Hi Greg,
>>> If you're wondering, there're a whole slew of good reasons why
>>> there needs to be an explicit control for the wireless modem, rather than
>>>just allowing wireless services to control the modem directly when they need
>>it.
 
>>Okay. I am curious what these are. Can you share the information? I would
>>appreciate it.
 
    There were product requirements which I really can't go into, but here are
the main reasons :
    - Ardis is a connectionless network, meaning that services can support
forced delivery (like APM and RadioMail do); obviously this only works if the
radio is on. The disconnect here is that Magic Cap and the PostOffice are
designed to support connection (session) oriented communications : you must
explicitly ask to connect. When your service is done, you can ask to turn the
necessary hardware off; if we did that for RadioMail and APM, we'd lose some of
the 'magic' of wireless in which messages just appear out of thin air.
    - Another big reason is safety; Ardis (and maybe the FCC?) require RF
devices to have a switch to be able to turn them off in special situations like
on airplanes.
    - Since the radio is a huge power hog, it's nice to be able to turn it off
to save your battery. There are new power save protocols in the works which
allow radios to be left on and even viewed as in service by the network even
though they go into a low power mode until some 'agreed upon' time slot (many
paging systems work this way).
 
Hope this helps,
 
Mike M. :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Milikich
Sr. Staff Software Engineer
Motorola Wireless Data Group - Subscriber Division
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