OK, the last session. What a panel! Tim Shepherd, who modestly disclaims inventing mesh networking. Gordon Cook, the sharpest quill in telecom. And Col. David Hughes, and extraordinary gentleman and soldier who has been wirelessly connecting the ends of the Earth.
Tim Shepherd
PhD thesis [Theoretical basis for mesh networking] misused. Used to whack FCC commissioners on the head. Things we think are settled in wireless are not. Want to teach a few technical things.
Imagine 100,000 people go to a football stadium. Acoustic spectrum for speech only a few KhZ wide. If everyone talked at once nobody can talk. Wrong! But you can talk to neighbour if everyone else talking at once. PA system still works. Can use intuition of football stadium acoustics as metaphor, with limits.
Where do we need more regulation? Acoustic or electromagnetic. Need more acoustic regulation and less electromagnetic.
Electromagnetic waves do not interfere. Slit experiement is inferference. Economists and lawyers use it in a different sense. Analog of two cars going to a single spot.
Interference occurs happens in the receiving apparatus.
On open spectrum list someone said there are times everyone in football stadium needs to shut up, for example during anthem. Life isn’t like a football stadium. 3am music – call police. In theater, kicked out if I annoy my neighbours. Response – football stadium analogy not perfect. Need less refulation than acoustics.
Hearing different from electromagnetic. Can’t redesign ears or brains. If neighbour transmits 100W of RF only a problem if you have a receiver. No receiver, no problem.
Second way it is different that there are 5-7 orders of magnitude more bandwidth. Like being able to listen to 50,000 at once. Also small wavelengths mean you can have directional signal.
So yes there are times when we expect people to be quiet in the real world. What does it mean to be quiet on the Internet? Maybe on a mailing list, but can’t expect people to keep it down and stop writing so much on their blog.
Military should be able to do what they want. Robust civilian systems like GPS need to be robust against people with malevolent intentions. Then we should have a free-for-all.
Gordon Cook
Three things. If I’ve learned anything in the last 6 months and the last 2 days. Former: wireless everywhere, ubiquitous, gigabits to kilobits. WISPs to RFID to tiny remote sensor networks. All interlinked in intriguing ways. To the extent that there is room for innovation left in ICT field it is in building this global, ubiquitous wireless network.
In last 48 hours have seen things get clear. It’s boundary crossing. Dinosaurs getting weak at the knees and keeling over. The only opportunities for creative existence not shackled by constraints of corporate business model. Need to understand how all the pieces build on relationships. Interesting business propositions.
Chaos, but can see enough of the big picture. Three years ago was losing subs. Asked Dave [next speaker] for advice.
Went from supercomputer center to office of technology assessment. Didn’t understand what it was all about. Start a newsletter. How to do that? Just start and keep on going. One foot after another. 3 years later meeting Steve Goldstein in Moscow and talking on NSF and international connections system. My devil’s tail not so long, so introduces to person running BBNS presentation. Head out to Colorado in 1994, meet Dave who is hooking up school in mountains at 56kbps.
Mitchell – passion is getting K12s onto the Internet. Hate the RBOCs. Whoa! Do I have the person for you [Dave]. Dave been doing amazing wireless stuff ever since.
Went to Tibet and Nepal in 98/99, Kashmir in 01, Nepal in 02. Had a revelation. Guy who runs largest ISP in Kathmandu. 10 years earlier was a student in Montana, student of a student of Dave’s. Said there’s an interesting Sherpa putting a telecom on the side of a mountain. Met about 4 Nov 02, talked to him for 45 mins. In 3rd world, Maoists had blown up the repeater tower. Get a satellite dish, PBX. Needed to explain whole copper and PBX stuff. How much is a box and can I stick it into a plane and fly it into Namche? Sure. Explaining how he did all this. Suddenly, sentence that changed everything with my relationship with Nepal and Colonel.
But that’s not the only reason I’m doing this. I want to preserve Sherpa culture. Want to put Tibetan characters on computer. Nobody under 35 can write Tibetan. Have Tibetan culture, not Nepali. Now using telecom to enable local indigenous cultures to survive. Another human being has come to same conclusion independently. From straight back to Toyko, New York, imedially call Colonel [Dave]. Back from Mount Everest – news for you. You’ve been reincarnated on Mt Everest. Met this crazy Sherpa. Spent 02-03 getting cybercafe to Everest base camp. Dream to go there. Did it.
Colonel David Hughes
Don’t go to many conferences. Isenberg dragged me here. Don’t like to do anything for people. Just go there, do it while they watch, let them learn, I have no intention to stay behind.
Hedy Lamarr, Inventor of Spread Spectrum. 1941. Never got recognition. I nominated her for award that got her world fame. Never occurred to these people who used her image in marketing she might still be alive (84 years old). She sued and for $5m.
Picture of her actual patent, released for public access in 1985.
Classified for 40 years by FCC. Too secure for intercept.
1995 and Israelis were playing with the technology. They then loosened up. Three NSF years at the edge. Rain forests of Puerto Rico, permafrost in Alaska, lakes in WI, outer islands of Chesapeake.
Nobody is doing modeling of wireless properly, just need to apply known biological science model techniques.
Towers, trees, rain, rats problems in Puerto Rico. Need to cut through canopt. 902-928 Mhz radios.
Lake Wisconsin, problems with ice, wireless in middle of lakes. Tower height, $7000 to get 125ft up, above trees. LOS problems? Use helium balloons. Small radios in slings. Hooked into wells [against wind and snow].
Chesapeake, offshore. Univ of Virginia studying out there, 14 miles of water. You can get range out of wireless, just need to know how. Maybe a little bit of civil disobedience in public interest. Only thing that stayed up during hurricane was this one link.
Alaska. Fairbanks. Central AK. 16 miles down the river to collect data from sensor, swap memory modules.
Real-time demo of webcam up in AK, -7C , date and time is now.
Caribou, vertical solar panels, not enough power still.
Power is biggest issue of mobile.
Everest. 18000 ft up. Can’t put solar panel and satellite up on iceflow next to base camp, as glacier moves 4ft a day. Called up friend in Cisco. Asked to give radios in return for PR. Got it all hooked up. VSAT on hard ground, local link to basecamp. Picture of Sherpa with directional antenna. Can then charge $1/min to climbers who can communicate with rest of the world.
Then off to Namche, but 76 years old. Had to train in CO. 2000 feet in 2 hours without collapsing. Namche surrounded by cliffs. Start with Lukla, don’t bring US radios, just being cheap ones from Singapore with low power needs.
Cybercafe. Success. Any climber could get to top of Everest and send email home to mum.
In Thame [nearby village], very poor, trying to raise money for books (much poorer than Namche). 5 relay radios. Picture of Moats [HELP! I know nothing about these micro smart-dust radios, even how to spell their name] Future of radios, tiny.
Economic development next topic. Examples of Bhuddist art they are selling.
Demo of SJPhone, ready to call – contact Mingma, sherpa in Pittsburgh, learned English in kathmandu. Couldn’t afford to go to CMU. Distance learning VoIP to classroom. 1500ms latency.
[Wifi problems in auditorium.]
Moats demo. TinyOS Linux derivative. Looks small. But two big dry cells. Haven’t paid any attention to alternate power. Sensors – sound, accelerometer. Smart dust 2mm x 2mm. Stansby power 1 uW. Transmit 1.5mW. Receive 1mW. Mesh range @915Mhz, not spread spectrum.
Duck Island in ME off Bar harbor, had Stormy Petrel birds. Why survive there and not next island. Put 150 old style sensors in, no room for bids in nest!
Fuel cell technology. Fuel cell with printer techniques, H2 hydride fuel cell. Three 1V cells. Smallest ones will fit on a bee’s back.
Want 20 years unattended of a fuel cell harvesting power. Tiny power, tiny storage. Want to know how to tap evergy in changes in atmos pressure. Why not? Trickle charge. Can last for years that way. I don’t want to be the guy who goes out there to change the batteries [Audience: what’s that PhD students are for!]
DI: Tell them about the award you won! We just think he’s great, given him the only standing ovation of the show.
Flattered, humbled, astonished. Association of graduates of west point. Schwarzkoph. President of Phillipines. Am Distinguished West Point Graduate for 2004. Going in May. Only 7th colonel to get it. Aldridge and Borman who went to moon before me.
GC: Crossed political correctness boundary.
Women at West Point – any nation that permits and encourages its women to join an institution aimed at killing people and destroying people is morally bankrupt.
Q: First time I’ve heard spread spectrum being locked up by military. Wanted to confirm this had been around for a while. Defence department has affected direction of [economy].
[Story of Hety Lamarr - you go Google for it yourself]
GC: I visited David in 1989 in CO. Will have Global bulletin board. Working stiffs will see this. Thatcher will talk to Brezhnev. Only 7 years later was putting Mongolians onh the Interet.
Third world can’t go wired except in main cities. Must be wireless. PDA sized thing.
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