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WiFi, Light Bulbs, And The FCC
JFMulder writes "According to Cringely, 802.11 WiFi wireless networking is going to get in lot of troubles when Fushion Lightning starts marketting low-power light blubs which causes interferences with Wifi signals. Read about it at I, Cringely. Supposedly the new kind of light bulb is a real electricity saver and can wreck havoc to wireless networks in a half a mile radius. So what would you prefer? Wireless networks or low cost light bulbs all around the country to save more and more on electricity?" Update: 06/13 03:52 GMT by M : Cringely confused the FHSS-or-DSSS 802.11 standard with the DSSS-only 802.11b standard, but the general warning about the potential for interference is certainly troubling.
This was posted -- what, two or three weeks ago? Come on guys!
The old story even had a poster who mentioned that he'd used the lighting technology Cringley mentioned, and it's nowhere NEAR primetime, so it won't be causing probs for several years, if ever.
Light or WiFi? Light or WiFi?! Aaah, can't...choose...*head explodes*
Actually, I already have a few energy efficient lights around, and I don't really use WiFi, sooo... guess it doesn't apply to me.
Danish != nationality
Until the geeks of the world learn to curb their appetites for lower power and roaming Internet, we are going to see these clashes.
Unfortunately, it's likely we'll see the death of one or the other before the geeks ever learn to use what they are provided in moderation.
I have been pwned because my
Why can't the world just grab a clue and use LED's instead... MUCH cheaper, MUCH tougher and MUCH better.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
While I agree that energy conservation is an important factor, consumption from light bulbs has to be balanced with all the rest of the devices in a home. What about TVs, or washer/dryers, or dishwashers? Or all of the industrial consumers? All those consume far more energy than regular residential light bulbs. Heck, we already have fluorescent bulbs for those who want to save. These light bulbs sound like a feel-good measure for those interested in saving the environment. Save the exchange of information FIRST.
Well the answer appears very simple to me.
If these lightbulbs are emitting RF in the 2.4GHz spectrum then when will some smart-assed entrepreneur come up with the dual-function lightbulb/WiFi node?
Half the guts is already there -- the transmitter.
If every household and business had these bulbs, think of the massive 802.11 network we could build!
Each bulb could become a node in a new, better, "brighter" Internet.
Okay so I'm kidding!
Of course if that doesn't work -- why can't they just use some sheilding on these bulbs? A very thin (transparent) metal-film conductive coating (of the type they use on LCDs) should do the trick quite nicely and at minimal cost.
could do without the lights and just rely on the glow from their monitor?
:)
12% of slashdot judging from the current poll: Preciousss, the sunsss hurtssss.....
802.11xx are doomed anyway, as long as the frequencies can be used without regulation. Yes, wlan shrinks cells automatically and delivers less when there is more users and traffic, and yes, you can "just" add network elements. However, when it really becomes a success story, it is doomed. WLAN with it's uncontrolled frequencies just will not work in very tightly populated areas if a significant percent of people begins to use them. And we don't even need any assisted interference to achieve the congestion.
the 2.4ghz band is a mess. cordless phones, video transmitters (X.10!), 802.11, and Bluetooth all share that band of frequencies. Granted, this is what was pretty well inevitable with the FCC unrestricting the 2.4ghz band.
now there are technologies they never thought of, like interference from this light. I seriously have a problem with any of these 2.4ghz products: i'm not even guaranteed that my video transmitter will work with my phone without interfering.
i'll wait until Ultra Wide Band products become available. 3.1ghz phones are just around the corner. then watch us roll into GPS territory. maybe we should just switch back to carrier pigeons (:
Perhaps it's because I've never used a wireless network in my life for computing, but I'd much rather have low cost lightbulbs myself.
Low cost lighting benefits everyone, rather than the relative few who can and will access wireless networks. I can see the power in wireless, but since most people will never take advantage of this, and you can be environment-friendly in the process, I say go for efficient lighting. As Cringley briefly mentions and then forgets for the rest of the article, it will decrease energy usage and reliance on oil, which will really benefit everyone.
This whole "war on terror" would not likely be happening without our (the US's) incredible appetite for oil. Anything we can do to curb this will be beneficial, and that to me is far more important than being able to get sports scores and news headlines on my Visor.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I want to be able to moderate stories down. And I want karma values for the bozos editing this stuff.
Maybe it's just me, but this is a no brainer. Sure, I'm writing this from the shitter thanks to my 802.11b network. Sure, I like using my laptop anywhere near my apartment. But if these lights are the real deal--prime time or not--I'll gladly move to an 802.11a network if/when they're widely used. Light bulbs waste a tremendous amount of energy nationwide, and if these bulbs can help reduce that, then great! We can only abuse the earth so long. We can wait until after we drop a deuce to check email, or can upgrade to 802.11a if we really can't.
Of course, widespread adoption of the new lights is a huge concern. Look at how energy efficient compact flourecent lights are, and how relatively few are actually used.
Anyone know exactly how much power these lights are supposed to give off? If these are supposed to save power better than current technologies(e.g. florecent) they need to put out 12W. But the claim is that it interfers with 2.4GHz so how much power is going out in that band if the whole thing is only using 12W? It seems unreasonable that 12W falling off at 1/r^2(okay I assume a sphereical bulb) would have enough power to interfer with WiFi .5miles away. So does anyone know the power output(or usage) of these lights and exactly what intensity a WiFi will pick up?
Many people don't realize just how much power light bulbs consume. To borrow some statistics (source): 25% of US energy consumption and 10% of the average residential energy bill comes from lighting. Light bulbs are horribly inefficient - 90% of the electricity they suck up is wasted as heat. So from an infrastructure standpoint, a cheap energy-efficient bulb can make a huge economic and environmental difference.
Dude, do not tie you panties in a knot. 400 people around you will need to shove their wi-fi up your ass and wrap you in tin foil for you to absorb all that energy. Not that it is entirely impossible, it's for you to tell, but for most of us - highly unlikely usage pattern.
Some data HERE
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i don't have links but i thought someone else set up networking based on the flickering of neon bulbs... maybe a fusion light bulb network would run faster than the 802.11 it is destroying? and at 1/2 mile link a pop they might be cost effective... a few bulbs in every building!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
The EMC directive: you're allowed to radiate gibberish, brain-dead stupidity, pornography etc. but NOT NOISE
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I want Wireless Light Bulbs OR Light-Up Wireless rays. Either will fit into my plans of world dumbnation!
Watch out! A technology that is 5 years away will probably seriously impact a standard that, although in heavy use today, will be superceded in a couple of years.
Now they not only tell us what vaporware is coming, but what other vaporware might impact it!
Someone call the Police and file a WGAS Report.
PS. If there was even a choice to be made it would be for the Lights. Reduction in power consumption is good for everyone but Oil companies and Opec.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. -Samuel Johns
I find it incredibly hard to believe that one of these low power lights can radiate so much field strength in the 2.4 GHz band that it will knock out wireless networks for a half mile.
These lights are governed by the same standards as WiFi networks with regard to field strength. Namely, FCC Part 15.
These light fixtures would likely be considered "incidental radiators" by FCC Part 15.
An incidental radiator must use "good engineering" practices and must not cause harmful interference to radio services.
It seems to me that wiping out a half mile of wireless networks is harmful.
Just for sake of argument, let's bump these lights up a notch to "unintentional radiators," which means they generate radio energy internally for whatever use but do not by design radiate it into space. In this category, they are limited to 500 microvolts per meter of radiated field strength as measured at 3 meters distance.
This is exactly the same field strength limitation placed on intentional radiators in the 2.4 GHz band.
This means that these lights may only produce as much radio energy as a WiFi base station/client card with a unity gain antenna.
The FCC has also classically ruled against unintentional radiators which cause interference with intentional radiators due to their excessive field strength, regardless of whether they meet the requirements of Part 15 or not.
The FCC normally requests that unintentional radiator manufacturers show good faith by being far below the legal limits permitted in Part 15.
I'm not even going to go into the fact that WiFi is a spread-spectrum system and is very immune to traditional forms of interference. Unless these are spread-spectrum, intentionally radiating low power lights, I don't think we've got much to worry about.
Also, whomever thinks the FCC just doesn't care what goes on in the unlicensed portions of the spectrum is wrong. They certainly don't chase down every Part 15 violation, but they do randomly sample finished products from a variety of manufacturers to determine their compliance.
The manufacturer gets into trouble if these things don't meet Part 15 requirements, so these lights will simply never get off the ground if they interfere as much as it has been said they do.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
Are you the guy pirating my WiFi signal? /. for free huh? costs me at least $15/month at home, 'free' at work though. $15/month means I have roomates not some ultra cheap broadband access.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I have a MUCH better question that Lightbulbs vs. WiFI:
What would you prefer? The WB Network or WiFi+Lightbulbs?
Why are the "people" shoved into this tiny band where they have to fight against microwave ovens and friggin lighting systems while bottom of the trash heap networks are given the rest of the spectrum FOR FREE to put crap on the air that provides no value and nobody watches anyway? Shouldn't those airwaves go to something good and useful, and actually help promote society?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Each of those little light bulbs should come with an RJ-45 socket.
Regards, Ralph.
Not all of us can reload evry 10 minutes all throught the day. Nor can we all spend hours digging through the archives to find what we may have missed. While I do agree that posting the same story two or even three times in a single day is a clear sign of lazy editing, having a potentially important story (and having my WiFi decimated is pretty serious in my world) repeated every so often lets those who missed it the first time hear about it.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
yeah but the real question is do you like my sig?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Please read the article before you guys get all "the story sucks" -- XM radio uses this frequency band as well;
WiFi i can't care less -- 802.11a is already making headways, by the time any kind of remotely user base of the light bulbs are established, i would have (as i assume a large portion of the rest of y'all) moved onto 5.8Ghz; or drop the speed down to 2Mbps; -- DSL is only 1.5 anyway -- and if i was really gonna move that much file -- i would just pull a cable temporarily or start the transfer and get some coffee -- either way i do not see it being a big problem for WiFi.
on the other hand, i don't see the feasibility of XM radios getting an upgrade... so if these bulbs do get popular, it means XM would work everywhere except the cities. ha!
so if they are really that troublesome, we will be seeing the company getting squashed in no time; there are too much $$ at stake for XM;
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Wind is cheaper than nuclear, actually. But best case, wind can't supply more than maybe 50% of current needs, and it has other problems. Solar looks like the up and coming thing, expect to see prices fall below nuclear over the coming decade. It too has problems though, and so nuclear is still a good idea. If nothing else, nuclear power plants work even during calm, overcast days. :-) But it's too expensive to supply all our power, and unlike wind and solar, doesn't look to be getting cheaper.
Also, with breeder reactors, you're not going to run out of fuel, ever (more or less).
You're right that nuclear waste storage is more or less a non-issue though. Just stick is somewhere. Yeah, it'll leak. But so what? We've got plenty of room (note for the geographically impaired: this isn't sarcasm).
How much oil and gas do people consume getting to and from work?
Wireless networks will further allow people to telecommute, reducing dependancy on oil. Sure, right now, most people are a few meters away from the access point, but creative people are building long-range networks using these things, within the boundaries of the current laws, using well-engineered antennas and low-power transmitters.
Look at those super-efficient flourescent bulbs that have been available for years. People just don't use them, probably because they cost more than the super-cheap incandescants that most people are used to.
On a personal level, I've spent a couple hundred dollars building my wireless network at home. Am I supposed to just toss that equipment into a landfill because my neighbor wants to save a few cents and feel that he is being 'green'?
What about the regulations that the FCC has on RF noise-emitting devices - don't they apply, even though the spectrum is free?
-- My Weblog.
Hehehe :) well, maybe you have to just submit your piece of code for the challenge to get the chance. :)
btw, thanks for the comment, I changed the phrasing of the rules now. Glad I did it before you submitted your entry
(I cycle to work myself, but only use flourescents in the summer, when I start to notice that the halogens are making it warmer in my place. Awful things, those...)
About the server, yes, I am one of those 'uptime' boasters - (294 days - Woohoo.) but I specifically chose a machine with pretty low power consumption, plus, where I live, the power comes from nuclear, not oil or coal.
Still, if my neighbor's porch light starts to interfere with my por^H^H^H downloading, I'm going to buy an air rifle...
-- My Weblog.
You probably can't do *your* work from home, but if you are my neighbor using these lights, you may be denying me the ability to telecommute.
I still think that if you introduce a technology that uses a shared public resource such as public bandwidth, you have a responsibility to not trash the resource for others. (Kind of like not organizing a football game in an area of a park where people happen to be having picnics.) Sure, it may be legal, but it's rude.
I'd guess also, that if your neighbors *do* get 'wired' in the next few years, the best way would be using this technology. Wireless NICs will be incredibly cheap in the next few years, while retrofitting apartment buildings with LAN cable will never be.
Do you think these bulbs would be allowed if they interfered at all with television signals, no matter how well they conserve energy? Doubtful.
-- My Weblog.
Light dimmers using varacs have been around for a long time, and they generate huge amounts of RFI--as an SWLer I hate them with a passion. Does anyone know whether the hash they emit extends up into the band used for WiFi?
Since the bulb is not even on the market yet, what is to stop the company from improving the design at the last minute? And where did the author of the article get this information to begin with? It seems kind of shaky.
Well, I actually think that this 'bulb' is already on the market for at least 10 years.
It is very common in Europe to replace normal light bulbs with low power bulbs based on fluorescent TL.
Those 'bulbs' use 8 times less energy than normal bulbs and a ten times longer life time.
Only disadvantage is, that can interfere with wireless equipment.
But I never had any problems with WiFi.
We need at least two frequencies dedicated to public TCP/IP over wireless. One in the high bandwidth, medium-low distance NLOS range (such as 2.4 Ghz), and one in the low bandwidth, long distance NLOS range (such as 154.6 Mhz).
So what do you want? Unlimited cheap personal freedom of press and perfect universal news retreival or an alternate light bulb? I see fine at night right now, thank you, but I have to pay $65/month for cable. It would be just fine for the FCC to let these folks blot out the 2.4 GHz band, so long as they give the rest of the specturm back to the people.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The total cost per kWh (counting upfront capital costs) has been dropping for years, and has now come within a hair of hitting the cost of fossil fuels (for wind). Solar is more expensive, but advances already in the pipeline should bring it to less than nuclear within ten years.
There is indeed resistance to building wind turbines. But in case you've been asleep since the 70's, there's a little resistance to building nuclear power plants too (we haven't built a nuclear power plant since Three Mile Island). And while they kill birds, it's is (and would be, even with a massive increase in generation) a handful. Plate glass windows kill 97 million birds in the US alone (and cars kill another 50 million), whereas wind turbines in the US kill 70,000. That means it'd take a 1000-fold increase before the two are even comparable.
Also, comparing the output of a single wind turbine to a single nuclear power plant is stupid. The question is, how many kWh of production capacity does a given dollar buy you when spent on Nuclear versus Wind? And the answer is, Wind, because the turbines are dirt cheap (compared to a nuclear power plant!).
As for solar panels, they do stop producing when it's cloudy and dark (much like wind turbines stop on calm days). There are two solutions. Large storage batteries, and nuclear plants to help keep them topped up during dark, overcast, calm periods.
Your figure for solar power density isn't completly correct. That's appears to be an average figure, but solar power density depends on your latitude, and ranges from 250 to 100 betweeen the equator and the poles. That means it would only take a square 500km on a side to supply the entire Earth's energy needs if built on the equator. Of course, shipping power from the equator isn't a great idea, but the US's power needs could be met several times over by coverering half of Texas in panels. :-)
That solution isn't cheaper than nuclear (not at the moment), but solar panels have been halving in price every decade since their inception, and it looks like this will continue to around 2030 (at least). Around 2010, both wind and solar will be cheaper than nuclear, and by some estimates wind will cheaper than fossil. And don't forget, fossil fuel generation can't really get any more efficient due to the laws of thermodynamics. The only way fossil fuel generated energy prices are going is up.
It's perfectly legal for these lights the "wreck" havoc all over your WiFi networks because the spectrum was set aside for industrial use long before anyone thought about WiFi. Part of the agreement the 802.11b people made with the FCC was that if some application came up in the future that interfered with 802.11b, they would just have to deal with it. I read all this on some site that was linked to from a /. article a few weeks ago. I forget where. Search in the archive for "fusion lighting" or "microwave lighting" or something. Long story short, WiFi was betting that no one would come up with an interfering device, and they did, so WiFi is screwed.
on a related note, where the hell did this WiFi acronym come from and why does it stand for Wireless Fidelity? My dad mentioned was reading a news paper and he says "Son have you heard of this WiFi or Wireless Fidelety?" and i laughed in his face and made fun of him for getting suckerd by an ignorant news reporter who was just assuming what WiFi stood for (HiFi means High Fidelity, so WiFi must mean Wireless Fidelity) The logic seemed assinine to me at the time, even though I didn't know what the Fi stood for. Turns out _I_ was the rube. Does anyone have any idea what Fidelity has to do with computer networking? Isn't fidelity sort of implied when you're dealing with digital transmission? Am I getting too worked up over a stupid marketing ploy?
One wreaks havoc, not wrecks havoc.
Are basic english skills too much to ask for? And I'm not whining about people who speak English as a second language. I'm talking about the english-is-my-first-language-but-i'm-too-fucking-i ncompetent-to-speak/write-it-correctly crowd.
pooptruck
Well, it's not just Slashdot. I've run across "wreck havoc" at least five time in the past two weeks on other sites.
Can you tell me what dimmer to use to get rid of the hum on my new light fixture with a magnetic transformer? The lighting expert at Home Depot didn't know (but he did ask if I wanted fries with it).