How Many Wireless Technologies Can We Handle?

Golygydd Max writes "The space for high-speed wireless networking is getting mighty crowded. Techworld reports that a new company, Sibeam, has entered the fray, hinting at a 60GHz technology to compete with the likes of Wimax, UWB and the others. Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?"

Comments

standardize

[SolusSD]

We need a robust future expandable standard. My school has changed wireless technologies campus-wide 3 times in 3 years!

Compete w/ WiMax?

[dsginter]

Just how does one compete with an open standard? Or am I missing something?

Re:Compete w/ WiMax?

[hungrygrue]

With a better open standard. Imap versus Pop3, for instance.

Re:Compete w/ WiMax?

[Orrin Bloquy]

Production studios continued using Beta for quite a while, even startups after the "war" ended. There was a measurable technical superiority here. Your post conveniently ignores the fact that Sony wanted a lot of money to license Betamax as a format from vendors, and JVC remembered how ineffective this was for their parent corporation fifty years before with FM radio patents. Sony has a history of losing battles not because their technology is inferior, but because they only value outsiders by what kind of revenue stream they might represent. They're the last bastion of Japanese xenophobic imperialism, and it shows.

When the future is still so unclear?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck do you think the future becomes clear? Let the competing standards thrash it out and the result will lead us towards are wireless future. The early adopters take the risk that the choices they make may be incorrect, but thats how we get to where we want to be.

Survival of the fittest

[phpm0nkey]

What's the harm in competition here? The wireless spectrum is finite; it's in our interest to kick around technologies until we can agree on one that's the cleanest, most efficient use of the space available.

A good first step would be to shut off analog TV and radio. That bandwidth is too valuable for us to just sit on.

The future becomes as clear as it will ever be

[kfg]

when it becomes the past.

We create it in the present.

KFG

Isn't that the WHOLE POINT!?!?!

[DeadMilkman]

Isn't the whole point of releasing it now that it CAN compete with other standards and maybe if its better enough (or more popular enough) it can still win?

I beleive if they waited for the future to be clearer there could already BE a new standard and they would have lost.

Not a Bad Thing

[Evil W1zard]

Well they have $15 million in funding to go out and do the R&D work on Gigabit rate wireless. The worst thing that can happen is that they fail miserably, but I'm all for them spending some money on developing a new product.

Matchbox philosophy:

[IainMH]

  Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?

Isn't that exactly when you need as many different minds working on a problem? The future will clarify itself.

Dumb

[Dun Malg]

Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?"

What an idiotic statement (and it is a statement, disguised as question). The future is determined by the choices we make today. More choices allows us to pick the best of those available, thus resulting in the "best future".

One less than what we have

[nuintari]

They can all exist, except for one, 802.11 needs to be fucking shot.

Insecure, unscalable, and the newest access points are flooding the 2.4 ghz by using all 11 channels as opposed to behaving and using one.

802.11 has ruined the 2.4 ghz spectrum, I ever start my own wireless ISP, I won't even try to use 2.4 ghz radios.

Re:Yes it does

[squiggleslash]

Given Sony sold blank tapes in retail outlets, I think it's safe to say the "BetaMax died because of Sony hated pornographers" claim is a ludicrous urban legend that ought to be obvious to anyone who's spent more than a few seconds thinking about it.

BetaMax died because of its short tape lengths. You want a device to record movies off the TV. One has 30 minute and one hour tapes available. The other two hour tapes. Which unit would you buy, especially in an environment in which most of the content you'll be owning will be self-recorded, not purchased?

Are you complaining?

[bitspotter]

In this world of unmolested monopolies, cartels, and rampant corporate mergers, have we so lost sight of the benefits of competition that we *complain* when we see it? Are we really that brainwashed?

Re:60Ghz!!!

[oliverthered]

Theres a party a few streets away, their really going for it which is the loudest whilst you trying to go to sleep, the base or the treble?

Re:None?

[tomstdenis]

That makes no sense. Just make it have a register "frequency" and have it reject out of band stuff ON DIE.

E.g. write the Khz you want to a 32-bit register ... oh that's out of range... sucker!

I've heard the excuse you gave before but frankly I don't beleive it. It's TRIVIAL to put a switch somewhere in an ASIC to just trip and say "out of range".

And really when it gets down to it we don't need access to the radio, we need to say

read packet to $MEM of size $SIZE.

Write packet from $MEM of size $SIZE

Where "packet" is transmitted verbatim using the 802.11 encodings [QAM, FSK or whatever it is].

That way you can build an encryption/switching stack on top of that and you don't need access to the radio directly.

Betamax is not used

[tkrotchko]

"Also it is still used by film majors for its higher quality."

First, this is a good article here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax

But to your point:
No, it isn't. You're thinking about the pro version of Beta known as Betacam, which I believe uses similar tapes, but a different technology. A description can be found here:

    http://betacam.palsite.com/format.html