Next Wave: Darwin’s leap to MAN

Posted by Dennis Sellers Mar 15, 2005 at 12:01am

Neo is Macsimum News’ international man of mystery. If we told you more, we’d have to kill you.

Editor’s Note: This is a reprint of one of Neo’s articles that has appeared elsewhere last year. We’re running it for your perusal and to add it to the Macsimum News archives.

“We believe that the next wave of the Internet will be client applications that work intimately with the Internet, but not necessarily with a Web browser.”

Steve Jobs—January 2000

This edited chapter was originally published in August 2004

The Countdown Begins – Now

Sun Microsystems has a new marketing tool. It’s called Jonathan’s blog. Their President and Chief Operating Officer uses this modern communications tool as Sun’s own digital podium to sound off against competitors, discuss Industry standards and other corporate events amongst other things. This August 25/04 entry, titled “Who picked your search engine?”, was of particular interest. He provided a brief yet purposeful overview of the evolution of the industry in context to how technology is no longer driven by the top of the food chain but rather by today’s youth (And everyone under 25 reading this is now thinking—Yes, it’s about the youth, stupid!). It’s a good read. Here are just a few of the key points made:

How many PC’s in your enterprise have CD players? How many of your employees look at consumer web sites at work (can you imagine watching the news at work 30 years ago vs. peeking at cnn.com today)? Do you limit your daily email to colleagues and customers? Ever IM at work? 10 years ago, the consumer eCommerce wave began—has it had an impact on the enterprise? Clearly.

And continuing that trend, think about the following: who picked the search engine you use most often? It wasn’t your CIO. Yet is a search engine a part of your business toolbox? Certainly, yes. And who picked your cell phone? Likely not your CIO, either – yet do you use it for business purposes? Surely, yes.

Jonathan then shifted to two Airline stories involving Boeing and Lufthansa’s in-air Internet services commenting, “wait until they start running video chat over that network … something tells me they’re going to need a tad more than 5Mbs real soon.

As an update to his own blog, he enters: UPDATE: Is this cool, or what – which just happens to be a shameless hyperlink to Apple’s very own iChat AV at 35,000 Feet—Was the first in-air videoconference? site. I say shameless, in jest of course due to the fact that the [url=Apple/Sun/Ericsson[/url] Alliance was formed back in 2002. So nice plug Jonathan!

The Alliance is focused

That same week (Thursday, August 26/04), Jonathan was once again in the news plugging their mobile-java services architecture supporting over-the-air application management as follows:

The mobile-Java services architecture framework will feature security improvements and support for over-the-air application management, including software and security upgrades by enterprises and service providers. Among those supporting the initiative are Orange, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Sun Microsystems and T-Mobile,most of whom are expected to join Nokia and Vodafone as members of the expert group for the specifications.

“We are working with Sun to bring together the various components to establish a common, open standards-based,next-generation Java services architecture for enterprise and consumer applications,” said Nokia spokesperson Charles Chopp. He went on to say, “Taking away the ambiguity in the Java roadmap will go a long way toward introducing the applications associated with advanced wireless networks.”

Earlier this June, both Apple and Sun announced agreements with BMW concerning in-vehicle systems (Telematics). In that same month Steve Jobs dropped word with Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg saying that “People want a much better solution for listening to music in their car. We’re working with some folks and hope to have some exciting announcements later this year.” During that same event, Steve Jobs made his pitch for Apple’s new AirTunes product. Are you catching the many references framed by “Air”? If not, then keep your eye open.

Apple’s huge Leap to MAN—The Fun Stuff
A significant clue defining one of the core building blocks of this next wave of the Internet came to the Mac community on August 19/04 by way of a report from the Australian IT entitled “Unwired hints at iTunes link.” To be blunt, North Americans completely missed the boat on this one, evidenced by how little coverage and discussion it actually generated. So let’s go directly to the source, to get this story right this time. Get ready to rock n’ roll with this intro-video! Watch for the next-wave-Air-Surfer: Welcome To a Glimpse of the Revolution (Note: they video could take a few moments to load, so be patient. You don’t want to miss this one!).

What is Unwired?

Unwired Wireless Broadband offers the same great features of other broadband connections available today. The incredibly fast speeds and ‘always on’ features are the same as those offered by cable or ADSL broadband technologies. However, that’s where the similarities end.

Unwired customers connect to the Internet over the air, rather than through a phone line or cable. That means that they get all of the benefits of traditional broadband, plus the portability and freedom that only wireless broadband could offer.

Unwired customers aren’t restricted to using their broadband connection within the home or office as we are today. They have the added option of simply taking their Unwired modem (within their entire coverage area) with them to get instant access to their broadband connection anywhere, anytime, at no extra cost! The freedom of simply taking your modem to school, the library, a café or to the park, is what we all want.

How It Works

The Unwired network is a true Wireless Wide Area Network (WAN). The Unwired Wireless Broadband service works through a network of towers similar to those used by the mobile phone industry, working in conjunction with modems attached to their customers’ computers.

The wireless technology is proprietary so it works differently from standard 802.11 WiFi products. The Unwired modem could connect within a range of up to 10kms (or 6 miles) from a tower, rather than being limited to 100 feet. The quality of the connection is much more reliable and Unwired uses private spectrum along with our proprietary equipment, so our wireless network is incredibly secure.

The customers’ Unwired modem connects to any one of our many towers covering Sydney. The modem is capable of transmitting and receiving wireless signals around or through buildings and other barriers. Unwired is a broadband supplier independent of the Telstra Network. They plug you straight into the internet.

Here’s Unwired’s Mac and PC music page.

Darwin’s Leap to MAN: Metropolitan Area Network IEEE 820.20

MAN is a relatively new class of network, it serves a role similar to an ISP, but for corporate users with large LANs. The MAN size falls intermediate between LANs and WANs. A MAN typically covers an area of between 5 and 50 km diameter. Many MANs cover an area the size of a city, although in some cases MANs may be as small as a group of buildings. MAN (like a WAN) is not generally owned by a single organization. The communications links and equipment in MAN are generally owned by either a consortium of users or by a single network provider who sells the service to the users. This level of service provided to each user must therefore be negotiated with the MAN operator, and some performance guarantees are normally specified.
MAN often acts as a high-speed network to allow sharing of regional resources (similar to a large LAN). It is also frequently used to provide a shared connection to other networks using a link to a WAN.

The mission of IEEE 802.20 is to develop the specification for an efficient packet based air interface [AI] that is optimized for the transport of IP based services. The goal is to enable worldwide deployment of affordable, ubiquitous, always-on and interoperable multi-vendor mobile broadband wireless access networks that meet the needs of business and residential end user markets.

To see a comparative chart demonstrating the advantages of 802.20 over 802.16 and 3G click here- Note Music Player (like iPod) and Mobile Gaming devices.

What MAN Delivers

Applications: The AI shall support applications that conform to open standards and protocols. This allows applications including, but not limited to, video, full graphical web browsing, e-mail, file uploading and downloading without size limitations (e.g., FTP), streaming video and streaming audio, IP Multicast, Telematics, Location based services, VPN connections, VoIP, instant messaging and on- line multiplayer gaming.

Voice Services: The MBWA shall provide air interface support to enable VoIP Services [Voice over IP]. QoS Features [Quality of Service] shall provide the required performance of latency, jitter, and packet loss needed to support the use of industry standard codecs applicable to mobile networks.

Imagine the Possibilities

In the big picture, the coming 802.20 standard (also known as MAN) is only but one initiative amongst many that are on their way to ignite the Next Wave of the Internet. Unwired’s video, Welcome To a Glimpse of the Revolution, really provides us with an exciting vision that the next wave has begun and can’t wait until it reaches our shores sometime in the 2005/2006 time frame. Apple’s work on being the first commercial in-air videoconference on the Lufthansa flight was exciting and the Apple/Sony alliance is bound to take us to the next level.

The Next Wave of the Internet Series
By Neo

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

  Advanced Search

Article Information

Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This

Contributor

Recent Articles