Rubenerd Blog

UPDATE, 20:16: Jim talked about this issue on his latest audio magazine and posted a comment below. As Jean Luc Picard would say: "stand down red alert!"

One of the great things about Whole Wheat Radio, the internet radio station and collaborative wiki for independent artists and just damn nice music, is that you can listen to it anywhere where you have a stable internet connection! Unfortunately, recently it seems to have issues with Wireless@SG, Singapore’s free island-wide WiFi service. When I was at Starbucks yesterday evening at 23:30 having a well deserved Chai Latte (I figure it’s not good drinking coffee at that time of day!) I got the following error message:

I was very used to seeing this message both at home and in public WiFi hotspots when I lived in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in 2006, but this was the first time I’d seen it here. I assume it was because in Malaysia the broadband provider TMnet shoehorns many customers onto the one IP address in places and uses some form of NAT system, and perhaps Wireless@SG in Singapore is doing a similar thing.

One thing I have noticed about Wireless@SG is the number of IP addresses you’re served at any given time. Sometimes I can be sitting at a Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, San Francisco Coffee or Dome for several hours at a time (coffee shops are so much nicer to study and work in than a study hall, and they’re a nice change from sitting at home all day) and I’ve noticed my MacBook Pro will be served 20 or so new addresses in that time period. In that case, I certainly can’t blame WWR for blocking me, I’m sure from their end such activity looks pretty sus.

I guess just like my detailed documentation on Whole Wheat Radio audio players for Linux and FreeBSD, this information would probably not be useful to most people, but just letting potential Singaporean listeners know that it’s not their fault, or WWR’s fault, it’s the WiFi system. Perhaps WWR here is best listened to at home.

A lot of talk in the paper here recently has been about the progress (or argued lack thereof) of the Wireless@SG free nationwide WiFi system which the Singapore government and SingTel are in the process of setting up. Reading the stories the last few days you would get the impression that city-wide wireless networks would be easy to set up and that the slow pace of construction is unwarranted.I’m fairly sure people are taking for granted how complicated and difficult a wireless network is to set up. People tend to dismiss Singapore as a very small country, while forgetting that the city isn’t.

The very high population density (6,369 people per square kilometre) coupled with people’s ferocious appetite for high tech gadgets and devices is both a blessing and a curse in this situation. As with most utilities such as electricity and water, wireless internet access would be much more viable economically in a place with a high population density than a low one given the fact you can supply many more people with less investment, but with wireless networking it isn’t so easy.

With electricity and water you have dedicated delivery systems, with wireless networking you are using a shared resource (the air) that has to compete with hundreds of other wireless networks people have set up. There are only so many frequencies that you can utilise, and the environmental conditions at each hotspot such as geography and relationship to other buildings would have to be taken into consideration.

Setting up individual wireless hot spots in fixed locations liked shopping centres or shops within shopping centres is easier, but would generally suffer from the same setup problems. That said though I’ve been to several Wireless@SG hotspots and have never had connection problems at all. Perhaps I’ve just been at the right places at the right times.