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

Martin Cooper on WiFi

[zeoslap]

Martin Cooper, the inventor of the cell phone had this in a recent interview http://news.com.com/2008-1082-995667.html

"Wi-Fi is wonderful. It is a superb local area network--what it was designed to do--and it does that very well. When you try to make Wi-Fi cover a wide area, it's absolutely the worst way to do it. Think about it. In order to cover a city, you need a million sites; we actually did an analysis of that. And every one of them has got to have backhaul. So it turns out it's neither economical nor practical."

I realise this is WiMax but I wonder what they are doing to move beyond the limitations these guys found.

Re:Martin Cooper on WiFi

[robslimo]

Unfortunately, I see rural areas being below the radar of ISP's for a long time to come. Unless it's government mandated (and 'ratepayer' funded in the utility model) there's just not enough money in it.

No, I think the target is precisely metro areas. Just as cellular telephony started in cities, then expanded to the countryside, the rollout cost of blanket wireless networking must be paid by a large initial audience before it will succeed. The backers seem to think that 802.16a is the solution... it's impractical in terms of infrastructure to feed relatively low coverage, low bandwidth areas by copper or fiber (and associated equipment), so enter WiMAX.

Before you try to draw an analogy to cellular telephony and related data services, recall that the bandwidth requirements of modern cell phones is modest compared to what the public (and me) expect from wireless Internet. Hardwiring every 802.11x hotspot back to the net is too expensive. Hardwiring a *few* 802.16x's (yeah, I bet it don't stop there) the net ain't so bad

Re:Martin Cooper on WiFi

[petecarlson]

Yes, there is a problem getting bandwidth to hotspots.
I run a wireless "hotspot" in Baltimore which serves a two block area. If I were to bump to a T1 I would need about 50 monthly subscribers to cover costs and a small profit. In order to do this I need to expand my range which means I need to set up additional acess points. The problem is that where the acess points need to be is not line of site to my base station so I would have to have a wired conection to each point or have a series of repeaters. This isn't practicle or cost effective.
If I could set up an 802.16 base pushing bandwidth to five or six 802.11b acess points then I could run them all off of one T1 line and put them in locations where they need to be.

Re:Martin Cooper on WiFi

[cnkeller]

I realise this is WiMax but I wonder what they are doing to move beyond the limitations these guys found.

We've been trialing on east coast for most of the last year.

Security!!!

[Slack0ff]

Hey I never got much of a chance to read up on this but with the advertised range what is the security like? Dont tell me its like that pushover excuse for protection known as WEP on 802.11b. My big concern is that with all this range it will be hard to pinpoint where the guy with a card and a laptop is tryign to get your stuff. Or steal connection from an ISP? Anyone got any thoughts or know the security specifics?

Re:Security!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Range for the big boys

[Capt'n Hector]

50 km... so you could get on your home network from the next city over? What about interference or hacking? If you have 1 million people using this standard, each overlapping, wouldn't that create massive headaches? Or, would that 50 km range be only applied by "select" companies that pay cash to the city(s) and maker of the hardware? It has the potential to become a disaster, but if done right... imagine surfing from home connected to work with a T1 line.

How about those WiFi startups?

[robslimo]

You reckon those (possibly overabundant and overfunded) WiFi startups are in on this?

It would be par for the course for a newer technology to lay waste to grand entrepeneurial visions... but since this standard was approved in January, hopefully some of those startups have it 802.16a in their sights.

Miracles from Where?

[LordMyren]

How does 802.16a hope to achieve these lofty goals?

What band does it use? Considering its long distance, the 802.11a 5Ghz range seems a bit out of the question, just too energy hungry. If its 2.4, i cant see how they expect it to compete with every other signal under the sun and still pull off such spectactamundo specs.

Typical transmition power?

Now wouldnt it be nice to have a frequency not in tune with water? So maybe vegitation isnt a big iron curtain between you and your data? Bring that critical LoS step another twenty feet down to earth? Course, thats probably not gonna happen.

By the time this arrives...

[path_man]

...the CDMA carriers (SprintPCS and Verizon) will have 2Mbps 1xEVDO (TRUE 3G networks) up and active. The biggest single limiting factor to creating a wireless infrastructure is that somewhere it has to tie into fibre optics. Wireless carriers, nacent though the technology is today, have this figured out. Some xx,000 wireless radio towers all terminate at a base station connected to real telco networks.

Creating new wireless networks for purposes of roaming inside a metropolitan area seems like a big waste of resources -- especially considering that wireless carriers have already figured this out.

Community Wireless

[composer777]

I wonder if this will be cheap enough to use with community wirless networks, or if we'll be stuck trying to extend the range of 802.11b? I would hate to see the wireless spectrum sold to the highest bidder the way domains were, but it seems that this may in fact happen unless laws are created to protect non-profit community access networks.

We have one such group here in Atlanta called atlantafreenet.org
The project looks fairly promising, and they already have a backbone up, but it requires a line of site. Does anyone have any prices on this equipment? I would hate to see the price of this technology made artificially high or have the bandwidth used up by the highest bidder. Hopefully we'll see communities creating their own free networks out of this.

2Mbps SHARED, max few 100Kbps

[univgeek]

You wanna share 2Mbps,( and pay through your nose), or you wanna share 11Mbps (.11b), 54Mbps(.11a,g) ??

Especially if this is a fixed application, and doesn't need to be truly mobile?

Seems a little fishy to me . . .

[div_2n]

Something doesn't add up to me. You can already go up to 72mi/115.8km with 802.11b in the 2.4 range. I know you don't get that high of data transfer that way but you can get really good transfers easily up to 24mi/38.6km and higher.

The only good I see coming from this will be more non-overlapping channels. But I noticed that some of the frequencies they are talking about are in the licensed bands. I really don't see how they are going to make that affordable unless the FCC opens up some frequencies.

It seems to me that cost effective deployment of such technology might be a good ways away unless I am missing something. If I am, please someone clear things up for me.

Kickass idea.

[Cinematique]

TV is moving off of the VHF band as the eventual HDTV revolution takes place. But what's stopping Acme Wireless from saying, "Hey, only channels 4,6, and 10 are being used in this area. Why don't we add some sort of auto-sensing feature to broadband wireless equiptment and start using parts of VHF today..." and then asking the FCC for help? Then, when the machinery starts hopping packets to other routers that are close to other television markets, it switches to another unused set of frequencies.

I'm just thinking of a solution like that little channel button on 2.4ghz wireless phones.

Technically infeasable?

If it worked, it'd be a hella way to jumpstart nationwide wireless Internet via the VHF band now and not a decade or two from now.

Thoughts?