What's the real scope of hardware openness?

[Luca Dionisi]

I'm definitely willing to believe that there are tech problems, the GPS
protocol into the chips we are using, closed firmware and all the rest.

And I admit I really know nothing about mobile comm problems.

Anyway, there seems to be some FUD here to me.
But then I am probably wrong. Could you confirm these
problems?

On 8/6/07, Ian Stirling <OpenMoko at mauve.plus.com> wrote:
> If you are on average 20 nodes away from the destination, then on
> average, (neglecting routing problems) you, and all the nodes you route
> through, are sharing their bandwidth with 20 other users.

Isn't that the same that having many users sharing the aerial
bandwidth when communicating with the same big GSM antenna?


> Because users are not evenly spread, there are 'hot' links, which are
> links between 'islands' of relatively isolated users.
> This means that a vastly disproportionate amount of traffic goes to them.

Couldn't this problem be worked out? Some powerful (wired?) connection
between the 'islands'. I mean, if you are talking about big group of
users, say a town or a big building.


> Even neglecting users who are abusing the network, the noise floor goes
> up significantly, because everyone is 'shouting' at once.

Emule does a great job in avoiding the abusers.


> Once you get a few people that decide that streaming video from their
> webcams to their office is a fun app, they utterly screw the people
> using the same frequency in the same range.

Again, the protocol should take care of who gets what part of the bandwidth.


> The problem _is_ the sociopaths.
> With an open protocol, and open devices, and shared radio frequency it
> is simply impossible to stop them interfering with other users.

Maybe mine is a naive idea, but I don't agree. If the protocol is well designed.