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Future of Wi-Fi
An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek looks at the The high hurdles facing Wi-Fi. Sure it's got promise but if overcrowded spectrum isn't destined to crimp its growth, it'll need better technology and regulatory help from the FCC."
So I'm sitting here in my living room on my laptop, using my wireless connection....and what comes up on slashdot but a story about wi-fi.
Wi-Fi is awesome. Decent speeds, things are coming down in price...the only thing to really worry about is the security (which I'm not personally all that concerned about...at least not for my personal network).
What i can't wait for is transparent worldwide wireless connections at decent speeds. and what excites me is that its looking like that might be moving closer to reality than science fiction. mmmm....wireless
I think this article reads too much into current Wi-Fi. All these people say that this and this needs to be done for Wi-Fi for it to grow, but it is growing at a furious pace already.
I think they overestimate what the current Wi-Fi is for. It is so limited, than market demand will certainly open up new avenues for wireless networking. This is how the tech industry is. Don't expect to be buying the same ol' 802.11b technology that you use today in three years - it won't happen. We always have new stuff.
That's what I hate about articles like this - they always state all the things wrong with a technology that we already know about, and they forget that when the demand rises for high-scalability and secure networks, then something will come to the rescue. If we can't get more bandwidth from the FCC, then they will have to figure out someway to get more out of the bandwidth.
I use Wi-Fi for what it is made for TODAY: medium to small networks where security is not paramount and mobility is.
And I, for one, will watch the great economy work and create new solutions as people are willing and needing to buy them.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I will probably get beaten down for this, but it seems to me that integrating encryption directly into the media is probably not the right approach for this. There _are_ systems that do work rather well. Let's take, for instance, a system like they have in hotels, where you have to log into a web page before you are even routed. Combine this with the simple rule of "never put your wireless net behind your main firewall" and you can sleep a little better at night.
Design a system that has protections beyond something built into the media. The medias function is _not_ to provide security, but rather to communicate.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
I recently drove to ohio from the minneapolis, long drive, with me and several of my friends, well, I brought my laptop and a fairly decent sized antena (omni 8) when we got near a city, it'd connect and i'd check my email every few hours, and have maybe 10-20 minutes of uninterupped internet access. from the hotel, i could use an access point either in the hotel, or from the business acrossed the street (the business had a bigger pipe) and the same scenario on the way home... This is a step closer to uninteruppted access, however the spectrum is fairly clogged, and you get a lot of interference, and many people like me who want free net access. After these bugs are worked out, the only thing we have to worry about is me watching divx while driving... "Oh I love this par...*screech ka-boom*"
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
In the article, if I understood it correctly, they talk about dynamically allocate frequencies so everyone can have a piece when needed.
I can imagine it's kind of like multithreading but with air waves, every one would get it's slice once in while.
My question thereof is this. How does one calculates bandwith available over a given frequency?
Because maybe I don't understand some concept (that's why I asked the question), but as I understand it, you can put as much information onto an "airwaves" as you like, no?
From what I remember an airwave as a sinusoidal look, from what I also recall, you can separate this in as many piece as you like, down to infinit.
So let's say we have a curve which "start" at -10, go up to +10 and way back...
If we separate into "units" of ones, we would have 5 places to put bits into +1(1) or -1(0), +2(1) or -2(0) etc etc. My only void is to how to specify if the bit is actually there or not... And the higher the frequency, the fastest it would come in.
I'm really not into this kind of theory, but this is interesting, could someone explain me how it works?
I'd rather be sailing...
1) Are you being serious? Remove the ethernet /card/ if you think removing an ethernet /cable/ is going to do you any good. /not/ do something?
2) Are you saying that you intend to have your wireless network set up so insecurely that anyone with a WiFi card can access it? That brings up two points:
*) Dont worry about your kids, watch out for your neighbhors. They'll be riding your connection faster than you can know
*) Just dont give your kids a WiFi card if you dont want them to access the wireless 'net. How hard is that? To
In short, I no longer wonder about shittily-raised kids. Please dont spread your genes any further... Of course we already know why the stupid people keep having kids..
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
As a indoor wireless LAN of limited range, WiFi works fine, but its use outdoors while economical for the early adaptors will eventually destroy its utility.
Remember Citizens Band Radio in the 1970s? CBs are limited power transceivers (4 watts) that operate over a limited number of channels. As more users used CB the utility and value of the system plummeted as the distances you could talk got shorter and the noise level on all the channels became unbearable.
WiFi as implemented in current hardware availab e is headed down the same path particularly if neighborhood mesh networks are constructed in large numbers.
All systems that have limited resources and very low barriers of participation entry eventually self-destruct.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
This isn't a contest between the evil corporate overlords, their minions at the FCC, and the freedom loving 802.11 users. Lots of people use the radio spectrum, for business, government, military, public safety, research and personal uses. One of the roles of the FCC is to coordinate and allocate the RF spectrum to the many competing uses in the public interest. The RF spectrum is a shared resource. That means that you can't expect the FCC to give you big chunks of unshared spectrum just because you want them.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat