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."

Comments

None of the above

[SuperKendall]

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.

802.16 is not wifi, not 802.11 at all

[Anonymous Coward]

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.