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WiMax Landscape Taking Shape
geekee writes "A front page article in EETimes describes some of the goals, as well as some of the issues, involved in WiMax (802.16a) development. The main goal is to deliver 74Mb/s up to 50 km. One big issue is the tighter specs required when compared with WiFi. "It's a big train wreck, and much more complicated than 802.11a design, especially in terms of dynamic range, spectral range and phase noise in RF," said Colin Howlett, a senior RF engineer at VCom Inc. There are at least 4 known companies working on the RF portion and 4 known companies working on the baseband processing. These companies include Intel, Fujitsu, and Maxim. Another issue is in getting governments to agree on regulation standards for the systems, particularly in the 2.5, 3.5, and 5.8 GHz bands, Inconsistancies exist in the requirements for dynamic frequency selection and transmit power control, as well as spectrum allocation. Cost is also an important factor, since WiMax is positioning itself as an alternative to DSL and Cable, and therefore, companies must be able to offer competitve prices to gain market share."
I could see using this for a backbone to get the signal out to fringe areas, but for the last-mile to the consumer, 802.11b(g) is more than sufficient. When they start making noise about "replacement for DSL" - well...does enough bandwidth _exist_ that it makes sense to have 50Mb/second to your house? If the internet ever gets _that_ bloated that you need that fat of a pipe, it's time to turn off the computers and go outside.
lets just hope the gear can handle that kind of bandwidth, my netgear access point says 54mbit/s, but i only get 10mbit/s sustained bandwidth. quite frankly i think they're cheating their customers putting a bandwidth label on the box when it doesnt even reach one third of it. The D-Link AP we got later wasn't much better either, only 10mbit again. I have doubts if we will see that kind of bandwidth.
No, 802.11 anything is not sufficient. Unless using specialized antennas at both ends, 802.11 would not even be adequate from the utility pole to the house in many circumstances. Anyone who has any experience with wireless ethernet knows that the range is never as good as it's hyped up to be, especially through walls and such.
I am feeling fat and sassy
I wouldn't have to worry about minutes
How do you know they wont charge per minute or per kilobyte?
Cells will get cheaper, and more unlimited plans will show up, because the infrastructure is there and practically paid for, they need only make up maintanaince costs..
Think how much it cost to use a cell phone in the 80s for a guesstimate at your WiMax service bill.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
and 2006 to have the key mobility and roaming capabilities? If it's enough of a deal-breaker that large and small businesses are keeping their proprietary plans in play, then perhaps it's good reason to do the extra work and get (at least some of) it in now.
I wouldnt do that quite yet, especially for internal LAN use.
Network cables offer some sense of security, you cant look at the data on a network cable without physically hooking up to the cable. If you secure your cable, you secure your communication.
For wireless, you cant very well secure the sky, so it is a lot less secure.
Obviously there is encryption, but moving from wired to wireless gives the spy just one less thing to worry about.
It really doesn't matter to much in a home network, I suppose, but it's just something to think about.
What is the FCC doing wrong in terms of allocations?
Almost any consumer device you can think of exists at 900MHz, 2.4gHz, or 5.8gHz, and I don't see any stuck on the drawing board devices waiting for more bandwidth to be available. The rest of the frequencies are of course going to be devided up by the highest bidders, there's a finite quanity that has to be split up otherwise a tragedy of the commons would occur.
RF users need to spend their time looking for better ways to use the bandwidth they already have access to rather than just waiting for the FCC to issue more...
From the article:
.11 into notebook computers some day.
Backers hope WiMAX could be used as a replacement for T1 lines for business, become a backhaul for 802.11 hotspots, provide Internet access for consumers and get integrated along with
Well, your theory makes a lot more sense, but it looks like it disagrees with the article; I'm just curious, where did you get your information?
Well, say goodbye to any form of high definition content streaming to your home over IP then. Seriously, why do people even assert that more bandwidth is somehow unnecessary. There are all kinds of scenarios that exist today that can't be handled because bandwidth is such a limiting factor.
Bigger, faster, better is done in the name of progress. No one says you can't take a break from fast-paced technology by going for a hike in the woods. Hell, you can give it up entirely and live there for all I care. Just don't go around asserting that things are fine the way they are and nothing should change, it only makes you look ignorant.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Going up to 30 miles with up to 74Mb/s is not exactly the same this as going 30 miles at 74Mb/s. Even if it achieves this goal (doubtful in my book without a massive power increase), it is almost irrelevant to any purposeful application. Think about it: 8VSB, used to broadcast digital television over-the-air in the US, and a very robust scheme at that, goes about 30 miles or so but at vastly lower data rates (about 19Mb/s payload). Now, let's talk WiMax: 3X data rate jump? What's the client transmitter look like? 30-40dB gain client-side antennas? Site aquisition costs? If rural areas can't afford local TV transmitters (it's what gave rise to cable TV systems in the first place) what on earth makes everyone think that WiMax transmitters will dot the surface of the earth? And I rather doubt this is laptop stuff.
Backhaul? Telecom's are awash with capacity and cable networks too. Anyone that tries to undercut them will have to a have a mighty economical technology.
Thousands of homes? 70Mb/s? Who would hook up thousands of users to a 100TX network? And then talk about the potential for video? And throughput is 1/2 or 1/3. Ridiculous.
As for Wi-Fi range, get a clue, please. Given enough power, antenna gain and sensitivity at both sides, 802.11 could reach 'to infinity and beyond.' Except, of course, for the interframe spacing requirements of 802.11. Any link that is longer than about a mile and a half (2km) cannot ACK within specification (processing latency impacts this generalization) simply for the propagation delay of the radio transmission. Any links that are longer than that are not truly compliant with the spec. (They generally depend on an ambiguity in the spec that in practice permits delays of up to 5X that with DCS-limited MACs, or 3X that with PCS MACs). After that, you are simply testing how closely the particular MAC adheres to the ACK and DIFS/SIFS specifications. To go fartherdistances, simply modify the MAC specification and add the appropriate antenna gain (and height). But beware, throughput will suffer (simply because you now have to wait longer before giving up on a faded channel).
As frequency increases, the more difficult it is to get a terrestrial link working, for a number of reasons. Path length also complicates things, exponentially. This is why TV stations always endeavor to attain, by any means possible, to have the lowest available frequency assignments. So does everyone else who remotely knows anything about radio.
Moreover, having IT people set up wireless networking is like having a person set up and run mission-critical servers because he has twenty years experience as a ham radio operator. It's nonsense. Now, beyond any reasonable doubt, 802.11 has been dumbed way down and people still get it wrong (even basic things like polarity and near-field obstructions). WiMax will absolutley fail if it becomes an "enterprise networking" technology.
It shouldn't be "WiMax", but rather, "Why, Max?" WiMax: the latest VC pump-and-dump deal.