I gave a pair of Metricom's revolutionary small Ricochet wireless modems the acid test the night they arrived. Putting one on a serial port of our Internet service in place of a dialup modem, I walked down the street about 600 feet to my local hangout, Rogers Bar, plugged the other battery-powered unit into my laptop computer serial port, and voilà! I was online, wireless, as fast as the serial port on my laptop could go. If I had high-speed ports, the Ricochet could have sustained 77Kbps throughput - faster than a 56Kbps dedicated circuit.
Metricom's development of a family of wireless modems, which operate in the no-license 902-928 MHz range, are the first real end-user products of their type in the world. In Cupertino, California, Ricochet modems can be rented at a monthly rate of US$20, with flat-fee service at $10-$30 to connect to Metricom's citywide "mesh" of pole-top modems. The result is seamless, wireless Net service. Metricom also sells the Ricochet modems separately at $495 each.
Ricochets "peer" with other units as pairs or in a local "StarMode" network. They even include point-to-point protocol (PPP).
But these are no digital cellular phones. Ricochet's wireless modems operate over "free spectrum": local digital-radio communications set aside by the FCC for low-power devices. If you choose to set up independent Ricochet networks, there is no cost for communications between modems.
Ricochets are tiny to boot - less than 8 inches long, 2 inches wide, and an inch deep. Almost half of the body is taken up by a six-hour battery. In addition, there is a small 9-volt, DC-output wall transformer with typical power plug and 6 feet of cord. And you can order them with either a 9-pin PC or Mac Din serial cable. Plug and play.
With 4-inch omnidirectional rubber-duck antennae, Ricochets have a range of about 1,500 feet. (Limited range is the trade-off for the free spectrum, 1-watt modems.) But if you slap on some Yagi antennae, it is technically possible to give them much greater range. In fact, some 1-watt spread-spectrum setups have operated over 20 miles' line of sight!
I'm thrilled with my Ricochets. They're the technology of freedom.
Metricom Inc.: (800) 556 6123, +1 (408) 399 8200, fax +1 (408) 354 1024, e-mail info@metricom.com.
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