WiFi Phone Announced

igrp writes "Zyxel just announced its Prestige 2000W VoIP Wi-Fi Cordless Phone. It's designed to work with 802.11b networks, implements QoS and IP-to-IP call functionality and uses 128-bit WEP encryption. It also scans for 'available APs in [the] hand set's environment'. War driving just became a whole lot more interesting."

War driving attention span

[dalamarian]

I don't know about the rest of you, but the war driving experience only provided about .5 hours of entertainment. After that I just wanted to go out and drink.

Nice...

[robslimo]

I bet these would be immediately useful on medium to large commercial, industrial and educational campus, for intracampus mobile communication. But to be of much use to the general public, the coverage by WiFi cells will have to become ubiquitous, at least in metropoliton areas.

VoIP on a mobile device is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

VoIP on mobile devices is not that new, is it? PocketPC based devices have been pulling this off for a while now. You can even get one with a built in laser! check out www.intermec.com [tinyurl.com]

Re:Nice...

[robslimo]

OK, but other than geek factor, what good does it do you?

A customer I've worked with has two locations in the US, one in Aimes, IA and the other in Lawrence, KS. They have some manner of leased line (T1 or T3) between them. Their inter/intranet and some voice lines traverse this pipe. In KS they just dial the 4 digit extension of anyone they want to talk to in Aimes. I'm pretty sure the voice lines are of the tradition analog (64K bit) type you'd implement on a T1 or T3.

Now, imagine the cost of a leased line from Aimes to Lawrence. Now, throw away the long haul and use two short haul connections local to each city. They could VPN for the intranet, and VoIP for voice. There's a potential for real cost savings there.

This is VoIP equivalent of cordless, not mobile

[blorg]

This is not the VoIP equivalent of a cordless phone, not a mobile/cell phone. It's a nice side-benefit that you may be able to use it on networks other than your own.

The QoS is useless you know, right?

[GPLDAN]

If you wardrive and get on another network, the phone will send out packets tagged with 5 in the TOS field, but the network you got onto is almost certainly not going to honor the field, whether it be TOS in the packet or DSCP in the frame.

Also, QoS in wireless as a whole in an incomplete field. Cisco's AP still can't change the underlying "time on the air" algorithm of 802.11b and thus, you can get into a priority queue on the backside, but if there are too many people associated to the AP, you aren't getting any QoS over the airwaves. This problem is being worked on.