IEEE Standards Board Passes 802.16a

papason writes "Welcome the birth of the IEEE's first wireless MAN standard for broadband wireless access in bands ranging from 2GHz to 11GHz. Yes, the same group that brought you 802.11b has brought you a real broadband wireless access standard. See wirelessman.org for more details."

Comments

Why must MAN always come before WOMAN?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will that wireless WOMAN standard come out?

Re:Why must MAN always come before WOMAN?

[eah]

...Not enough foreplay, usually.

Great, now only if my ISP cared.

[Kethinov]

I use a wireless ISP at home as it is my only form of broadband. From my perspective, wireless is great! I've loved it since day one. It kicks the crap out of satellite.. I can actually play games now with a decent ping!

But the problem is, my ISP is cheap. 100% stingy. All of the some 200 people who use this little local service are shoved onto a single IP. Yep. My IP is used by 200 people. That's so much fun when some stupid kid using my internet service gets everyone IP banned from some service.

Furthermore, when some fool decides to put his entire hard drive out for grabs on Kazaa, everyone on the network suffers. Our service is subject to frequent bottlenecks and complete downages regularly .

My ISP hasn't given a crap about the standards for years and I don't see that changing anytime soon. :(

Re:Great, now only if my ISP cared.

[Kethinov]

Has your ISP ever heard of traffic shaping?

*Hangs head* My ISP uses MS DOS on their servers. They also claim to be incapable of capping user's bandwidth. Leave. Why pay them for shitty service?

It's either this, dialup, or satellite. I play games, so low ping is a priority. Since dialup is bad pings and satellite is even worse, I'm stuck with what I'm on.

Re:Great, now only if my ISP cared.

[Tripster]

Why not offer to help them out, a small 200 seat ISP probably isn't making a whole lotta moola but if it improves YOUR speed that's all that matters :)

I'd start with a nice Linux box at the front end to handle gateway, firewall and transparent squid duties, you won't need to get overly fancy, especially if you skip the cache (although it would really be in their best interests).

For a couple G in hardware you could likely save them 25% in bandwidth at the proxy, plus you could use iptables etc. for traffic shaping, throttle using iptables or squid, etc.

I've done it, I've installed 2 headend gateways for small cable/wireless ISPs here in BC, works like a dream and it does save about 25% at the proxy. Mind you, they also have the luxury of being able to throttle users at the cable modem, so they only offer 384/128 service residentially but it beats dialup, although they also own the only dialup service in town too.

Re:Great, now only if my ISP cared.

[Oculus Habent]

All home customers are on a private IP space, business customers get live IPs. Not that it helps much of anything. Come 4pm, my 300k line slows down to 56k or worse. But there's very little else available in rural Maine.

Re:Another 802.16 Article

[Strike]

No, here it is: http://www.commsdesign.com/story/OEG20030130S0055 Maybe I'll click HTML instead of Plain old text next time.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

IEEE Standards Board Passes 802.16a

[Amsterdam Vallon]

... gets two-hundred bucks, and moves onto 802.16b ...

We have enough fucking standards....

[Anonymous Coward]

..how about affordable and easily obtainable access at the lesser standards we've had for years!

um.. Typo?

[Derg]

From the site:NEW! IEEE 802.16a approved as IEEE standard on 29 January 2002! [emphasis mine]

I do so hope that is a typo.. or this isnt really news... on the assumption that this is new, and that is supposed to be 2003, what does this mean for mobile users? I assume, due to the higher frequencies used that all new antennae are needed, but at what sort of cost?

Re:Wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume so. 802.11 (both a and b, I think) was originally intended for wireless connectivity in smaller areas. However, due to the increasing demand for wireless coverage on a wider scale, we're seeing this standard get perverted and hacked on to accomplish this. A standard created for this purpose alone would help quite a bit.

Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

We DON'T need no stinkin standards!

What is the speed?

[ruiner13]

All I can find in that article is them beating to death that it uses a wider frequency band than the existing standards (which is a good thing as the other wireless connectivity standards i feel will saturate the frequency bands quickly). I may have missed it in the artice (and I apologize if i did), but have they released bandwidth figures yet?

Re:What is the speed?

[Max Romantschuk]

This PDF indicates data reates between 6-54 Mbps. Apparently 27 might be the goal to start with, if I'm reading the figures right (Halfway on page 2).

Putting my money where my mouth is...

[wiresquire]

I've got $40 per month that says this never comes to anything ;-)

Sexism out the wazoo

[jonman_d]

wireless MAN standard

How sexist! Haven't they heard about politically correct computing?!?

Can anyone find the speed??

[CyberBill]

I saw it said "T1 or greater", so thats 1.5Mbit, and there was some other stuff saying up to 2Mbit. So, if thats all it can handle then that sucks. Sure, greater area is awesome, but we need something extremely fast and extremely directional in a more residential market so we can get a free wireless backbone that can have hot spots on the ends. I see a day where we no longer have ISPs, we are just all connected to each other in a huge mesh.

w00t, man... w00t.

-Bill

Re:Can anyone find the speed??

[fateswarm]

Excellent comment that last one. "all connected to each other in a huge mesh". And the fun part is, most people are convinced that "tree structures" are the only solution for vast networks like the internet, when the truth is a true mesh, not just "I'm connected to you and you are connected to my uncle" but "I'm connected both to you and my uncle" could work really really, nicely and with less downtime. I, too wait for that day.

Re:Can anyone find the speed??

[LS]

The mesh idea is a wonderful concept and something I hope for in the future, but has a number of problems yet to be solved:

* A way to guarantee high quality of service from one side of the globe to another, or even one US state to another.

Who is going to lay down the pipes across the ocean and across the desert? And even if some benevolent souls on the edges of civilization decide to donate long distance pipes, will they be large enough to handle all that multiplexed traffic?

* Manufacturers of Internet equipment and standards committees working together towards this goal.

Decentralization could potentially kill off markets, so what incentive do manufacturers have for designing protocols and building equipment for distributed routing?

* Technological barriers

How would this be implemented? I'm sure there has probably been research done on distributed routing and name lookup services, but will it work at a large scale? And would it be reliable?

* Adoption

With cable, DSL, and wireless, you give someone some money, and all of a sudden you have a connection. With a distributed system, you would need to coordinate with your neighbors, since you can't rely on a company to keep things running. A possible solution would be that companies could be highered to organize and setup a neighborhood network, and then be hands off after that, except for maintanence and upgrades.

Anyway, I hope that the work is done to make this feasible, and that people could be convinced to join a distributed network and get off the "feed".

LS

compared to 802.11g

[goombah99]

So all I know is what steve jobs tells me. And jobs said at mac world that the A standard was dead beacuse it was not backward compatible and G was backward compatible with B (and just as speedy as A). Apparently MS and the INtel gang are going with A (e.g. the smart screens use it). So can anyone explain this to me. What is the merit of A over G. Also do A or G do anything to address weak WEP security?

Re:compared to 802.11g

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't 802.11a, this is 802.16a. 802.11 standards are for wireless LANs, 802.16 standards are for wireless MANs. And just in case you don't know, a LAN is a "local area network," and a MAN is a "metro area network."

I doubt Apple will use this standard much, but I imagine your phone company and/or cable company will bitch to high heaven to keep this out of your home.

Re:compared to 802.11g

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two significant differences between 802.11a and 802.11g.

1. Backward compatiblity with 802.11b.

802.11g understands 802.11b, and is capable of sharing the air with it in a cleaner fashion. This theoretically results in fewer collisions, and therefore faster throughput for all involved.
The more useful part of 802.11g understanding 802.11b is that it is very easy (and pretty much standard) to build your 802.11g radio to step down to 802.11b if that's the only thing around. This means that you should be able to use your new 802.11g card with existing wireless layouts.
802.11a does not understand 802.11b -- they mutually consider each other to be interference. This theoretically results in more collisions than 802.11g when used around 802.11b stations.

2. Number of channels. Channels are essentially the sub-bands the radio spectrum gets chopped up into, and traffic on different channels is not supposed to interefere with each other.
802.11g and 802.11b both have very few channels available (3 or 4, depending on who you talk to). The home user doesn't really care, but for someone trying to lay out a grid of receiving radios to provide maximum area coverage, this limitation can be a challenge.
802.11a provides 8 channels (once again, there is some dispute plus or minus one), and hence is preferable when laying out large spreads.

Opinion: 802.11g is a good thing for consumers with small private wireless networks. 802.11a is a good thing for large companies with large networks.

Re:compared to 802.11g

[afidel]

All major manufacturers that I am aware of have a tri-band 802.11a/b/g chip/system in the works. Because 802.11a and 802.11g both use the same encoding scheme a lot of the core logic can be shared between the two, now add backward logic for 802.11b and you have a complete package. You need two phys and two antenna systems (though they will usually use the same antenna substrate for space) and thats about it. As for security that too is in the works, I believe the 802.11x comitee is working on WEP2. Besides there are a variety of solutions on the market that are already secure. For instance Cisco uses dynamic user authentication through RADIUS to dynamically give out keys to each user and the keys change on a user specified interval (make the interval small enough and cracking the keys goes back to cracking a 128bit key, most difficult), this is an oversimplification of the system but enough to get the point across.

Re:compared to 802.11g

[druzicka]

What is the merit of A over G.

802.11a runs in licensed band. So you don't have to worry about your cordless phone, microwave or garage door opener stepping on your wireless LAN.

Also do A or G do anything to address weak WEP security?

802.11i will improve encryption.

Define Broadband

[Cyno01]

broadband wireless access in bands ranging from 2GHz to 11GHz.

What do they mean by broadband? High throughput of data, or is this UWB(ulta wideband)and uses a broad range of the RF spectrum?

security

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that it is 60% more of a homeland security threat?

Re:Traffic Shaping anyone?

[hageshii]

Furthermore, when some fool decides to put his entire hard drive out for grabs on Kazaa, everyone on the network suffers. Our service is subject to frequent bottlenecks and complete downages regularly.

Has your ISP ever heard of traffic shaping? Give top priority to SSH-like stuff, then web-browsing, then ftp, etc. etc. etc., then finally P2P. I run a Gnutella node that constantly uploads at +20KB/sec with no slowdown on web-browsing, etc.

The Speed

[Arcticfox24]

According to this site, the speed of "IEEE 801.16.1 is intended to support individual channel data rates of from 2M to 155M bit/sec."

Re:What about Apple's 802 standard

[afidel]

802.nnx are by definition standards (IEEE standards to be exact) and therefore Apple could not come out with their own. Apple is AFAIK going to use 802.11g which occupies the same spectrum as 802.11b (2.4Ghz) but uses a much more advanced and efficient encoding scheme OFDM vs DSSS so it has a max line speed of 54Mbps vs 11Mbps for 802.11b. The encoding is the same used for 802.11a uses in the 5Ghz range so other than needing two antenna and phy systems a lot of the core logic can be shared, that is why most manufacturers are targeting tri-mode 802.11a/b/g devices for the second half of this year. It will allow universal wireless connectivity no matter what the AP is speaking.

Re:summary of what exactly 802.16a will do anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what this is....this is an espresso machine. No, no wait. It's a snow cone maker. Is it a water heater?

What about security?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, we don't want a Wide Open Metro Open Network (WOMAN) screwing everything up for us! ;)

IEEE 802.16 spec could disrupt wireless landscape

[Anonymous Coward]

What Intel is saying:
IEEE 802.16 spec could disrupt wireless landscape

What the heck?

[phr2]

How are all those bits going to fit in the air? What will the transmitter power requirements be?

I seriously doubt if this is going to use unlicensed spectrum like 802.11. You just can't move that amount of data over that much distance with those little 15 milliwatt(?) transmitters that 802.11 uses. And you can't have thousands of the things active in a city at the same time without clobbering each other.

So expect yet more monopolies given to whichever corporate greedheads have the best political connections, just like in radio and TV broadcasting. Sigh.

some info

[itzdandy]

subscribers send and recieve at speeds of 2Mbit to 155Mbit / second.
bands between 10-66Ghz with mesh topology capabilities, also recently amended for a 2-11Ghz band range as well.

support for QoS in devices, and also support for traffic shaping to improve web browsing experience while higher band protocals are being used.

--

basically, 802.16a is capable of 155Mbit ul/dl speeds in a zone, and use of directional antenea and focused areas allow degree zones to be set up allowing 155MBit/sec in as little as 2degree arc from antenea or better with better equipment. you could conceivably cover a circular area with ~27900MBit/sec agregate bandwidth.

--

please note that this info is from grouper.ieee.org and put into my own unorganized words, please read the docs for more precise info.

woman?

[Maskirovka]

Just to clear a few things up...
Should our latest acronym WMAN (Wireless Metropolitan Area Network) be pronounced 'woman'? So if someone asks me about my administration experiance, should I brag about how many women I've designed, configured, upgraded, and troubleshot over the years? Sounds like grounds for a certification in network pimping.

Yikes

[LongJohnStewartMill]

Be careful who you're with before blurting this out:

"I just spent the weekend at a MAN Party, and I'm exhausted. I just got my pictures developed. Want to see them? Seriously, you should come next time."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re:Wireless

[c.emmertfoster]

No, only adherence to standards and a widespread adoption of such hardware will increase the quality and speed of the wireless internet.

Internet Explorer still has a market majority of browsers and has for years jizzed in the face of standards. People to lazy and companies to complacent too bitch have for years accepted this. As another example, BETA videotapes were a "standard" for about five minutes.

Standards are meaningless unless implemented properly and widely accepted by a consumer base.

802.16a MAC presentation

[cedneve]

Here you go:
http://www.ieee802.org/16/docs/01/80216-01_58 r1.pd f

About the speed, they state (page 20) that with a 28Mhz frequency range, you can put up to 132 Mbps of data. Of course, it also depends on the distance from the base station.

Not sure this is what is in their IEEE approved draft but I suppose it hasn't changed.

I'm no expert but I like it. If a manufacturer would quickly get some products out, it would be awesome. We can choose the frequency, the frequency range and provide wireless at speeds way beyond 802.11a/g.

A Good Overview

[-tji]

On the IEEE page there is a good overview document (zipped PDF).

It covers the basics, such as:
Bandwidth: Up to 134Mbps
Hub Radius: A few kilometers
Line of sight propogation

¥ Compared to a Wireless LAN:
--Multimedia QoS, not only contention-based
--Many more users Many more users
--Much higher data rates Much higher data rates
--Much longer Much longer distances

802.16 MAC: Overview
¥ Point-to-Multipoint Point-to-Multipoint
¥ Metropolitan Area Network Metropolitan Area Network
¥ Connection-oriented Connection-oriented
¥ Supports difficult user environments Supports difficult user environments
--High bandwidth, hundreds of users per channel
--Continuous and burst traffic
--Very efficient use of spectrum
¥ Protocol-Independent core (ATM, IP, Ethernet, ) ¥ Balances between stability of Balances between stability of contentionless contentionless and
efficiency of contention-based operation
¥ Flexible QoS offerings Flexible QoS offerings
--CBR, CBR, rt rt-VBR, -VBR, nrt nrt-VBR, BE, with granularity within classes
¥ Supports multiple 802.16

Re:Wireless

[CityZen]

So that's one small step for MAN... ?

I would not use .11a

[lingqi]

Not that 54M / 72M is not cool, but what's up with the 5GHz band? It might be that these guys did not realize there are countries out there that does not have an ISM band at 5GHz?

2.4GHz is about as universal as you can get as far as ISM band is concerned - but you still run into trouble. In the US, say, 2.400-2.465 or somesuch is the ISM band. In Japan it is 2.450-2.900 (or 2.83, I can't remember).

That's not a lot of overlap people! That's exactly why I am staying away from D-Link cards right now - only goes up 2.465GHz, which means that I have to operate out of a 15MHz band when I am in Japan. Considering that 2.400-2.450 is used by the military last I checked, I have no intention of jumping this border.

Similarly, .11a is completely out of question - 5GHz is not even an ISM band in japan, along with a slew of other countries. When they get this mess worked out, I will consider it - but that does not seem to be anytime soon.

Re:What about Apple's 802 standard

[Tokerat]

Apple no longer "creates" standards, it simply implements them, it may possibly improve apon them if it is possible to give back to the open source community. This means cheaper, more compatable products at Apple quality levels. All off Apple's previous "standards" (Mac video adapter, ADB, etc) where all proprietary to the Macintosh.

• FireWire = Sony iLINK = IEEE 1392
• AirPort = IEEE P802.11's "b" standard
• AirPort Extreme = IEEE P802.11's "g" standard

For more info, IEEE's working group on these standards can be found here.

On another note, this gets me thinking... what are they going to call the 802.16a-based AirPort? AirPort Double Extreme? SpacePort? it aught to be interesting to see what marketing comes up with for this one...

Already there

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the BROADband part