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]

Go to wimaxforum for technical info.

Re:Martin Cooper on WiFi

[robslimo]

To clarify,

And every one of them has got to have backhaul

WiMAX isn't expected to be what you use to hit the 'hotspots' with your notebook. It is expected to feed the hotspots... it *is* the backhaul. Naturally it must have it's own, land-based backhaul, but that's no sweat for guys who'll be rolling this out.

The idea of 'free' zones will largely pass when the people with the money to make wireless internet work finally get the tech and the business model worked out. Yes, I said *business*. Sure, there will be people, organizations and towns who'll foot the bill for small hotspots, but to make it work, to make it ubiquitous such that you *expect* it to work, will be require a commercial model. 802.16a is the first major technological step toward this model's feasibility.

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.

Some acronyms for ya

[cmburns69]

LAN = Local Area Network
WAN = Wide Area Network
MAN = Metropoliton Area Network
WOMAN = Wide Open Metropolitan Area Network, which is what most of those 802.11 networks will be...

An online Starcraft RPG? Only at

Re:Some acronyms for ya

[MarkGriz]

"WOMAN = Wide Open Metropolitan Area Network, which is what most of those 802.11 networks will be..."

Presumably these will be equipped with an 802.11g-spot?

Re:Some acronyms for ya

[swb]

Presumably these will be equipped with an 802.11g-spot?

Yes, except you won't know where to find it, and the equipment will always fake a link light, so even if you think you've found it, you can't be sure.

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

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.

Re:Security!!!

[ackthpt]

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 [sic] to get your stuff. Or steal connection from an ISP? Anyone got any thoughts or know the security specifics?

Right on the heels of this article, I'm more worried about War Cooking... gangs of nerdish thugs driving around cities, looking for open access to my microwave.

07:10 AM Cook for 10 minutes
07:20 AM Done
07:22 AM Cook for 15 minutes
07:37 AM Done
07:48 AM Cook for 5 minutes
07:53 AM Done
08:04 AM Cook for 3 minutes
08:07 AM Done
08:14 AM Cook for 25 minutes
Smoke alarm goes off, firemen arrive, haul smoking carcass of microwave out into street.

Get the Pringles and call the SETI people!

[worst_name_ever]

If a Pringles can is able to extend the range of 802.11 wireless LAN to several km, then a similar application of tubular snack food waveguide technology to this new standard ought to solve the question of "are we alone in the universe" once and for all!

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.

Re:By the time this arrives...

[vought]

...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.

You know, I've been hearing this exact verbiage for four years now, and I don't believe it any more. When I worked at Metricom, Ricochet was the product that was going to be 'killed' by 3G. Luckily for 3G, Metricom's brain-dead, overspendy management and ridiculous pricing model killed the company instead. Curiously, the arrangement Intel seems to be proposing here is strikingly similar to the dual-band microcellular architecture Ricochet used/uses. Microcellular architecture has some unique strengths, as evidenced by the fact that Ricochet was the ONLY way to get data to ground zero in the days immediately following the WTC attacks.

Now the previous poster is saying this uplink and backhaul arrangement will be obviated by 3G. You know what? Show me. Then I'll believe it. Until then, I don't think 3G will ever solve anything for anyone.

3G sounds like great technology. But it isn't shipping, and there are LOTS of caveats. have you ever seen a technology that worked out of the box? 3G is still "months" away, and it probably won't work as advertised when it does ship, if ever. Perhaps 3G should be renamed "Duke Nukem Forever Wireless".

I'm tired of hearing "wait until 3G". Hell, I'm tired of waiting.

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?

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.

wires

[stratjakt]

Plug em in

Wires are the future

When all you wireless guys cancer ridden corpses are long since buried, those of us with wires will be enjoying the fruits of the new millenium.

Ever try to assasinate someone with piano 'air'? No. You need wire.

What people are saying about 802.16

[Dusty]

From grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/16/pub/buzz.html

What People Are Saying about 802.16 This dated list includes an incomplete but nonselective collection of external references. If you have items that you'd like added to the list, notify the Working Group Chair, who compiled it.

Re:This is going to be slow. -- silly proposition

[victim]

Now thats just silly. Correct arithmetic does not make correct conclusion. Oh wait, I just checked in preview, your arithmetic is wrong. PI*r*r... 3.141596*50*50 = 7853sqkm... ~9kbps/sqkm. Maybe you used PI*PI*r*r? Anyway, to continue...

Just like cellular phone cell size, you tailor the coverage area to match the number of subscribers. In an urban area you use small cells, as small as a block or 4, in rural areas crank it up and cover a whole county. (I'm from Missouri, ours fit. Nevadans and Austrailians not so.)

Don't Forget the Maintenance

[Myriad]

Presumably these will be equipped with an 802.11g-spot?

Yes, except you won't know where to find it, and the equipment will always fake a link light, so even if you think you've found it, you can't be sure.

Don't forget that they also tend to be highly unstable, suffer from monthly outages, and require enough regular maintenance that you'll likely have less time to spend fragging with the guys.

Watch out for the frequently required diamond upgrade too!

Blockwars: a real-time multiplayer game similar to Tetris.