Stanford CIS

The challenges of 100% utilization

By Stanford Center for Internet and Society on

This one is lodged somewhere between picayune tidbit and outright plug. My alma mater, Dartmouth College has been at the forefront of wireless deployment for several years (beginning, sad to say, shortly after my graduation). It's been a fascinating experiment from both technical and social standpoints: first, how does one build and maintain such an aggressively-deployed network, and second, how will people respond to having "always on, everywhere" Net access pervading their lives? For example, I once heard a (perhaps apocryphal) rumor that Dartmouth was providing VoIP handsets to students in order to save on long distance costs. I don't suppose anyone could confirm or deny?

This article on ISP Planet is somewhat more concerned with the former question than the latter. Still, an interesting glimpse into the (maybe) future.

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