Australia’s cities go 802.11b

Australia is considering city-wide 802.11b networks to solve the last mile.

Using standard components, like Cisco’s 350 Aironet access point and a readily-available antenna, the network is achieving reliable broadband access. 1 kilometre from Murray’s office in the CSIRO’s North Epping facility, a terminal with a standard 802.11b wireless card and a fixed antennae receives data at the maximum 7.66 mb/s data rate (802.11b portends to operate at 11 mb/s but with the protocol overheads it effectively means the maximum data transfer rate is 7.66 mb/s).

Murray says that range could be extended to as far as 7 kilometres, although obviously the quality of service suffers over such distances. The fact that the network is operating at a high quality speed over distance of greater than 1 kilometre through some of Sydney’s leafiest terrain, offers great hope to budding broadband entrepreneurs.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Bill!)