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802.16 WiMax Wireless Broadband on the Horizon
"The IEEE 802.16e spec, which will support mobile applications, is expected to be complete by early 2005. Nextel, Sprint and BellSouth are all interested in the technology to deploy services like streaming video and TV, wireless phones, and high-speed Internet service in unserved, low-density areas near high-density ones. Mobile operators in developing countries like Brazil's NEOTEC group have already successfully tested an 802.16 wireless broadband deployment. Intel communications group executive VP and GM, Sean Maloney, is banking on it. From the article: 'We believe that WiMax can happen, and be widely deployed, and be a big deal in the next three years the same way Wi-Fi has been a big deal the last two years.' Mirrors at Network World Fusion, Techworld and PCWorld. What happens when techies start to build their own 802.16x WiMax VoIP systems?"
0.05 better than 802.11!
From the sound of it, this new spec appears to deliver far too much bandwidth to really make it cost-effective for the average consumer. IMO this is best for fixed-wireless installations where installing cabling is too cost-prohibitive - especially if the range of the radio tech used in this spec is decent enough.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
great, even more pain !
But I can't realy see how this is gonna work? Usually, higher bandwith means higher frequency. Higher frequemcy means less range, since the waves is easilier interupted by obstacles, like trees. and so on. Someone care to explain this to me?
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
Nextel, Sprint and BellSouth are all interested in the technology
Great...just what's needed from a phone provider: more wireless technology that they can provide terrible reception with.
that's bound to make more than a few people sterile.
50 _kilometer_ range? wow. that's more than enough to connect 2 people in nearby cities.
this should be pretty sweet for rural networking. i foresee a flood of long range domestic and roaming wireless plans coming up circa 2005.
I wonder if it becomes actually viable ... The power consumption might reduce the actual advantages for a laptop/mobile system ?. The battery is thing still dragging mobile computing , it's still 1970's space-age technology. But maybe methanol fuel cells will come up by 2005 end ?
[http://wiki.dotgnu.org/DotGNUPeople/gopz]
The point-to-multipoint 802.16d standard, with a 50-kilometre range
Omnidirectional antenna-equipped routers will double as handy microwave ovens.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Last I heard the first company developing/testing 100mbit wireless was Toshiba. I heard this on The Register, but I can't seem to find the link.
Does this have anything to do with them? Have they had any input/association with this? Have there been any copyright issues or anything?
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The last digit of pi is four.
My largest concern regarding this is the frequencies are they going to mess it up again with hair brained auctions (Cell phone's) or make it so restrictive that even my microwave will buzz my connection (802.11). I fear for how the FCC will dream up this freq. distribution.
Don't worry, I doubt this technology will ever see the light of day... or if it does, it will remain cost-prohibitive for regular consumers.
;)
Too many people have way too much to loose if this becomes the standard like 802.11 has. In any urban or suburban areas, image how many Wifi hotspots there are within 50km... or even 25km.
Cell providers and ISP's are going to fight this every step of the way because of the competition this could pose... with the right hardware. How long before we see 802.14 VoIP handsets sold on thinkgeek?
All I see anywhere is 'hundreds of megabits per second' but i haven't seen any actual numbers... anyone know?
There is no real demand for this kind of technology in countries that are already well-cabled with more fibre-optic cable than they can ever use.
We did a project once in Nigeria that depended on semi-reliable Internet connections across the country. The only option for our client was to install VSAT stations, at a cost of $50,000 each not counting operating costs.
With 50km point-to-point range it becomes very possible for operators to build a national IP network with local distribution via WiFi or cable.
This could do for Internet what the GSM has done for telephony in large parts of Africa (i.e. brought modern communications to millions of people who have never been able to get it before).
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The original article alludes to using WiMax in licensed bands such as 2.5 to 2.7 GHz and, while another article suggests the potential for operation in a wide range of bands from 2 to 11 GHz (and early testing in unlicensed frequencies at 5.8 GHz). This suggests that these devices will initially be available in mutually incompatible consumer versions (unlicensed spectrum) and service provider versions (licensed spectrum).
I wonder what this will do for adoption because the volume on the RF components will be fragmented across multiple bands. I also wonder if people will create WiMax variants that interfere with WiFi by operating in the same frequency space.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Go read up on mazwells equations. Mazwell's laws of EM waves will help even your tiny little brain
...
MaZwell's equations uh? I trust you haven't been too busy reading then yourself
As for his famous "laws of EM waves", it might be something to do with tinfoil and clever pointy hat folding.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
that's bound to make more than a few people sterile.
You're saying that as if that's some sort of problem?
please refrain from posting.
. htm
Spectral efficiency measures the ability of a wireless system to deliver information within a given amount of radio spectrum and is directly related to system capacity. It determines the amount of radio spectrum required to provide a given service (e.g., 10 kbps voice service, 100 kbps data service) and the number of base stations required to deliver that service to end users. In the latter years of deployment, when subscriber penetration is high, it becomes one of the primary determinants of system economics.
Spectral Efficiency = Channel Throughput/Channel Bandwidth
Spectral efficiency is measured in units of bits/second/Hertz/cell (b/s/Hz/cell). It determines the total throughput each base station (cell or sector) can support in a network in a given amount of spectrum.
Copied from: http://www.arraycomm.com/pcct/spectral_efficiency
There's a million places I could point you to. So to say that capacity and frequency are not related is simply wrong, if not ignorant. The same definition stands for all wireless communications schemes, regardless of whether they use cells or not. All operators, whether it's Telephony or Networking deploy their networks and offer services based on spectral efficiency and power needed to achieve that efficiency. Nothing else. Bit rates, Frequency and all the rest of it are just byproducts...
/. Where the truth
Given that, so far, only 802.11b is truly Open Source capable, can we hope that this one will be ?
As so many (supposedly) Open Source coders have been ready to wave their legs in the air and sign NDAs to do drivers for various supposedly OS-Oses I won't hold my breath.
Don't know which ones? If they aren't 802.11b just try to see the hardware specs they used to write the driver. The code is NOT open if you can't publish the specs.
I do hope that WiMax features more robust encryption than does WiFi with WEP. Something tells me that service providers are not going to be too concerned with interception of their customer's packets (only theft of bandwidth). And even if WiMax is "secure," I'm sure that it will include a nice backdoor for government counter-freedom operations.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Imagine the benefits of allowing wifi card makers to boost the power of their transmiters. It would make the microwave oven obsolete too. An entire dinner could be cooked while it sits on the dinner table, oe for that matter, before it even leaves the grocery store. Cows could be cooked while they stand in the fields. Also, no need for water purification plants, since all rivers and lakes would be under a constant boil. And, best yet, no need for artificial heat in your house during those cold winter months, since you'd be warmed from within!
Consumers would get too much for their money for 802.16 to be cost effective? How does that work against us? Besides, the wide range means the bandwidth per user will be relatively small. In NYC, the rollout bandwidth of 155Mbps in 50Km would offer 8bps average to each of its 20M covered potential users.
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make install -not war
The eye is the only part of the human body which does not have a natural cooling mechanism.
During WWII, radar techs in Britain would frequently step outside in front of their radars to take the chill off the foggy, rainy british weather.
Oddly enough, many are today suffering from a form of blindness much akin to hard-boiling an egg. The proteins change from clear to white... (similar to cataracts, except the whole viscous substance in the eye) Also, cataracts too is much more common.
Strange coincidence, that.
oh my!
This sounds expensive.
This sounds only like a service provider tool from a big building to a lot of locations with the downstread demarc connecting to service provider equipment with ethernet out or long haul out to remote locations. I can see this probably will be a tool for telcos or big companies/governments in the 3rd world or other locations in the US. I can see this used to feed bandwidth into more rural areas where high capacity fiber won't be pushed and then the big boys can push DSL while waiting to sell bandwidth do their smaller competitorsIf you've got pockets with money and can pay alot to use a big building's roof ala TowerStream. But you still need your bandwidth from somewhere.
Wow, the future is the past. Microwave for broadband like AT&T Long Lines. Now it looks like selling those towers off was like Polaroid selling off anything digital.
I work with the NYC City Council, and we're studying wireless "broadband" deployment. NYC has 20M people inside a 50Km radius - that's 8bps per person on a 155Mbps 802.16a segment. And the multipath reflections through our concrete canyons would destroy much of that bandwidth. Cranking down the power reduces the multipath, and allows our dense city to scope a segment to a smaller footprint, shared by a manageable number of people. How about attenuating the shape of the field, a la Pringles can, to merely fill the grid of Manhattan streets? External building antennae can hook the WAN signal to LANs, without wasting its power soaking through the concrete. Anyone have a field demo of this topology running? Want to talk to my committee in sunny Manhattan?
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make install -not war
Bullshit. "802.anything" is a joke. I'm no great networking hero, but I know that every single wireless setup I've ever seen runs at less than half its rated capacity - even when the WAP and client are in LOS, less than 10m away from each other.
;) ?
A guy I know recently forked over a lot of $$$ for a "54mbit" setup (wireless cable router and a 54mbit PCI card) - the kit is spaced about 15 metres apart, with only 2 non-load-bearing walls (read partitions) in the way - it runs at about 10mbps.
My own kit is a simple WAP and PCMCIA card - old kit - supposedly 11mbps. Runs at just over 2mbps.
So, I ask you this:
Has anyone here ever actually got the advertised rate from this stuff (or even anything close)? Or am i condemned to watch my streamed divx pr0n at 10fps for eternity
Afterthough: Will they ever actually make 802.xx kit which *actually works as a network card* - ie allowing frame injection using libpcap? Or is my segfault / bsod pain to continue?
Encryption should not be a part of the protocol, it should be separate so it can be updated as technology improves
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
We (consumers) are going to sop up ever bit of bandwidth available. ISPs (which phone companies are already into in a big way) will dish it out, and once we start running short, prices will rise and bandwidth intensive applications like voice will be the first to be sacrificed to the economic demons of supply & demand.
I went down and bought a cheap system, set it up in about 10 minutes, and it works great! Easiest network I ever setup. The bandwidth I get is higher than my cable bandwidth, so no problems in that area, and it works in every room in my house.
Being a standard makes it easy for me to buy components for my handheld, laptop, and desktops while still being cheap. And bonus! My cards are compatible with my company and also most of the coffee shops in the area.
Can you describe a system that works better? That I can buy today? Or would it just be a joke?
Someone predicts that a new standard will be available in 2005, with equipment presumeably following a year after, and it makes headlines on slashdot. In the meantime, hardcore 3G makes it to the United States and nary a peep out of the slashdot editors.
The most exciting telecomm development that I have seen in the last year is Verizon's announcement that they are going to roll out EV-DO in the US. This has already had serious consequences in the cellular industry, with AT&T/Cingular being forced to accelerate merger talks to compete with the offering.
I think the problem is that the slashdot editors are PC geeks who have played around with WLANs and so understand the technology somewhat, but have no clue as to the kind of technology uber-cooolness that goes into making a 3-G system. From a comm-theory standpoint, WiFi is a joke compared to the theoretical and technological miracle that allows you to make a call over a digital cell-phone.
WiFi technologies are simply this: a desperate effort by the traditional "datacomm" companies to grab a piece of the lucrative cell-phone business. WiFi is their lever, and they are trying their best to use it to muscle into the business, by making wild claims and even wilder technological predictions. These datacomm companies do not have the technological knowhow to make real competitors to cell-phone systems, and they have latched on to WiFi as a drowning man to a piece of wood. Maybe when Flarion's product matures, they will have a better story.
While I sympathize with the objectives of the Ciscos, Broadcoms and Intels of the world, I can still see through their rather transparent claims.
Slashdot seems to have bought the WiFi line hook, line and sinker.
Magnus.
I think what WiMax will do is finally make broadband Internet available to most of the USA.
You see, one of the biggest problems with trying to set up broadband in the USA is the sheer size of the country and the fact USA metropolitan areas are so widely spread out, which drastically increases the cost of setting up DSL and cable modem broadband access. With WiMax, you essentially have solved the Last Mile problem of getting broadband access into the home, especially in rural areas. Also, because WiMax works with moving vehicles and trains up to 250 km/h (155 mph), it also means mobile access isn't an issue, too.
From the article in the link
The Next Big Thing For Wireless?
The Next Big Thing For Wireless? WiMax is a lot faster than Wi-Fi and has a bigger range -- but success isn't assured
Everywhere you turn these days, there seems to be a new way to zap data through the ether: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS, 3G. Now comes yet another addition to this alphabet soup, a technology that can blast data seven times faster and up to a thousand times farther than popular Wireless Fidelity, or Wi-Fi, systems. Officially called IEEE 802.16 but marketed under the sexier moniker WiMax, it's bound to be a hot topic this year, thanks to aggressive backing from chip giant Intel (INTC ) and support from equipment makers such as Nokia (NOK ) and Alcatel (ALA ). The first WiMax gear should be on the market by the end of 2004.
Think of it as Wi-Fi on steroids. While Wi-Fi hotspots have a radius of about 100 feet, WiMax uses state-of-the-art microwave radio technology to span distances as great as 30 miles. That means it could be used as an alternative to copper wire and coaxial cable for connecting homes and businesses to the Internet. If it flies, WiMax could reinvigorate competition between dominant telecom and cable companies and rivals using a whole new infrastructure -- not just leasing space on existing networks. "This is the next telecom revolution," says Rudy Leser, vice-president of marketing for Tel Aviv-based Alvarion Ltd. (ALVR ), the leading maker of broadband wireless equipment.
That's just for starters. The real buzz about WiMax is that Intel Corp. is aiming to shrink the technology down to a chip so that it can be built directly into PCs and laptops. Intel did the same thing for Wi-Fi with its Centrino mobile processor line and helped accelerate the Wi-Fi boom. Analysts figure WiMax laptops could show up by 2006, letting people get on the Net wirelessly virtually anywhere. "If you like Wi-Fi, you're going to love Wi-Fi everywhere," says Sean M. Maloney, general manager of the Intel Communications Group. Pyramid Research LLC of Cambridge, Mass., figures that nearly 4 million people will be using such "broadband wireless" technology by 2008. Revenues from broadband wireless services -- mostly based on WiMax -- could top $2.1 billion annually by that time.
If all of this sounds like a marketing pitch from the 1990s bubble, it should. Telecom startups such as Winstar LLC (IDT ) and Teligent Inc. went broke trying to sell similar wireless technology to businesses and homes. But WiMax has a big cost advantage. The boom-era startups used proprietary equipment that cost as much as $1,200 for every customer site -- three times as much as early WiMax products are expected to. Thanks to standardization, prices should plunge even further in the future, to less than $200 for the gear that sits at the customer's site. Then, when WiMax migrates into laptops, the cost to buy into it will edge toward zero.
Still, success is hardly assured. The biggest question is whether even gung-ho techies need another technology to tap the Net. Wired broadband is widely available in homes and businesses in the U.S., Western Europe, and parts of Asia. The rapidly spreading Wi-Fi provides speedy Web links on the go. And wireless companies are rolling out ever-faster ways for their customers to tap the Net. On Jan. 8, for instance, U.S. giant Verizon Communications I
I think the difference is that you rarely set up your own cell phone network.
Once again we are confronted with the hype for a new all singing all dancing wireless broadband standard which operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. The data rates are theoretically possible with no interference from Microwave Ovens, cordless phones 802.11x.
With commercially available equipment from Cisco you can already build a reliable 25Km link which requires that the antennas be mounted at the 150' level due to the curvature of the earth.
So the advertised range figures are possible but only in environments such as the Serengeti with the transmitters mounted on 500' towers. In this environment this could bring true internet backbones to the third world. Remeber up to 1996 or so the transcontinental links were only DS3 (44Mb/Sec)
Since when have the marketdroids ever allowed someting like the laws of physics to interfere with their hype since they will try and tell you a single tower located in a valley will serve all the communities around it which happen to be on the other side of the range of hills surrounding the valley with the predictable results (Sigh...)
People can stop trying to hack 802.11[abg] into a long range protocol. I've have potential clients ask me for long range wireless solutions and basically had to tell them that it can be done with 802.11[abg] but it's hacky, unsupported, and I can't do it (being a software guy and neither an infrastructure nor soldering guy).
-no broken link
I've got five moderator points this morning and there is exactly one post in here I'd mod up - the guy who suggested that people not post if they don't know anything, but he already has a +5.
There is a link in my sig to my journal and there you'll find a brief description of how 802.11 (wireless lan) and 802.16 (wireless access) differ.
50km == 30 miles. I've installed 2400MHz and 5800MHz links on the same 22 mile path and I've done a bunch of other 20 +/- 2 mile shots using 5800MHz.
At 22 miles with 19dB dishes on each end we saw analog modem speeds with 2400MHz (802.11b) equipment. Using 29dB 2' Andrew dishes and 100mw 5800MHz radios we saw a solid 5+ mbits on a radio that maxed out at 8 mbits.
I've planned a 40km 45 mbit shot for a project that didn't go through - I think we had a 4' dish on the remote tower and a 6' dish on the skyscraper end of the link.
Whatever band and modulation method they're using in these breathy 802.16 announcements the physics aren't going to be much different than what I describe above - long shots are point to point, cells are small (3km - 4km) if you want to go fast, and I mentally say "snake oil" when I hear the letters O-F-D-M. It works, but it ain't "all that", as they say.
So, mod me wise, or mod me troll, but know this: The slashdot collective has as much business talking about wireless networking as any room full of male gynecologists and cross dressers has talking about childbirth.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Wow you won't even need a "sniffer." You'll be able to smell that from the next city.
Last time I checked, Verizon/BellSouth/etc weren't making 3G network cards and access points for deliverable in-building networking. Nor are they making bridges for short building-to-building links.
I have exactly the opposite opinion of the wireless tech that you do. I could give a shit less about 3G. It's useless to me, as I don't travel much, and have no need for it.
3G still does nothing for the stated purpose of this equipment, which seems to be long range high bandwidth wireless links to provide data service where there currently is none. 3G still needs WIRED towers, which have a decidedly limited range and even more limited throughput as distance increases.
Each application has its' place. I see no hook line and sinker, as there have been a plethora of 3G articles here over the years.
Concatenating/daisy-chaining radio links, while elegant sounding, is not the best approach. Daisy-chaining RS232 devices showed that it's suboptimal, and wire is much more predictable than radio. Especially since it will add latencies of random amounts and weird throughput profiles (which is, I suspect, some of the causes of the delays in product introductions). In the end, it's about bandwidth per user, not range.
As for spectral density, the more data you cram into a fixed amount of bandwidth, the more linearity/more fidelity you need. The highest spectral efficiency is format analogue, which should give some insight on the fragility/sensitivity issue.
Range doesn't mean anything, it's something made up by marketing people. You guys know 802.11b can go 50km right now with off the shelf gear, and a couple of dishes on mountaintops? Does that mean 802.11b has a 50km range too? I can just see all the postings now after people buy .16 gear and complain that they can't connect to their home AP from the next city over.
WiMax base stations cost something like $10,000, while the nodes themselve will be on par with cable modems, NAT routers, etc. You won't see anyone setting up a WiMax antenna on top of his house, though, to provide wireless connectivity for free to thousands.
But that would be cool. I think WiMax is the first real step towards Internet everywhere. 802.11 was just a sampling of what was possible...
Consider the following:
Something like wifi, open frequencies, but long range. Like everyone being able to have a microwave relay with which they could contribute to the bandwidth and routing capabilities of the whole internet. Could this cause something many have talked about and foreseen, an open, peer-style network like the internet, but with even more and smaller players? With signals being routed shortest path over a network which is huge and more interconnected than anything before it? Will the frequency range be open like wifi? The TCP/IP is designed to be easily distributed like this, right? Even if the answers are 'yes', will initial large players try to lock something down that is obviously (to semi-concious networking experts anyway) something that might be almost as free and open as air?
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
Actually, it's 0.05/802.11 = 0.006% of an improvement.
The Ezine Directory
Sure, the range in a perfect vaccum may be 50Km, just like the record set in WA with 802.11b out past 80 miles, using very specific hardware.
Typical range will be far less.
There is an effort to setup one of these networks in my county this year (2004). They expect to need two antennas to cover the entire county. Intel and IBM met with the public and municipal officials last week. So far, no company has offered to be the ISP, but BellSouth, Cox, and Alltel are obvious choices. Initially, service will be offered to businesses, later to residential customers. If the project goes through, Intel says this will be the first site in the United States to be covered.
Official Home Page (only looks right in IE)
Stories from the local paper
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
WiMax clients won't need drivers; you'll just plug the WiMax box into your Ethernet port.
The 5800MHz radios we used were WiLan AWE-120 and they cost about $2k an end so its not something you're going to install just for fun. The AWE-120 is dead and the replacement is more expensive but its hardened for outdoor use and gets its power over ethernet - the installs are a lot cheaper this way.
I believe the antenna was an Andrew P2F - you can look at www.andrew.com for details. I recommened the Tesco catalog if you want info on antenna specs and such but you'll buy from eletro-comm.com. I've used a lot more RadioWaves antennas than Andrew - they're not as tight specs wise but they do a good job for a lot less.
If I can ask, where the heck are you going to do this? If you didn't already know this how did you find yourself in the position of designing a link like that?
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
There's one simple solution to this whole problem... Get rid of built-in encryption entirely. There's no reason to have encryption on the card, it merely ensures that it can't be upgraded when it's cracked, and that it was put together at break-neck speeds, before all the problems could be solved. It's not as if hardware encryption gives you more bandwidth or anything like that, so why use it?
It's simple really... Either use IPv6 (prefered) or IPSec. Everyone can access it. It's got great encryption with numerous, selectable ciphers, and all sorts of other benefits. Far better.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I wonder how such a thing will interfere with existing 802.11 installations; I can't imagine all the traffic generated by Windows machines and their lovely network-abusing protocols (NetBIOS and the like). What happens when the signals from this network overlap with the 802.ll networks (which i'm sure would happen)? is .05Ghz enough signal variance to not cause problems?
(I'm asking because I honestly don't know.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Maybe the enthusiasm for wifi is because, in it, people see a potential way out the hellish grip of the telecom industry. The amazing cellular technology that you describe is used only to give people access to approved content, billed by the minute, megabyte, page, picture, or message.
I think you, and the industry you represent, fears wifi. Currently, it's not suitable for large-scale deployment, but what happens when we get an access point in every house and store, all co-operating in a dynamic, flexible, ad-hoc network that rivals the reliability of the cellular network but without any of the oppressive barriers to entry? That's a dream for now, but the potential is there, and you fear it. What if we create a truly wireless extension of the internet, where all computers are peers, rather than crippled and restricted profit-making machines of the sort that cellular handsets are today?
And while we're at it, you can stop lying about the promise of 3-G. Can you honestly see it as being anything but severely crippled once it hits the masses? You need look no further than the state of voice communication on a modern digital cellular phone: the quality today is *substantially* worse than it was on my analog cell eight years ago.
When it finally dies, no one will miss the cellular industry of which you're so proud. But feel free to fawn over the promise of 3G as delivered by another telecom mega-merger.
Why-Fi.net: Everything WhyFi, Wi-Fi, and WiFi
First of all, the discussion is WiMax not WIFI. If you think that WIFI is a desperate attempt to grab cell phone marketshare, you are truly clueless. WIFI is intended as an Ethernet cable replacement in confined spaces...that's it. Sure people have stretched it to other applications in outdoor environments with marginal success but it wasn't designed for that. WiMax on the other hand is designed from scratch with WWAN in mind.