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Following Steve Cassidy's article on the parlous state of Wi-Fi in Cannes, I thought it about time to put my tuppence-worth in.

Cannes (although a slightly special case) is a classic example of the problems that plague Wi-Fi. As a collision-based, short-range technology, it was just never designed to provide blanket coverage to large open (or semi-open) spaces.

More importantly, the level of expectation attached to Wi-Fi as a technology is nothing short of lala-land - people expect it to do everything, in all circumstances, without question or configuration.

Add to that the fact that events like the one Steve attended inevitably bring out the home Wi-Fi guru in each exhibitor, adding dozens of uncontrolled access-points into the equation, and you have a recipe for disaster, which is inevitably what happens at Cannes (and most similar events) on a regular basis.

Allow me to explain my intimate experience of this particular issue. You see, I run a wireless ISP (WISP) based a mere stone's throw away from Cannes in Antibes. We provide guaranteed wireless services to the yachting industry along the French Riviera, and are currently expanding into Italy, Spain and the Caribbean with the same offer. Did I say "Guaranteed"? You bet I did.

Abandoning Wi-Fi

The reason I can say this is that we abandoned Wi-Fi as a technology over two years ago in favour of the far more capable (and frequently over-hyped) WiMAX alternative. Now, in most cases, this would mean that we would have purchased a chunk of spectrum from the national authorities for gazillions of Euros and could therefore provide ubiquitous, expensive coverage.

However, in our experience there aren't many competing services at sea, or even pointing towards it, so we elected to operate in the unregulated bands that Wi-Fi also uses. Given the differences in the technology, this doesn't cause either us or them a problem, as one of the main requirements for our French operating licence was a commitment not to degrade existing networks.

Having said that, when you use Wi-Fi to create those networks, there isn't much to degrade as they are inherently unreliable for numerous reasons.

Take Cannes as the example. There are currently at least four commercially-operated Wi-Fi networks

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within range of the Port of Cannes - Orange (France Telecom), SFR (Vodafone), Neuf WiFi and the intriguingly named hotspotpc!

Of their transmitters, identified by the wonderful Netstumbler during the recent Cannes Festival, no less than eight were using channel 1, seven were on channel 6, and ten on channel 11 (these being the main default channels on most routers).

This channel congestion is bad enough, but, in addition, many boats have their own on-board Wi-Fi network with one or more routers. Furthermore, the exhibition stand guru's were adding yet more channel occupation. The worst part of this is that probably half of all the networks present were created with no more design than "take it out of the box and plug it in", and ALL expected that just to work.

This meant that, in total, 24 routers were using channel 1, 19 channel 6 and a crazy 30 were using channel 11, out of a total of 100 networks detected from a single point in just a few minutes.

Now with a collision-based technology, this simply doesn't work.

Add to this the factor that boats come and go on a daily basis (thereby changing the channel occupation regularly), and you have a recipe for unreliability and therefore unhappy clients - some of whom were expecting to stream live video over their networks!

Channel hopping

"Modern" alternatives, such as 802.11g+ and 802.11n routers compound the problem by using multiple channels, thereby increasing congestion and reducing reliability. Simply put, this is the wrong technology, wrongly deployed by the wrong people in the wrong place. It was never going to work.

And yet, everyone just expected it would! On numerous occasions, we had calls from clients who said their "connection wasn't working", only to find (in every case) that the networks around them were causing so much interference, that no-one could get online, whilst our own equipment was working perfectly (admittedly using exclusively the 5.4GHz band at that time).

The only place for Wi-Fi in such situations is in a small, relatively closed space, or where very short range is required. In most cases, even then, a single 2.4 GHz channel (B mode only) should be selected, so that all available power goes to that channel.

However, for places such as the Palais de Festival, where the conferences are held, there is only one sensible answer for visiting conferences etc - use cable.

This may be the more expensive option, but it is the only option in such a congested space or where connectivity is an absolute requirement and congestion is likely. These days, it doesn't even mean using ethernet cable, as ample (no pun intended) power-line options exist.

Wi-Fi as a technology has much to offer, but only if used appropriately and with an understanding of the limitations presented by the technology itself. Until consumers (and providers) shift their expectations to something more realistic - such as WiMAX - expect the problems to continue!