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01/16/2008Defining the Broadband-Wireless Networks User Experience
When planning and implementing a citywide broadband-wireless infrastructure, how do local authorities, network providers, equipment makers, and systems integrators manage expectations appropriately among the clients and constituencies the network will serve? The 3rd Wireless Networks User Experience Roundtable, co-presented by Novarum and W2i, at the 15th W2i Digital Cities Convention, in Washington, DC, continued a broad-ranging exploration of terms and metrics useful in establishing a clear set of expectations about how city, county and regional networks are going to deliver. The following is drawn from highlights from the discussion: User Experience - There is a dramatic difference in user experience based on the type of client you are using. A network that works well for a high-powered device used in the home (for example, a Ruckus client) gives the impression that the quality of the network is much much better than with your standard notebook client, even when the testing is done outdoors.
- One surprise from recent testing is that the new products based on 802.11n perform very well and almost as well as the high-powered devices. Even though the current infrastructure is based on the older 802.11g standard (for the 2.4 GHz access side) these newer clients perform much better than anyone expected. That's a little bit of a bright spot on the technology side.
Network Design
- Before you even begin implementing network, you need to understand what application you want to enable and what client type is likely to be used with that application. This should drive the discussion of the type and density of the infrastructure, which translates into what type of investment will be needed in the infrastructure.
- There's a wide disparity depending on the application type. For example, a public-safety application where you're supporting police cars will generally have a very high-power client device with a high-gain antenna on the roof of the police car, which is going to be outdoors. The type of infrastructure required to support that is very different from what would be required to support the standard laptop user.
- One of the outcomes is that the industry could benefit from the development of a set of client enhancements — not new technology or new way of doing things, but simply based on the configuration of the clients we could develop a better user experience with these networks, and perhaps that would benefit everyone across the board.
Network Coverage - How do service providers describe their coverage? Metro Wi-Fi coverage maps are not that convincing in terms of claiming what the coverage area is, especially if you're accustomed to thinking about coverage through cellular maps. Wi-Fi maps can range from a series of hot spots and an identification of where the access points are to, in some cases, shaded areas similar to those used in cellular coverage maps.
- The coming generation will expect pervasive Internet, and they won't even understand that there is some technical challenge to delivering this. For adults today, the notebook is the device of choice for connecting to the Internet, but kids have Nintendo, PlayStation, and they expect to get that everywhere.
- Delivering residential broadband inside is one of the biggest challenges for networks in the 2.4 GHz band (which is one of the attractions of the 700 MHz networks). It's a big challenge, but it also creates a natural boundary between all of the indoor Wi-Fi stuff and all of the outdoor Wi-Fi stuff. We haven't had this major negative problem of interference. Maybe we should define that in exactly that way, and have an explicit mechanism: In this application for this network, how are we transititioning across that boundary?
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