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Intel Pushes 802.16a Wireless MAN Standard
An anonymous reader writes "The 802.16a standard, approved in January of this year, is a wireless metropolitan area network technology that will connect 802.11 hot spots to the Internet and provide a wireless extension to cable and DSL for last mile broadband access. It provides up to 50-kilometers of range and allows users to get broadband connectivity without needing a direct line of sight with the base station. The wireless broadband technology also provides shared data rates up to 70-Mbit/s."
"What about interference or hacking?"
Security with WiFi is no less secure than hard wired networks. The fact that anyone even suggests this at all is extremely frustrating. Its not unlike the claims made by mainstream reporters claiming that web cookies are a way to spy on you.
Check out the following oscast editorial for more info on the subject: No need to feel insecure about Zeroconf / Rendezvous security - February 27, 2003
It won't be compatible with A/B/G, 16a is a backhaul standard, and you (probably) won't ever have to talk to a 16a radio with your laptop.
The idea is to use this to supply bandwidth to hotspots.
It's 802.16a. All of the three technologies you listed are just for short range networks, not the kind of MAN network that they are addressing with 802.16a.
I think the way it would work is you'd get an 802.16a "modem", just like you get a cable or DSL box right now to connect your network to.
Personally, I find wireless access a choice of last resort - if I can get cable or DSL I'd take that every time over wireless.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Go to wimaxforum for technical info.
On one side the marketing at Intel is pushing for 802.11a, and on the other side, the company offers technology with 802.11b only. What you can get from Intel as far as Wi-Fi in the new line of x86 laptops is an inferior 802.11b. Intel 802.11b chipset is significantly worse than other players like broadcom that even reviewers of ZDNet flag the chip has been mediocre.
And currently, if I want to get a laptop with 802.11a or both 802.11a/b (which makes more sense currently since a is not so popular), I can not buy anything with Intel Mini-PCI chipset in it (Centrino technology, not the banias but the wireless stuff, is 802.11b only).
The new laptops with 802.11a/b all come with the superior Broadcom chip that has been licensed to Philips, IBM, Dell, etc...
It appears that Intel marketing droids are at work on some cool idea, and the engineers are developing something else. Not too uncommon for a company of this size.
Totally different standards. And for a typical long-haul connection both endpoints are staticly configured, so the security protocols like WEP and AES aren't needed at the layer2/1 level. Instead, each endpoint should just run a vpn. Still vulnerable to denial of service due to spoofing, but it's wireless - that's unavoidable. The key is to make it unlikely by limiting its usefulness, and with a vpn running, an attacker can only deny service, never gain free service or snoop the medium for anything useful.
From grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/16/pub/buzz.html
It appears that almost the entire /. crowd today has not even a glimmer of a clue as to what 802.16 is all about sooooo ....
10101 ~ -< ))) "802.16" ((( >- ~ 10101.
I attended a talk today by Roger B. Marks, a member of the IEEE 802.16 standards committee where he described the standard in detail. Many people say just add a pringles can to 802.11 to extend the range, but there are many other issues beyond range. 802.11 and 802.16 are designed for different purposes.
Among other things, Mr. Marks described that 802.11's MAC uses CSMA/CA (carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance). The carrier sense means that it listens (or tries to listen) for other devices broadcasting and only sends when it detects silence since the receiver can only handle one transmission at a time. This is fine for wireless LAN's where for the most part, all of the devices can "hear" each others transmissions and figure out when its ok to send. In an 802.16 MAN (metropolitan area network), the users' devices can't receive each others transmissions so the base station assigns each device a time slot in which to send & receive its data. (For more information on IEEE802.16, see their website: http://WirelessMAN.org.)
Even old 802.11 standard can reach 50km. There is no limitation of distance in the actual protocol. With high gain antenna, line of sight and enough power you can shoot much more. Actually there was a trial in Sweden using metorolagical baloons and they did more than 200km with 802.11b. The main concern is LOS blocking due to curvature of the Earth. If you want to shoot 60km and have one antenna at ground level, you need to have the other one at least 200m high. And this will aplly to 802.16 too.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/