gladiator WiFi (townhouse, transfer, neighborhood)

[drcharlotte]

Hi,

Just closed on our townhouse in baxter village. I want to set up phone, internet and cable. Anyone have experience with gladiator WiFi? I am considering the following option: Gladiator WiFi for internet, Direct TV for cable and Vonage for phone. The other option is use comporium and bundle all three together.

Any opinions or advice?

Thanks!!!!!

[MilesBFree]

I checked their web site since we might be interested too. It is short on technical details, but from what I could piece together it looks like they are building a sort of WiFi mesh-type network where the WiFi access points are daisy chained together.

What that means is that the network might become congested or slow once a lot of users get on it. It might also mean poor reception if your house is farther away from the access point. They do not say if they will locate the access point in the neighborhood, in every house, in every few houses, etc.

I would ask them about those sort of questions, what sort of minimum bandwidth they will guarantee. Vonage might be an issue over WiFi in this sort of network depending on minimum bandwidth they will guarantee.

Also ask them if they cap data transfer, limit types of protocols or ports, allow Vonage, provide QoS, strangle peer-to-peer transfers, or throttle bandwidth in any way. These are common issues with many carriers including the big guys. Most of those big ones have finally allowed the required ports for Vonage, but when we first got Vonage a few years ago we had issues...

Also ask which WiFi spec they use (e.g.- A, B, N, etc.) since your PC might not support the right type of WiFi, and if they plan on going to WiMax and when. If no WiMax, this is a dead end solution.

Please search the forum here for a discussion on WiMax and Clearwire for more info I posted on that.

Another concern I would have is if you have more than one PC or networked device in your home, but they do not locate an access point in your home over which you will have control. If the WiFi box is somewhere in the neighborhood but not in your house, you will not be able to plug in other wired devices such as the Vonage box (unless it is WiFi enabled, which newer ones might be).

With a cable or DSL modem in your house, this is simple. You plug a router (WiFi or otherwise)
into that modem, and then you have complete control over the devices you want to connect to your network. If the WiFi access point is outside your home, you probably won't.

You may end up paying per device that you want to connect to their WiFi network.

[Sharpcarolina]

We are in Baxter and have DTV. Of course, we have had it for over 10 years and love it. We are still on comporium for internet and phone, but would love to have an alternative.