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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.
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!
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 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...
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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
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!
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
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 ?