Here's an issue I want more attention paid to, framing a wireless network so that it fits the geographic space used by its owner.

This is literally putting a square peg in a round hole.

Most of the antennas on Wi-Fi base stations are omnidirectional. (I found this image on a parenting Web site but it seemed to fit today's theme.) That is, they radiate in all directions. Their service footprint is mostly circular, except where the signal has to go through walls. (Radio waves don't go through walls as easily as they go through air.)

When your house has lots of walls, the simple way to get the signal to go into all your rooms is to turn up the radio, as 2Wire does. The trouble is that once your network signal reaches an outside wall, it's going to run as far as it can through the air. Your network is a radio station and your neighbors will not only be able to hear it if it's turned up loud, they will probably be able to use it. (If you secure your network so they can't, you're essentially taking away their access to the spectrum. You've cranked up a rap station and they can't listen to their symphony.)

Directional antennas can aim a radio signal in one direction or another. Netopia uses directional antennas to claim coverage of a three-story house from a single base station. But, with a low-powered radio, it may still not reach all your rooms.

The solution is to forget about trying to cover everything with a single base station.

Instead, I would suggest you have a main station and small repeater stations in corners of the house. The repeater stations would have directional antennas, aimed toward the base. And the radios need to be cognitive, that is, they need to turn the power up or down on command.

Remember, as those old-timers who've driven across country with an AM radio will tell you. Waves travel further at night, when there's less traffic in the spectrum. A cognitive base station should turn itself down at night, and turn itself up during the day when a directional repeater is trying to reach it.

What we'll have, then, is a wireless network architecture that adjusts itself to fit the space where it's being used. It means your network is unlikely to interfere with your neighbor's network, so the spectrum can be re-used more efficiently.

Can it be done at popular prices? With standard base stations now selling at around $150, and Moore's Law still in effect, I think the answer to that is obvious.