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WiMax: When, Not If
Omega1045 writes "An article over at SiliconValley.com got me excited about the new WiMax Technology that over 140 companies and organizations are pushing. The article is a little low on the technical side of things, but discusses a possible 10-mile range for the wireless technology. Many see this as a nice solution for the "last mile" problem. Similar technologies have seen a lot of hype before, but with the likes of Intel, Dell, British Telecom, AT&T and bunch of the Ma Bells, I think one can be forgiven for getting a little excited. If you are still skeptical, you can download the 'Complete Guide to WiMax.'"
It is amazing what happens when the FCC de-regulates part of the spectrum.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
...but in reality, this is just another stopgap until homes, curbs, etc. have better last-mile wiring capabilities (i.e. from SLIC huts and such).
Wireless remains a shared medium, of generally limited bandwidth...therefore, limited usefulness. This is just because it's a unguided medium. 10 miles sounds nice, but this is going to require specialized equipment because the signal losses between 10 GHz and 66 GHz are pretty significant over any distance, and will probably require line-of-sight as current wireless networks do.
Definitely a hyped up technology, I say.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Well, as seeing that this page is how it is, one would guess not.
Sig
Though I do honestly hope WiMax succeeds, there's absolutely no gaurantee that they will be able to get the consumers to buy these things like hotcakes. Quite franky 802.11b at 11MBit/s is good enough to carry (US anyways) consumer broadband which averages around 1.5Mbit down 384kbit up. Until broadband reaches the speeds where a consumers WiFi link is what's slowing them down, that's when we'll get the upgrades. But in the meantime, unless people suddenly have a real use for the increased speed/distance, I can't see think taking off so quickly.
The thing about this is the power requirements to broadcast must be enormous!
:(
I have a usb wifi from Linksys and it overheats and stops working after about 2 hours of bittorrent.
I'm currently looking for a pocketPc capable of running Skype with good wifi (b is alright) but of course WiMax is theoretically better. If they get this technology right then there will be no more cell phones, ever.
I don't think I'm going to wait for wimax though... Being constantly interupted doesn't sound like my cup of tea so 30ft isn't the end of the world.
Hope WiMax doesn't overheat things though that really sucks.
Also my English teacher (read tree hugger) mentioned that you get a headache when you are in one building since it got a cell antena on top. It is noticeable.
Maybe this isn't the safest technology to base future societies around
When I first heard of the concept of a wireless internet connection, I thought it would be cool to set up a network between my friends. Unfortunately, HAM packet radio required a license, and 802.11 doesn't have enough range. But this finally does.
So you're thinking, "what's the point?" The point is that it would be completely free of government and commercial control. Kind of like Freenet, but with better performance.
But that's not the cool part. The cool part is that with the right hardware and enough people, it could spread beyond my circle of friends and eventually replace the wired internet! It would be what the internet should have been -- completely decentralized and in control of the people.
Now, I realize that WiMax at 10 miles and not that much bandwith won't be completely adequate, but at least it's a start.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
10 Miles isn't anything special. We use normal 802.11b and reach about 10 miles now, we just put a flat panel antenna and a 100mw Cisco 350 / 200mw Engenius bridge / 100 mw Smartbridge bridge at the client location. Simple.
I suspect WiMAX will just cause us interference headaches, although since we can take 802.11b (what, a few hundred feet) adn stretch it to 10 miles, I wonder what we'll be able to do with WiMAX.
that those frequencies HAVE been deregulated, they just aren't unregulated. Deregulation just means that some of the regulations/restrictions have been removed, it doesn't mean there aren't any rules at all.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
If you're a college student or are otherwise bound to a metro area for the vast majority of the time, very inexpensive service can be had. However, the biggest users (business people) need out-of-metro coverage. That's expensive.
My plan is about $45 US, I can talk all I want on weekends, and unless I'm underground or in a thick-walled (or otherwise sheilded) room, I have service.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
For example, just last night on the machine I am typing this on, a dell latitude c840 connected via 802.11b, I thought "I'll copy over the 3 svcd images for man on fire, and watch it later in bed"
start the process abd ooh, 72 minutes to go...
FUCK
plug the RJ45 in and it is done in a couple of minutes.
So the truth?
Wireless is OK for web browsing, email, and maybe copying the odd few megabytes, but everything else on the LAN, including the fileserver which is the whole point of a LAN for many people, is limited to cable modem speeds AT BEST.
This was with only ONE active wireless client using my local AP.
You can't increase the bandwidth (significantly) without increasing the frequency significantly, and you lose loads of range when you do that, so you need to up the power significantly, and that is the achilles heel. POWER.
My missus just bought a new mobile phone, as a proportion of volume it is mainly battery, the only significant power consumer inside is the transmit circuit, it will last days on standby, but a couple of hours of talk time and zap.
Laptops proportionally speaking (this includes PDA's etc) must have a much smaller battery, and they also have a bunch of power hungry internal devices (screen, hard disk, cpu, etc) of which the wireless card is just one.
There just ISN'T the spare electrical power to run a fast wireless transmitter to spare, not for any useful period of time.
The ONLY way to get the power to spare is to run it off the mains, then you don't have a portable device, then you might as well just pick up the RJ45, it is one hell of a lot more secure and orders of magnitude faster.
(gigabit 802.11 anyone?)
And yet all I see and hear is wireless being touted as the emperors new clothes, you gotta have this or your life will be meaningless, it will make everything so easy for you, blah blah blah.
You know the ONLY real application for wireless in the real world that actually causes it to be used?
I'm typing this on a laptop with ONE cable, the mains power cable, running in to it, as it happens it is a "pull it and it will fall out" not a "pull it and either the cable plug or socket will break" type connection, that and the fact that 2 wires will always tangle themselves no matter what you do, makes it worth using.
UNTIL I want to transfer a gig or two across the network, then I pick up the RJ45.
My contention is this, the more "professional" you are (as opposed to an amateur who uses a PC for home use only, for maybe a couple of hours a day) then the MORE likely you are to want to transfer lots of files, the less use wireless becomes.
I use my laptop at home, as I am now, and "at work" when it functions as a portable personalised computer and mobile hard disk storage system, where I will use it for everything from temporary file backup of clients computer while I do X to clients computer, through network diagnostic tool, to repository of wads of useful files (eg XPsp2 et al) that I might want, to the other benefits of a mobile personal workstation, the "oh, while you're here, I don't suppose you could take a look at" to which the answer is yes because I have my tools in the form of my laptop, to the bottom line which is while you are sat there waiting for some time depemndent process to complete, instead of twiddling your thumbs you can just go online and check your email and poke slashdot.
In those scenarios listed above, you the only use I have for a network card?
To see if they have a wireless network up.
For actually DOING anything it is too slow by orders of magnitude and too insecure by entire paradigms.
my 2c anyway.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
It's time to upgrade to 11g. You should get up to 20mbit of real-world performance with 11g compared to the 3-5 from 11b.
Done right, plain text is unbreakable (just make sure the bad guys don't see it.) That's the same logic as your one time pad (just make sure the bad guys don't see it.)