Wee-Fi: Green Wi-Fi, Gogo Mobile Price, Ruckus Enterprise, Apple Firmware Update

Green Wi-Fi gets Voice of America write-up: The folks at Green Wi-Fi are leveraging solar power as a way to bring networking to the developed world. With little or no electrical infrastructure, the wider world of the Internet was unavailable to rural schools. Baikie set out to make a system that was appropriate to the infrastructure as well as affordable. A Sun Microsystems engineer, Baikie helped develop a system that's smart enough to save energy by powering down at night when there are no users. Voice of America discusses Green Wi-Fi's projects in Senegal and Panama, as well as future efforts.

Gogo quietly offers mobile pricing option for in-flight Internet: Aircell's Gogo Internet service on Delta, Virgin America, and American airlines has quietly released an $8-per-flight mobile option, a discount off its $10-$13 (under 3 hours/over 3 hours) pricing model. The soft launch lets people with iPhones, Blackberrys, and other mobile hardware get a cheaper connection, justified because such users typically consume much less data than a laptop toter.

Ruckus Wireless releases enterprise-oriented 802.11n gear: ZoneFlex enterprise is part of Ruckus's move into corporate headquarters. The company started with MIMO devices for the home, expanded into IPTV, hotzones, and small businesses. This latest release includes a simultaneous dual-band 802.11n access point, an upscaled WLAN controller, and enterprise policy management including elements such as virtual LANs and virtual SSIDs. Ruckus gear uses mesh networking, which always functions better with multiple radios to avoid duplicating traffic over the same channels. Ruckus has a bit of secret sauce, la Meraki, that segments same-channel mesh into dynamic clusters without breaking client Wi-Fi access.

Apple ships firmware updates for older 802.11n base stations: Apple last week released updated firmware, with security and bug fixes, to enable remote file-sharing and configuration for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) users. This feature, the only backward-compatible item that's part of the company's new 802.11n base station models, allows a MobileMe subscriber to use Back to My Mac to access hard drives and base station configuration when using a computer with the same MobileMe credentials. The software can be downloaded through this link, or via Check for Updates in the AirPort Utility menu with that program launched and a base station selected.

Wee-Fi: Option’s GlobeSurfer III, Amtrak Un-unplugged, Forbes’s Yawn
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