Madrid Wireless
Jim just sent me this link on warchalking in London. I can't imagine I'll be seeing much of this in Madrid. From what I've read, WiFi is legal here in Spain, but the next version - I can't remember the exact spec 802.11a is still being considered. So we're stuck at a slower rate here for the time being. Here's an website about WiFi in Madrid and Spain.
Instacorrections from Jim:
jimhughesuk: update for your blog, 802.11b (11Mbps at 2.4GHz) is legal in Europe jimhughesuk: 802.11a (54Mbps at 5GHz) isn't, but Hiperlan (sp?) also (54Mbps at 5GHz) will be jimhughesuk: 802.11g (54Mbps at 2.4GHz) should be legal, but like HiperLan isn't available yet jimhughesuk: the only major differences between HiperLan and 802.11a is that HiperLan talks at as low a power it can to minimise collisions, 802.11a being a US standard, just shouts all the time :-) jimhughesuk: In theory HiperLan kit should just be 802.11a with a firmware upgrade
Nice. But it seems that Spain is doing it's own thing... Also, here's more information about those kiosks (the one that's in the pic) some have wireless access apparently...
And here is the definitions between wireless specs. I don't have a clue, really:
802.11b is good old 2.4 Ghz Wi-Fi. It has three lower data rates (5.5, 2, and 1Mbit/sec) and is the basis for most wireless lans. While 11Mbps is the advertised speed, useable rates are about half that and actual throughput can be bring it down to one quarter. There is 85 Mhz available using 11, 22Mhz wide channels. Most overlap so they can't be used next to each other - only 3 channels don't overlap.
802.11a Both 802.11 (a & b) were conceived about the same time but the higher (5Ghz) frequency was took longer to bring to market. 801.11a can ratched down seven steps (48, 36, 24, 18, 12, 9, and 6Mbits/sec). The 5 Ghz band has 300 Mhz of spectrum 5.715-5.735 and 5.8 (something). The first 100 is indoor only, the next 100 is indoor/outdoor and the last 100 Mhz is outdoor. Each 100 Mhz band has four channels.
-Russ