Forgive me, I wasn't at the meeting, but I suspect that you had the
usual slew of problems with 802.11 networks at large meetings, such
as:
a) Users confusing other users by going into ad-hoc mode with the
same network name;
b) some base stations seem to get royally confused when this happens,
which is worse (and I suspect but do not know that this can cause the
base stations to drop their transmit power)
c) radio-level problems caused by 802.11 devices using the same radio
channels but not co-operating. I even recently was at a meeting
where the IS had setup 3 base stations on the same network and
frequency, within feet of each other, because each had a 10-user NAT
limit. Asking for radio interference (and it didn't solve the
problem, since users cannot then choose which base station they get!).
d) aggressive bluetooth devices making it difficult to get large
packets through
...
Why do I bring this up? Because at IETF and MPEG meetings, large
company developer conferences, and so on, I observe it takes a
significant team of people just managing the wireless network. Is it
time for those who have experience "at the sharp end" to pool the
collected wisdom and talk to the 802.11 committee about this? I
think that otherwise these problems will (and probably are) damping
the adoption and use of this, and hence IP-based services, and that
it's time to consider changes to the spec. -- or at least
recommendations -- to ameliorate some of these problems.
As to why some OSs switch automatically into ad-hoc mode if they
cannot find the base station, I will remain silent...
--
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime
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