offtopic question about high density wifi

[david at lang.hm]

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, C. Scott Ananian wrote:

> OK, I'm sorry but your assumptions are mostly wrong, and you don't
> seem interested in rethinking them.  Chris Ball gave you the most
> useful information.  Please re-read the pycon articles he pointed you
> to, especially the bits from 2008 about contention and spectrum.

Ok, having gone back and re-reading this, I'm confused. This seems to be 
exactly the RF contention issues that I understand and am prepared (as 
much as possible) to deal with. It also seems like an argument _against_ 
the big, expensive access points, not an argument for them.

in the 2007 report under the section RTS he talk explictly about the 
hidden node effect. They talk about it from the point of view of one AP 
that can see two nodes that can't see each other, but the effect would be 
the same when you have an AP and client that can't hear each other, but a 
second client can hear both. This latter situation is what you would have 
with lots of directional antennas radiating out from one point.


you seem to be telling me that I don't need to worry about RF contention, 
that there is something else that will limit me. That is exactly the type 
of problem I am trying to learn about.


As these articles say (and I was already planning), I want to have the 
access points with power turned down so that I can fit more in a given 
area without them overlapping on the same frequency.


David Lang