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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."
It's not enough for Airgo to just double the data rate. Other companies are doing that.
:)
Fortunately, that's not all they're doing! As the article states, they're also greatly increasing the range and reliability as well... and they're not going to stop at just double the data rate, either
I have had the honor of working with these folks, both briefly as a consultant for Airgo and with their previous work at Clarity Wireless/Cisco. They know what they are doing, and if anyone can innovate in an otherwise full and competitive market, they can!
Proving Engineers are better at Math then English....
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,.... X
What happened to half the alphabet?
This is getting silly - consumers aren't even close to adopting 802.11a and b in serious numbers.
It's more important to have consistent standards that work and that everbody understands than to get additional speed that few people will need.
I suspect Airgo will have a tough time of it. 802.11b is really, really cheap and fairly ubiquitous. g is backward-compatible, and no consumer broadband connection can take advantage.
I suspect that the killer app for a standard faster than 802.11g will be a wifi DVR content server, and I don't think you'll see those rolled out in any significant way until Hollywood decides how they're going to keep earning money in an age when any 14 year old can steal their IP with little difficulty. I'd say 2-3 years at the earliest for a clear successor to g to emerge.
how do they propose doing that with power limits already heavily regulated ? omni directional hi-gain antennas are incredibly difficult beasts especially when you get past 1 wavelength (as apposed to 1/4, 5/8th etc) sure they could go the yagi route but then its directional torch like beams which don't really help for walkabouts
Then we move onto the interference aspect, power levels and emitted radiation are heavily regulated for a reason (fire,medics,military,rds,taxis,radio,ham,tv) who pay heavy fees to use the band, will the FCC/DTI come down hard on this or relax the regs?, there is also tremendous scope for abuse if thats the case (think starbuks paid wifi jamming/overiding mr nice citizens free community wifi)
what about differing countries regulations of airwaves frequencies (some countries the band that wifi is on is regulated and licensed (military/satellite)) is there a worldwide agreement that wifi bands are unlicensed ?
this rush into wireless has plenty of legal complications (just like CB/walkie talkies) (ie: Italy can have 1000 watt+ cb's while the UK can only have 4W) all this talk of standards just seems a bit premature, anyone clear this up for us ?
In 3 square miles north of my house, I've nailed 384 access points. 35 of them had WEP enabled. The rest... SSID "linksys" or "default".
It gets scarey when you find that ratio in a commercial / shopping district... and there's nothing you can do, because if you warn people why they shouldn't use their credit cards there, you go to jail.