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Airgo Quadruples Wi-Fi Limit
QED writes "Airgo Networks, a privately held maker of wireless networking components, said on Wednesday it has developed chips that will increase the Wi-Fi speed limit by a factor of four.
The Palo Alto, California-based company, which designs its chipsets around Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO), a wireless technique that uses different radio channels to improve both speed and transmission quality, said it has achieved data rates up to 240 megabits per second (Mbps)... "
What a great way to be a good neighbor. Piss all over all the channels available so no one else can do anything.
... I need better distance and fewer signal dropouts. I'm not talking about all that far distances either, just 200-300 feet inside an office building with many sheetrock walls and twisty hallways.
Obviously it's a good thing that wireless is getting faster. However, most people use wireless for connecting to the Internet. Even 802.11b is much quicker than most Internet connections. It will be a while before this technology is useful to a lot of people.
Bradley Holt
So, in other words, they've developed a chipset that will allow a router/WAP + WLAN card to use multiple channels at once...
Not only is that not -really- upping the bandwidth limit (they just got more signals, not a bigger throughput per signal), it seems to me that it'd blast out 1/3 - 1/2 of the avaialble spectrum within range for wireless.....which means if you buy one and are in an apartment/city/whatever, you could be a real jackass to your neighbors simply by using it...
now lets connect to the router with a single 802.11b card and turn all of it's speedy goodness into a good old 11Mb/s just like we do with these newfangled backwards-compatible 802.11G routers
(No, i didn't read TFA so i don;t know if this will work or noto)
When will the wireless market begin to stabilize? I will not invest in wireless technology that very well may become out of date or unsupported by newer hardware in the near future. As such, I will continue to use gigabit ethernet, thank you very much.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Wow. Ok, I'm not great on the conversions, but isn't 240 megabits/second = 30 megaBytes per second? If that's really the case, I don't think data can even be written to my hard drive that fast. Wow.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
I have to believe this is for corporate use, but if so, I hope the new standard sports heavy security.
I hope its not marketed towards Joe Sixpack. I'm sure he'll be impressed right up until he realizes that his Cable is only 6Mbps.
I don't get it.
I don't understand the way wireless speeds are rated. I got very close to 100mbps on my LAN before I upgraded to gigabit. I can't get anywhere near 54mbps on my wireless if I put my Powerbook right next to the wireless router!
I'm not certain, but I think the word channel may be misleading here. I think that MIMO is actually using the same bandwidth, just combining multiple RF paths to enhance the signal to noise ratio. Another MIMO link is here.
And although it's yet to be standardised, Belkin have had pre-n kit out for a while now.
This is not news.
.....this is aimed at guys who download lots of pron.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
So is this 240mbps bandwidth total as in everyone shares, or is it 240mbps dedicated? -Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
One of the key components of commercial WiFi architecture is the ability to leverage the channels and get complete coverage. You need those separate channels so that you can have signal ranges overlap. With separate channels, overlapping signals won't interfere with eachother (too much). That way if one AP goes down, the others can have their power level turned up to compensate. So basically, Airgo is giving us 240 Mbps for single AP installations (i.e. homes) where it will never be used.....fantastic.
Ehternet seemed to grow by powers of 10, but I don't quite understand how WiFi does it
10 Megabit, 100Megabit, 1000Megabit
vs
11MB to 56 MBs and now this...
What is being improved on to increase bandwidth? Can someone explain - I'm a software geek, not hardware.
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
That a great way to be a good neighbor. Piss all over all the channels available so no one else can do anything.
I was about to post with the same sentiment until I read more on the tech.
MIMO is not your typical blast-it-on-multiple channels approach. This article discusses the technology. Instead of using up a bunch of channels, MIMO systems send multiple signals on one channel and use multiple antennas and advanced algorithms on both ends to sort out which signal came from or went which direction.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The article says : achieved data rates up to 240 megabits per second
Now either they acheived 240Mbps, or they didn't.
I will give you a present of up to one billion dollars. Puhlease!
4x the speed is still not that great.
Current 802.11g devices have a theoretical throughput of 54mbit, and a real-world throughput of actual data of 10 to 20mbit. So it follows that Airgo's new cards will permit 40 to 80 megabits.
Now, wired 100mbit networks can reach 80mbit real-world speeds (Actual after-overhead bandwidth), so at first glance it looks like we're there. Except we're not.
The important things to keep in mind is that wireless networks behave like hubs, not switches, and on top of that all data must go through the access point. So if you have two computers close to an AP, you take up 40mbit for computer -> AP, and the other 40mbit for AP -> computer.
In other words, they claim 240mbit, but the fastest real-world transfer between two wireless devices is probably about 40mbit, IF those computers are very close to the access point. If the computers are a bit further away, you will get 20mbit. 4 computers doing 2 transfers and each transfer goes at 10mbit.
So you see? 4 computers 50 feet away and you're already down from 240mbit to 10mbit. This is very far away from wired performance.
First you're going to spam across multiple channels. Yes, that'a real good idea. I can almost hear my cordless phone going static at the thought of that.
How about we work on getting rid of the distance limitations of Firewire or USB, instead? We've already gotten their speeds up to 400-800 megabits. Why spam across the airwaves when we can spam faster thru copper? (No pun intended)
Another thought. Oh, 240 megabits, eh? So I can receive your key packets faster for decrpytion? All your wireless bandwidth are belong to us.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
One quarter the time that it takes to download a YTMND.
I hate my life.
The firey horse porn of vengence shall be delivered at approx. five times the speed! Most excellent indeed.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
Which is what I think this technology is. It simply will not work where I live for example. There are folks on almost every channel (while they should be only on channels 1,6 and 11), and even single-channel wireless gets tricky.
Airgo is a participant in one of two consortiums of companies promoting competing technologies to use in the 802.11n standard. Here's an article that covers the situation:
t icle/CA445702
http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/ar
Airgo is obviously trying to gain leverage with their technology by getting it out on the market early. I don't think this is a good thing in the long run, since we all have benefitted by the degree of standardization in 802.11b/g and Airgo seems to be trying to get their own proprietary technology out there in front of the legitimate standards process.
-R
You might as well have said :
"When will the technology market begin to stabilize? I will not invest in technology that very well may become out of date or unsupported by newer technology in the near future. As such, I will continue to use an abacus, thank you very much."
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
this press release (and several other noises will surely follow) is more to combat Intel+Marvel+Broadcom camp which has taken a different position that airgo in the 802.11(n) standards work. these are merely battle lines being drawn for the standards meeting (where demonstration of feasibility etc command premium). now going up against intel (or cisco) in these standard meetings has not met with much success in the past though and it remains to be seen (claims of 240Mbps bw notwithstanding) if Airgo survives the standards battle on this one. MIMOs will happen - intel inside OR airgo inside...
There's an article on MIMO in the latest physical issue of Technology Review magazine. Fortunately, the article's on-line.
I think a lot of people in areas affected by recent disasters (New Orleans, New York, DC, etc) that reliability in EXTREME disaster conditions trumps speed improvements any day of the week. I'll be happy with half the current speed of wi-fi if I could RELY on it to WORK if a disaster were to strike. Of course that has more to do with the signal strength and the actual transmitter network itself.
or wait for 802.11n?
Now someone can ghost my hard drive and pull away before I even see them parked outside
MIMO avoids this problem by not bonding together 802.11 channels. Instead of sending one data stream down one channel and another stream down another channel, MIMO simultaneously transmits multiple data streams over the same channel.
"
From the above posted tech article..
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
and the distance is... ?
Yes, I RTFA and didn't see it. I know enough about MIMO to know that it's great, but until we've come up with a way to comfortably blanket the world in a massive wireless network, bandwidth isn't a big deal.
IMHO, 802.11s is where the funding should be. It is right now for the most part, but more could be spent.
For more info on the available protocols:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11
Phased arrays finally approach the market. If these products capture significant profits that are reinvested into R&D for better phased arrays, we might be able to finally escape the "1 frequency : 1 channel" trap we've lived in for a century.
Phased arrays use spatial info of signal origin/reception to distinguish between different channels, even in the same frequency. Like how our eyes' retinas can distinguish between two red traffic lights in front of our cars, rather than just "seeing red" in the single frequency they share. Conversely, lower power transponders might be able to get the same bandwidth, a boon to mobile devices, or just remote telemetry.
The implications for info density are vast: multiply bandwidth by multiplying transponders. And the political implications are fundamental: the FCC is built entirely on the need to register frequency use to a single operator, to prevent signal interference. Phased arrays don't require the registry, because only physically coincident transponders could interfere, and that's practically impossible. The FCC won't be necessary to protect from signal interference, and won't be able to abuse its power, for example by regulating cable subscription content.
Even "WiFi" will be really unleashed. It became popular due to its unusual status in an "unlicensed band", which therefore doesn't require a license for its low power transmissions. The FCC will still be useful in certifying devices, that they don't transmit unhealthy radiation or otherwise pose a physical danger. Phased arrays promise freedom from physical constraints which have produced constraining, mission-creeping bureaucracies. MIMO might be just the beginning of throwing off those shackles for good.
--
make install -not war
but I want distance and low power. 11Mbps is great for me, I just want it to go further and get that bandwith constantly. 240 Max sounds great on paper, but that's in a lab or some other type of ideal conditions. Not in the real world where you have to deal with other people's wireless phones, microwaves, 802.xxx routers, etc. Where I live there are over 4 wireless networks that I can see. Are they telling me with a straight face that I will get 240 Mbps in that kind of condition ? I don't think so. I would much rather have a wireless technology that uses almost no power and goes further but has lower bandwith then that, and uses as little radio spectrum so that I'm not getting kicked off when someone else turns on their wireless phone.
30MB/sec. is rather pedestrian, any new IDE drive can do that. My desktop IDE drive (WD Raptor) does 64MB/sec. average. Your boot times and application load times would improve dramatically if you got a faster drive.
-Ryan C.
I design wireless networks and hardware for a living. I'm running simulations of video streams across ns2 and NCTUns as I write this.
Yes, you can increase throughput. Yes, you can cross-correlate FEC across channels to reduce errors. However, this solution hogs the spectrum, isn't tileable to create large wireless networks because of its inefficient use of channels (not to mention that the algorithm they're probably using only works because 802.11 has fairness problems, will definitely conflict with 802.11n (which also uses MIMO), and has a kook for a CEO.
"When MIMO was first unveiled, it reversed over 100 years of scientific thinking by harnessing natural radio wave distortions, which were previously perceived as interference, to deliver dramatically increased speed, range, and reliability," said Greg Raleigh, chief executive of Airgo. "With True MIMO Gen3 technology, our team has achieved a scientific milestone by proving that wireless can surpass wired speeds."
This guy is talking about something no more complex than using four radios at once and he's talking like it's the Second Coming. Could someone please bonk him with a hardbound copy of the 802.11n standard?
I like the idea of tying into multiple access points to increase throughput, but because their method relies on inherent 802.11 unfairness in order to work, I can't see this working in a large deployment.
This is pre-802.11n stuff, folks. Wait for the real stuff to come out from established vendors who actually contributed to the standard, instead of these guys who seem to be trying to break everything else by layering their solution on top of 802.11a/b/g, disrupting it in the process.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
In the MIMO system they're discussing here, you use the same frequency bandwidth but deploy multiple antennas, which gives you spatial diversity. Wireless communications are basically limited by the probability that your channel goes screwy and experiences what's called a fading event, where your signal suddenly drops because of interference. This means you have to be more conservative in the data rate you transmit at.
What they're trying to do is transmit, receive, and resolve multiple signals in the same frequency band by using multiple antennas, and resolving them in a clever way to try to create independent data channels. Since each antenna is physically at a separate location, the signal paths (and hence the fading characteristics) from the transmitter to the receiver will be more independent. Then the odds that all channels experience fading simultaneously drops significantly, improving the overall robustness of your communication channel to fading. That means you can be less conservative and achieve higher bit rates through your channel.
In short, same frequency usage, but they're getting spatial diversity by using more antennas and giving themselves a more robust channel.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
Michael Jackson had a similar sort of fame when he was young. I see TripMaster Monkey following a similar path as he ages. While innocent now, the pressures of fame here at Slashdot will affect him severely. He will seek to control the cock market. And he will do whatever it takes to control each and every set of male genitalia here. I fear he will abuse the penisbird for his own personal gain. Someday you might find a penisbird perched on your manrod, pecking away at your cockknob.
"Current Wi-Fi technology tops out at 54 Mbps. Remarkably, Airgo's technology also beats wired home-networking technology, which generally reaches only as high as 100 Mbps"
Airgo's technology doesn't beat wired home-networking technology; Airgo's tech isn't even deployed. Instead, Airgo's tech is faster than the average home network.
Assuming the specs given are correct, this will likely result in lowered prices on 1Gbps wired network utility, as people will be choosing to upgrade to Airgo's MIMO or to 1Gbps.
We'll be faced with the same choice as now -- slower with lower security but nice wireless access; or faster, more secure, tied down to wires.
Joe Sixpack won't likely upgrade until we get faster broadband.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I think technically, "increasing a limit by a factor of four" would mean that the limit would be lower, i.e., from 54Mb/s to 13.5Mb/s. Pedantic, I know.
It is also unclear as to whether the data was actually intact or not, how much error-correction the network card needed to perform, how many resends were required, etc.
In other words, even a transmitted rate of 240 megabits per second need not equal 240 megabit transfer rates. There are plenty of ways to fudge the numbers.
A trivial example: A network card operates at 240 megabits per second, but needs 240 retries to get enough data across for a genetic algorithm to build the most probable originating packet that could produce the data received, where the genetic algorithm adds several minutes to the transmission time of a single packet. At what speed does the card operate?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, MIMO may turn out to be useful in your office. Like what you have described, your office has several walls and twisty hallways. This causes multipath radio signals that degrade the main wireless signal, mainly through of fading and interference. However with MIMO, the reflected signals are put to good use as they are recombined by the MIMO algorithm.
w00t
I am at 54 mbps up from 2 mbps with linksys access point+signal booster.
Yes, it's using different channels, but not in the sense you and I typically think of it, as chunks of spectrum. Rather, it is exploiting multipath, where each path is treated as a separate channel. Multipath is usually a significant problem for traditional wireless communication, because it causes dropouts and frequency nulls and such. But it turns out that if you're clever (and these guys are) you can exploit multipath to shove more data down the same sized pipe.
So in short, they're not hogging spectrum to get these speeds; they are being good neighbors.
You are in a sheetrock maze full of twisty hallways....
This is an even faster system than what Airgo has been selling through Belkin, Linksys, and so forth. The 802.11-pren gear is less than half the speed of this new stuff.
And Linksys, and Netgear, and Buffalo..
No, they're not late at all.
WTF? You want submersible wi-fi?
I wish people would stop comparing wired to wireless. They serve 2 seperate needs and are nothing alike.
If I could get around a speed of 100MB/s wireless, I'd be in heaven. Right now I have a 56MB/s connection, which tends to get pretty good reception and decent speeds for copying files SO LONG AS I TURB OFF ENCRYPTION. With encryption, the overhead seems to slow things down a fair bit. Now if I could get say 100+MB/s, I'll just run a permanent VPN connection to my primary server. Fully secure, 100% of the time, still with fast transfer... rather than just when I want to have some private and flick the VPN on.
I use the previous generation of Airgo's WiFi chips at home (108mps) in Belkin's Pre-N product. We have two laptops and a desktop on the router and no issues.
This stuff is the real deal as it increases both bandwidth and range all within a single channel. I thikn the risk in terms of compatibility is only future, what I have at home is compatible to 802.11g and 802.11b. So if you need extra band
They are a lot of misinformed post claiming something worse than this technology is. These posts are less informed that a reader of this month's Computer Shopper rag which describes MIMO and the current products available. They emphasize the range the solution brings.
Airgo has had this out eons ahead of the competition and that's a rarity in this business. IMHO, the best way for the competition to slow them down and catch up is to stall the standard. And guess what...
If MIMO technology uses the fact that radio waves bounce around and can reach the reciever through multiple paths, and thus reconstructs the signal much more accurately, wouldnt it be possible to determine location by the variations in the multiple paths? And thus, a reciever could know which signals are meant only for it? Depending on how close they are and how accurate this stuff is, it could get around the shared bandwidth problem of wireless (not to mention avoiding colisions).
:)
You could also work this into the security, by knowing where the computers were located...
Or am I completely misunderstanding this technology? Or are they already doing this?
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
The Dept of Homeland Security is working on radio blimps for this purpose -- basically putting a bunch of cell/data transcievers on a blimp and flying it over a disaster area.
This would (presumably) solve some of the problems from Sept 2001 in New York, when all the radio gear on top of the WTC went down and the rest couldn't keep up with traffic. It would have been very helpful indeed if they could have got one of these flying over New Orleans, particularly since the lack of communication was the biggest problem everyone noticed about the immediate relief effort.
If you're going to mod it up, you'll have to label it "Funny". It is definitely *not* 27Mbit/sec each way, but thanks for sharing your knowledge of 802.11 with us.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Not a bad idea to think when it will stablize. I like to see what the Two leaders in wireless are pushing for there wireless lines.
Cisco and Symbol Technologies are the industry leaders for indoor wireless right now. Cisco is in my areas of the network where there is carpet and Symbol is made for the factory floor (no frills, heavy duty). If you are trying to justify the use of 50-100 hand scanners for $1200.00 a peice so the fork lift drivers can scan products and manifest's before they are loaded on the trucks you better have a future for your infrastructure.
802.11B/G are stable, most industrial applications are built around this technology since it is inexpensive to deploy. 802.11A is not as standard but it works well when you want to keep the traffic on different access points, I only use 802.11A for our executives in the conference rooms because the cell size sucks and the signal drops within about 50 feet if you are good at your power settings and assosiation rates. Most Dell laptops have a trimode card, we have the 802.11A on our corporate VLAN and the 802.11B/G is on our industrial VLAN that only has two servers on it. (no email or web access).
Lets face it somebody is going to try and hack your wireless, make the building next door look more inviting.
Here's the real truth behind Intel's illegal collusion with Marvel, Broadcom and Atheros: It's simply a stall tactic. First of all, there was real compromise b/n the WWiSE and TGn Sync groups on the 11n standard -- to the point where they were ready to come together with a Joint Proposal. The Intel et al group strong-armed this out-of-nowhere-against-all-IEEE-procedures proposal in at the last minute just to delay the process (and get a head start on the silicon. They need it, after all. Everyone knows Intel takes two years to create what others can do in one). And while Intel, Broadcom, Marvel and Atheros have had the draft since May, some of the IEEE competitors didn't receive it until this month. A four month delay?? Word coming out from IEEE this week makes it sound like Intel might be backing off...