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New WiFi Standards, Double the Data?
morkeleb writes "According to the New York Times (free reg. req.), just when you thought it was safe to stock your home or office the 802.11x way, another possibility springs up. From Stanford and Bell Labs comes an approach using MIMO, which 'relies on taking advantage of huge amounts of computing power to send numbers of signals from closely spaced antennas', thereby enhancing range and throughput. Looks like Intel and Nokia are interested in the technology, as well as a number of highroller venture capitalist groups."
The article mentions longer distances "two to six times as far as current tech"
This means 200-900 feet.. Even if you say 500 feet, that would be insane.. Imagine that + a pringle can...
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I don't care! At those rates and ranges, if they can provide equipment at consumer market prices and linux drivers I'll buy their product.
They may be a logical jump for "private" networks still on 802.11b. Skip G all together, which last I knew had little to know Linux support.
Not only faster, but my whole house should be covered. Now w/ 11b, I have dead spots in the far reaches of my not so large house. 100m/b to boot!
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
The new wi-fi "standard" can ben ten times as fast as "b" or "g" and I still wouldn't regret buying my Airport Extreme this year. I've got PCs and Macs and a printer all talking to each other quickly and wirelessly and I didn't have to upgrade a single thing I wasn't ready to upgrade (in terms of money or in terms of time--I can't count how many network cards--wireless and wired--caused system conflicts on my PCs and it took forever to get it working right. I'm not changing anything I don't have to until I have to). I got a performance boost (a more solid signal) without touching the network cards themselves.
Alex.
i think extending the range is the critical bit that would make or break many business plans, compared to the less important higher data speeds .. The leverage that you get from the increased data speeds is not as much as it is in the gains of distance.
2 to six times increased range in radius means, 4 to 36 times in area coverage .. which is big enough to make currently dead plans alive and healthy. If I could get these sort of gains i.e. 4 to 36, in the potential of revenue generation with the same cost of initial deployment, I think the technology will be of very much interest to me ... just need to go back and crunch my numbers again
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
No, it's better to spend a lot of time experimenting with different technologies, and determining the strengths and weaknesses of each, before settling on a single standard that could possibly lock us all in to a mediocre technology for decades to come (see Microsoft, x86 platform, etc.).
WiFi hasn't been around that long. I'm willing to wait several more years before standardization. The last thing I want is for everyone to rush to a standard and pour time, money, and effort into it, when we don't even know what the other options are, yet.
If 802.11* turns out to be pretty stupid compared to some of the newer tech, then won't we all feel dumb after investing thousands in wireless gear, and even dumber that we now have to restrict ourselves to equipment which is backward compatible with a deficient standard. I'm not saying this has happened, but obviously it could.
Be patient and let people experiment with new tech, we'll all come out better for it in the end...