite well. You can walk through downtown Tempe (by example) with a wifi phone and talk all you want as your phone does handoffs the whole way with perfect audio quality.

Tempe and other cities use mesh. It's for residents, business and public safety. For the public safety apps, they have wifi gear that supports high speed roaming. The is a pre-version of 802.11r which is the upcoming roaming standard and which works at over 140mph today.

Tempe is gettng WiFied -- when did this happen? Sounds like a brilliant plan right up there with the light rail project.

Tempe already is wifi'd. And neighbors Chandler and Gilbert are starting to copy them. When they are done, it will be over 150 square miles of seamless wifi mesh coverage. Sacramento is installing now along with plenty of other US cities and cities around the world.

stimpy, when you say "mesh", do you mean the kinf of mesh referenced in the post by KIR@GCM? Can it do handoffs? If so, those wifi pphones suddenly make a lot more sense to me.

I'm not sure what kir was referring to, but yes I mean a mesh. And yes, now that you can have wifi phones with the same mobility as GSM phones, it opens up a huge market. Forecasts are for hundreds of millions.

Tempe already is wifi'd. And neighbors Chandler and Gilbert are starting to copy them. When they are done, it will be over 150 square miles of seamless wifi mesh coverage. Sacramento is installing now along with plenty of other US cities and cities around the world.

Damn I'm just oblivious. I'm not a fan of such project, but I guess thats a different thread waiting to happen.


-Vincent

I'm not sure what kir was referring to, but yes I mean a mesh. And yes, now that you can have wifi phones with the same mobility as GSM phones, it opens up a huge market. Forecasts are for hundreds of millions.

Wouldn't capacity be a problem with a high concentration of wi-fi phones/other devices? With a limited amount of spectrum available and only three real channels how many conversations could be supported simultaneously? How much relief would power level reduction and higher node density give?

Wifi in it's native form absolutely supports mobility. In fact it works quite well but only at low speeds. That's because there is no standard yet for how you choose when to roam. So by default, it generally doesn't work perfectly above 20mph or so. However at slow speeds and walking, roaming works quite well. You can walk through downtown Tempe (by example) with a wifi phone and talk all you want as your phone does handoffs the whole way with perfect audio quality.

Tempe and other cities use mesh. It's for residents, business and public safety. For the public safety apps, they have wifi gear that supports high speed roaming. The is a pre-version of 802.11r which is the upcoming roaming standard and which works at over 140mph today.

Stimpy I do not disagree with you regarding mesh, hence the reason for stating the exception in my post. But without mesh, there is no native ability to hand-off, so it is not correct to say that Wi-Fi can support mobility between AP's, unless it is mesh-enabled. The distinction needs to be made as most of the world's Wi-Fi networks are not mesh. Thankfully, the issue will become moot within the next 2-3 years as Wi-Max chipsets are set to become the defacto standard.

Also, I am glad to hear that voice services are working well over the Tempe public network, this is good news indeed.

Wouldn't capacity be a problem with a high concentration of wi-fi phones/other devices? With a limited amount of spectrum available and only three real channels how many conversations could be supported simultaneously? How much relief would power level reduction and higher node density give?

Just like with GSM networks, when you have high density of callers you have to add more capacity to the network. Sectorization helps quite a bit as do the newer 802.11g phones. Having 6 radios (3xG & 3xA) in a single node really ups the capacity. Since it's the early days of wifi voice, we haven't run into serious capacity issues, however popular VoIP conferences have maybe 6000 attendees many of which are using the WiFi mesh at the conference for VoWiFi along with email, web, etc.

Stimpy I do not disagree with you regarding mesh, hence the reason for stating the exception in my post. But without mesh, there is no native ability to hand-off, so it is not correct to say that Wi-Fi can support mobility between AP's, unless it is mesh-enabled. The distinction needs to be made as most of the world's Wi-Fi networks are not mesh. Thankfully, the issue will become moot within the next 2-3 years as Wi-Max chipsets are set to become the defacto standard.

A couple of points to correct here. First of all, you don't need mesh to do hand-offs. Mesh just makes things easier and cheaper to build and operate. You can wire each AP and it will still support hand-offs. There is nothing in WiFi that prevents hand-offs. The key to make it easier is to have a single SSID across all AP's and operate only at layer 2, at least for a given district. Even without this you can do hand-offs on normal AP's. Of course it helps if the technology is tuned to make hand-offs work better, but nothing in the 802.11 standard prevents this. 802.11 is just associations. The phone can reassociate to any AP it wants to at any time. And phones, just like laptops and PDAs will reassociate automatically to the next most powerful AP with the same SSID as it roams.

As for WiMax, it will likely never take over WiFi. It will be a niche technology at least for many, many years to come. There are already over 500 million wifi chips shipped, they are cheap and they continue to improve in quality and the 802.11 standards are continuing to improve. The only value of WiMax today is that it operates in licensed spectrum. However as long as wifi is cheaper and more plentiful and works just good enough, it will dominate. WiMax promises to have better NLOS performance, but that remains to be seen. The current WiMax chips aren't as good as WiFi so far.

Hi...

Could someone pass along the name(s)/#s/URLs of any of the NYC car services offering WiFi?

How are these priced compared to non-WiFi services? ...and how is the the actual service? (do they show up on time, know the roads, etc)

thanks

Hi...

Could someone pass along the name(s)/#s/URLs of any of the NYC car services offering WiFi?

How are these priced compared to non-WiFi services? ...and how is the the actual service? (do they show up on time, know the roads, etc)

thanks
environmentally friendly car service and wifi in New York City
http://www.ozocar.com/

environmentally friendly car service and wifi in New York City
http://www.ozocar.com/

Anyone used ozocar? Definitely looks interesting- rates look OK for airports as well.

Anyone used ozocar? Definitely looks interesting- rates look OK for airports as well.
My wifes clients do. Nothing but positive comments