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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."
Google has this article, too. No reg required.
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!
More standards! Now it makes even less sense to me and my good old cat5 cable which persistently fail to provide me with 100mbit/sec speed!
Hate me!
I just bought a wireless g router. I always get screwed. Like when they came out with the Metro after I just bought a Pinto.
...as well as a number of highroller venture capitalist groups..."
But what of the venture communists? Equal time, that is what I say. Venture capitalism is man exploiting man, and communism is the same but reversed.
MIMO, which 'relies on taking advantage of huge amounts of computing power to send numbers of signals from closely spaced antennas'
If they're close enough, you can run an ethernet cable between the two, that's even cheaper.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This has to be the single dirtiest-sounding technology I've come across yet. I like it!
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.
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...
Personal Website
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 17 -- Airgo Networks, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up, plans on Monday to introduce an alternative to the popular Wi-Fi wireless data standard for connecting to the Internet, capable of doubling Wi-Fi's already high speed and extending its range. Airgo's technology is just one example, industry executives said, of the continued emergence of new companies, undercutting recent fears that wireless technology innovation is slowing and is in danger of being dominated by a few large established concerns. "Just as the revolution starts to happen, some people are saying that it's over," said Craig Mathias, president of the Farpoint Group, a industry consulting firm in Ashland, Mass. "Clearly, we are in the early days of wireless data." Airgo's technology, known as multiple-in, multiple-out, or MIMO, relies on taking advantage of huge amounts of computing power to send numbers of signals from closely spaced antennas. By doing so, Airgo is able to squeeze in and out more data than conventional wireless data arrangements. But Airgo faces a big challenge in winning broad support for an approach that is not compatible with the existing Wi-Fi standards. The company said it hopes to create markets by seeking out consumer wireless equipment companies serving local area networks, hoping that in a hotly contested marketplace, a higher-speed, greater-range option will soon prove advantageous, even if it is not compatible with existing software. On Monday, Airgo will announce a chip set that extends the speed at which data can be delivered to a computer by wireless radio signal, to as much as 108 megabits a second. Current Wi-Fi standards are capable of data speeds ranging from 11 to 54 megabits a second. The company says the signal can be sent farther as well -- from two to six times as far as current Wi-Fi technology, which typically reaches only about 100 to 150 feet from a transmitter connected to the Internet. "We've created a new currency that is better range and better performance," Airgo's chief executive, Greg Raleigh, said. The industry is working to define a new generation of Wi-Fi that could take data rates to 200 megabits or even higher, and Mr. Raleigh said Airgo would propose its technology for the standard. In addition to computer communications applications, Mr. Raleigh said he expects new consumer uses for very high speed wireless, like data connections for HDTV television sets and other home appliances. Michael Kleeman, chief technology officer of Cometa Networks of San Francisco, which is installing Wi-Fi access points nationally, said: "People are beginning to realize that it is important to focus on the radio frequency side of the equation. Now, people are paying attention to antennas." Airgo's MIMO technology was pioneered at Stanford University, Bell Laboratories and other research centers. It is an example of the shift to what are known as smart antennas, an approach that is being widely adopted in the wireless networking world. Other companies are also striving to develop antenna technologies to improve wireless data service. These include Vivato, a wireless technology company that is using antennas to direct beams, and the leading chip maker Intel, which has acquired the intellectual property of another Silicon Valley MIMO company, IoSpan Wireless. Airgo, whose founders started and then sold Clarity Wireless to Cisco Systems in 1998, has so far raised a total of $52 million in venture capital from OVP Venture Partners, Sevin Rosen Funds, Nokia Venture Partners and Accel Partners.
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
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
Last time this happened, I'd just installed BSD when Bell Labs announced their work on Plan 9. Boy, was I left in the dust on that one!
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
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.
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.
Do you know what's soo great about standards?
There's SOOOO many to choose from !
(POOO! TANG!) Thank you thank you. I'll be here all night.
From the website... Full support for 802.11b/a/g standards and additional standards allows for an unprecedented level of backwards compatibility and performance at all data rates. Seems to me it is. Anyone know for sure?
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
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
According to this Infoworld article, Airgo Networks is working on enhancing 802.11a. This is not a new version of 802.11.
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
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 ?
Don't say 802.11x when you mean 802.11*. 802.11x is a wireless security standard. As far as I can tell, this article has nothing to do with 802.11x. I see this error a lot.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
MIMO uses multiple antennas spaced more than half a wavelength apart on both transmitter and receiver. By doing so the signal recevied at each antenna experiences independent multipath fading. By using this information it is possible to send an independent data stream to each antenna on the same channel, i.e N antennas = N-times the datarate.
This is all done by linear algebra and matrix inversions which is probably the origin of the "taking advantage of huge amounts of computing power" claims in the articel. For more info check out this paper
What a fool I was to frivolously piss away that $200 on an Airport 802.11b hub, which runs at almost 10 times by DSL connection speed, a mere year ago! If only I had waited! Sure, it would mean I have had nothing for all of last year, and nothing for all of this year, and nothing for quite some time to come, but at least I would have had the promise of a much broader pipe to connect to the tiny trickle of data coming through my broadband connection... if and when it arrives, without having frittered away all that money on an industry-standard wireless network that will only be useful for another 10 years or so.
Oh, woe! The crying shame of it all!!!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you're getting the extra distance and speed from the special MIMO antenna set, why would you want to replace it with a pringles can? Or, if you're going to use a pringles can, why are you buying the more expensive tech?
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.
Let's compare apples to apples here.
802.11g: 54Mbps theoretical, 25 Mbps actual
USR: 100Mbps theoretical, ? Mbps actual
I'm more interested in the Atheros turbo mode which claims 90 Mbps actual throughput.