ForbesOnTech

Mesh Networking Begins to Come of Age

One of the most incredible technology demonstrations I ever picked for Demo was of 802.11 ad hoc mesh networking. The Demonstrator was SRI in Menlo Park and the technology had been developed for the USMC as part of their urban warfare technology.

When the technology was described to me months in advance of Dem, all the cosmic gears, sprockets and drive elements went “click” and I instantly understood that the technology could have far-reaching implications beyond the Marines and their need to keep data and other networks up and running under the most adverse of conditions.

            SRI’s demonstration caught the attention of venture investors, entrepreneurs and press. Everyone who saw it immediately understood what it meant to see a network expand with the simple addition of another portable computer equipped with the right software and hardware. The audience also understood the meaning of a “dead node” in a combat 802.11 network.

            SRI’s technology is still very fresh in my mind, long after it was unveiled at Demo. As a result of the that demo, I went on to pick several other mesh networking companies, notably Sky Pilot Networks, now a mesh hardware supplier, but which was originally chartered to be a public networking supplier.

Two ther companies in this space that deserve watching are Firetide Networks (pick by Chis Shipey to launch at Demo 2003) and Packet Networks ( a  co-founder of which  is the former SRI researcher credited with pioneering mesh networks).

Instant wireless networking (another name for 802.11 mesh networks) has scored a number of impressive wins since it was unveiled six years ago. It’s now used extensively by the Department of Defense, emergency services agencies and municipalities to increase the flow of information in a variety of circumstances.

Firetide is one example of how instant wireless networking suppliers have been able to quickly capitalize on the growth of wireless networking. Since its founding in 2003, it has gone on to create a partner network that specializes in installing instant user-configurable wireless networks for anyone that wants to deploy wireless VOIP, video surveillance and high speed internet connectivity. Meru Networks, Netgear, AirPath Wireless and Pronto Networks.

Packet Networks has been equally successful in the public sector.

            Mesh networking is an important is also a part of educational computing where college level instructors are using it to create instant networks that are used for field work. One of the most unusual instant networks was highlighted recently in the blog of HP’s educational computing evangelist, Jim Vanides. One of Vanides more unusual posts here, concerns an enterprising geology professor who organizes multi car caravans that take students on field tours for a geology class. The far-thinking professor has built a power point deck that outlines the geologic features the students see as they whiz along at 60 or more miles an hour. The students sre using tablet PCs equipped with wireless adapters and mesh networking software. Presumably, the professor is controlling the display of PowerPoint slides from a passenger seat somewhere along the rolling classroom. I can only hope that student drivers aren’t glued to the slides on their notebooks and talking on their cell phones while they drive.

            Instant mesh networking, it’s a technology that can transform educational and all other categories of porftable computing.—Jim Forbes, wirelessly from my palm fronded outside office on a small mountaintop in rural San Diego County on 09/04/2007.  Woops, I guesss that was a small earthquake offshore. Fins up!

(mandatory disclosure:  Prior to retiring after a stroke kicked my butt in the hours before I was to have opened a Demo show, I produced DemoMobile, worked with Chris Shipley on Demo and wrote the printed and online versions of the DemoLetter and DemoMobile Letter.).

Ths Daunting Cost of a College Education--Paying the Cost to Become the Boss

It’s been two weeks of college graduations for some of my younger friends and now that they have their sheepskins a couple of them are beginning to talk about one of the more onerous aspects of getting a degree today, Student Loans.

            I am appalled at the cost of a four-year college degree here in California. It’s rare to find a student who doesn’t leave school with more than $17,000 in student loans and pretty routine to hear about young men and women who graduate owing $24,000 or more. And this is in a state that was tuition free for almost one hundred years.

            I’m pretty fortunate, I guess, I may have been among the last group of young adults who could work their way through college without student loans.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to get my degree back from the framers on the same day I got a billing statement for my student loans.

Actually, I can imagine it.  I think I would be seriously bummed.

Listening to the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs discussion at the All Things D conference last week, coupled with seeing a young lady I watched grow up who graduated late last month really started me thinking about the high cost of a college education today.

First things first, both Gates and Jobs agree that meeting the educational needs of today’s technology driven work force may be one of the biggest problems companies like Apple and Microsoft face today and in the future. Now consider this in context: neither Gates nor Jobs graduated from college (although I’m willing to bet a C-note their kids will).

When I look at young college students on campuses here in California, I try to put myself in their shoes or sandals. I wonder how horribly daunting it must be to think that, as a college student today: ”I’m going to need to borrow $20,000 or more to get a freaking four-year Bachelor’s degree, then maybe find a way to finagle enough cash to get a Master’s, while keeping body and soul alive.”

It’s a frightening thought for legions of kids with the intellectual drive and necessary credentials to get into a four-year college today.

So now we come to the other component in the equation, students' parents, many of whom are co-signers to those necessary loans. How do you think they feel about guaranteeing several score thousand bucks at a time when many are worried about a forced early or forthcoming retirement?

College tuition costs are going up in California and most other states. And there are virtually no 100 percent scholarships for kids who aren’t superstar jocks. Something is horribly wrong here.

It’s much more important to turn out competent lawyers, teachers, engineers, public servants and other professionals than it is to get a team into the Toilet Bowl or some other nonsensical college holiday post season game. I’m sure most college presidents are aware of this, yet they continue to grant full ride scholarships to classes of students who are least likely to make major societal contributions.

But wait there’s more. There’s another class of student that gets really hit by the current high cost of a college education.  That class is the returning veteran, who because of their age, life experience and maturity are much more likely to be in need of financial assistance than your typical 19 or 20 year old sophomore. First, today’s GI Bill bears no resemblance to the GI Bill of World War II and Korea.  If the soldier, sailor, marine, airman, (or woman) or Coastie, sets aside a fixed amount of their monthly pay check, the government matches that amount, and disbursement begins when the veteran begins college and lasts until the funds are exhausted. Sadly, most colleges still think of the GI Bill in terms of its original late 1940’s model. But, it’s better than nothing, although few colleges reserve spots on admissions’ lists for veterans.

I have an suggestion for Mssr’s Gates and Jobs:  How about you set up new educational/tuition assistance programs for the children of your employees? It may help solve some of your concerns about the educational level and suitability of their future workforce and it sure as hell could become an important draw in recruiting dedicated new employees.

To the producers of the Wall Street Journals All Things D conference? Don’t you think it’s time to suggest that industry titans put their money where their mouths are?  What about it Kara and Walt?

Finally, soaring tuition costs seem to be outpacing inflation. Yet, as a country we absolutely have to invest in the education of future generations. And to do this we need to face the dichotomy of making under graduate degrees more meaningful to industry and more affordable to middle class families.

Todate, I believe we’re failing on both fronts.

But I firmly believe that somewhere out in the wiregrass the next Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Henry Ford is probably hitting the books for SAT exams or tinkering with a new web-based application. Such potential students are much more valuable to our society than a young jock whose name will be forgotten six months after his last college bowl performance.—Jim Forbes on 06/04/2007.

(disclosure, I have two children, and I made a decision that one of the most important things I could do as a man and a Father, was pay as much of my children’s college tuition as I could and eliminate their need to get student loans—JMF)

Way to go U of Wisconsin: Educating the returning Veteran

The kind people of Wisconsin are in the process of doing a really neat thing for their veterans.  They're going to make sure returning vets can afford to get college degrees at a tuition reduced rate of about 50 percent free at their Universities and State  Technical Colleges.  Way to go Wisconsin!

Now if California universities would just do the same thing. Can you imagine what the infusion to the entrepreneurial community economy would be if the Stanford Graduate Business School,or USC's biz school followed Wisconsin's lead?

So how out of touch are c colleges here in the west with veteran's educational needs. doing the background for a story I wanted to write about the Stanford Graduate Business School. I asked an official of that prestigious institution "if they had any vets among their current students"

She paused a second and came back with "ah, no, I think most would be in graduate biology or medical programs"

"No," i screamed "veterans-- people who have served in the armed forces."

She was completely taken aback. "Why would we know that?"

"Why, indeed, since you're so out of touch with reality that your grads have pissed away hundreds of millions in risk capital without generating one cent of honest return!" I wanted to yell.

Obviously, I have an ax to grind. I got out of the service one morning at about 0830 and was sitting in class in a pair of new Levis and a tie-dyed shirt by 1 P.M. of the same day. three years later I was a newly minted college graduate and hard at work at my first "degree-required" job. What I really remember about my college experience was how many of my professors were themselves veterans-- including one who had served on an unterzee boat in the WWII German Kreigsmarine. Most of my professors grokked the importance of college education for returning veterans and passed that along to many of their students.

Over the years, I've read a lot about veterans as college students and how motivated they are to complete college educations. but the one problem for most returning-to-college vets is the cost of tuition-- the GI Bill didn't come close to covering tuition for my generation and I was of an age and socio-economic status where getting help from the parental units wasn't an option. So, I just buckled down,cinched up my belt and pulled myself up by the boot straps, exactly as my generation's father and uncles did after WWII and Korea. The economic returns from  the GI Bill are staggering.

Excluding hospital administration and related costs, the education of our veterans in colleges cost tens of millions a year (after the fist great influx over discharged vets --following WWII and Korea) but over its near 40-year life, but it pumped more than $40 trillion back into the economy (according to the Veteran's Administration). That's one hell of a return on an investment. And in my experience, the difference a GI Bill-financed college education made in my life, and in my children's lives is even more dramatic. Both of my children have gone on to college thanks to the difference in my earning power made possible by an education paid for in part by the GI Bill. To put a point on it, because I graduated from college, I was able to earn enough money to help my kids with tuition and living expenses.  This means the neither my son nor my daughter began their adult lives encumbered by crushing student loan debt.

That's far different than one of my best friends who has two daughters on scholarship in the University of California system. When each of his kids get their sheepskin, they will also face up to about $45,000 in debt.  Yikes!

The only debt I had when I graduated college was $15 I had just charged on a Union 76 credit card to fill up the gas tank on my '62, V 8-powered, two-door Impala. O'Rale!--Jim Forbes, 05/19/2006

So Why Isn't Stanford Recruiting Vets?

I was scratching around looking for a book length project to sink my teeth into and started calling graduate business schools

I thought I might find some great fodder among graduates who had completed their studies in the late eighties and early nineties. Invariably I would get shuffled off to a "media representative" tasked with the specific responsibility of the business school or department. I understand that their job is to determine whether my inquiry was real or not and my job is to convince them "I'm truly worthy."

Despite a well deserved reputation as a tenacious reporter, I was reasonably confident that most of the people I've worked with over the years would conclude that "I'm worthy."  Particularly since as a Demo producer and reporter editor, I'd helped large numbers of one-time graduate students fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams.

But a funny thing happened along the way and the event is best illustrated by a conversation I had with someone from the Stanford Graduate Business School, the institution that most interests me. In discussing the background of incoming students I was told that x percent were female and y percent were male and that such and such came in as new students to the graduate program from various undergraduate programs and a smaller number came in from Stanford's internal engineering entrepreneurial track. I thought "well that's to be expected but I wonder how many students came on board after real-life experience."

To someone who got their degree at the ripe old age of 24 after a genuine real-life experience, my next question was instinctive. "how many of your incoming students are vets?"

The pause from the other end of the phone lasted eons I could well imagine the gears spinning up in the media rep's office across from Stanford's Lane Hall." Vets?  We don't have any veterinarians," she said.

"No veterans, Ms so and so.  you know, men or women who have served in the armed forces and are using their GI Bill to get advanced degrees."

The silence was deafening but I expected it."I don't think we have any in our program," she said.

At this point in the conversation I had mentally subtracted at least 20 points from the score I've mentally awarded Stanford's esteemed grad business program. But,"hey," I thought, "Stanford is the home of the Hoover Institute and their mascot is the chicken hawk."

Within seconds I'd gone from a slow burn to an out of control fast burning wild-fire fuse.  I mean, how much money has Stanford received in Darpanet and other defense-related funding and yet there are no veterans in the Grad Biz school?  What's up with that? ? After all, it's not like ring-knocking graduates of Hudson High, Canoe U or Dooley School (respectively the US Military Academy at West Point, the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs) wouldn't consider an MBA from Staford following military service? But no, this category of student is completely absent at Stanford.

Subsequent to my original conversation I've learned that a number of professors at Carnegie Melon University, and various other Universities including satellite campuses of the University of California are now reaching out to make sure that veterans are aware of their programs. For the sake of my generations children now in uniform, I hope that more schools begin actively recruiting vets into various entrepreneurial programs.

I was the product of one such program.  For me it started at 8:30 a.m. when I collected my final pay from the finance office at Camp Pendleton and walked into a business/technical  journalism class at 1:30 the same afternoon. And guess what, most of my instructors were themselves vets.

I rankle whenever I hear some neoconservative tell me "no entitlement program has ever paid off."

"Excuse me, my learned political scientist," I fire back."Let me tell you about the GI Bill, It generated over 40 trillion dollars over its life and helped create multiple generations of entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and even venture capitalists. Don't believe me look into the backgrounds of the founders or principles of firms like Draper Fisher Jurvetson or Kleiner Perkins, Caufield and Byers.

You shouldn't  be surprised to find that more than a few of those people wore a uniform and went to school on the G.I Bill.  It's this understanding that made me wonder what's up at Stanford, particularly since of the firms mentioned above is so closely associated with the school and has a principle someone who wore Army green while working in a sensitive position  at NATO's headquarters in Belgium.