Alec Saunders SquawkBox

The rumours have been flying about the iPod Touch equipped with a camera and microphone built-in.  Yesterday Andy Abramson talked about the potential for this device on WiFi networks as a communication product.  Andy’s thesis is that this new iPod device is the disruption that will unleash Voice on WiFi, and as an early adopter points out that he has been doing this for a couple of years now with Truphone on Nokia and Apple devices.  He’s predicting a flurry of SIP applications through the iPhone store when this new iPod Touch comes to market.

Me, I’m not so sure.  After all, wasn’t that the premise of Skype on the Sony Mylo?

Consumers expect always-on connectivity, and WiFi doesn’t deliver.  With ubiquitous inexpensive 3G the norm, WiFi has become a backup network rather than a mainstay data network for many people.  Take me, for example.  I pay for a Boingo subscription each month because when I’m in a hotspot, it’s faster and more responsive than the 3G on my iPhone.  But I also have 6G of service on my iPhone for $30/month, of which I’ve never used more than 400M.

Travelling, however, is a different story.  As Andy notes, you can talk for free on WiFi when you’re travelling, versus whatever the outrageous roaming rate that your carrier might charge.  Savvy travellers use products like Truphone and Skype to avoid roaming charges.

In my opinion, the real value for telephony in WiFi is in fixed mobile convergence – phones that know the cheapest / highest quality networks, and use them seamlessly to give the best overall experience to the customer. My iPhone should (but doesn’t) automatically pass my calls over WiFi when in a hotspot, and seamlessly hand off to cellular when I leave that hotspot.

When we moved into our current home, we had the place wired for ethernet.  The state of the art for WiFi at the time was 802.11b – 10 Mb/s, short range.  I had ethernet cabled everywhere, and then used WiFi for devices that were better mobile – laptop computers initially, and later mobile phones, music players, and so on.

For the last 6 years there have always been two hotspots – one in the basement in the wiring closet (Saunders), and one placed on the main floor family room (Foo).  This was to achieve coverage, primarily.  The basement is not a great location for your primary router, but that’s where the whole house is cabled from.

Foo is a 2002 vintage Dell TrueMobile 1184 – slow 10Mb/s 802.11b, and no wireless G.  I retired it yesterday, after upgrading an aging Linksys WRT54GS router using the excellent DD-WRT firmware.  DD-WRT is an open source project which allows you to take a commodity, consumer grade router (like the very common Linksys router I have), and reflash it with software much more akin to a high end commercial wireless router.

What can you do with a router equipped with DD-WRT? Run a commercial hotspot, a WiFi VPN server, a bridge, or a mesh network, to name just a few.  And in my case, boost the power of the transmitters.  The software allows you to adjust the power anywhere from Linksys default of 70 mW up to 240mW, or down.  I chose 84mW, which with the 2.2 dBi of antenna gain that the Linksys “rubber ducky” antenna is rated for comes well within the maximum legal limit of 100mW.

14mW of extra power, and now my coverage is good everywhere in the house.

So before you rush out and buy an 802.11n router (as I had), check out DD-WRT.  The upgrade was painless, and the results are exactly what I had hoped for.