The Future of Wireless Connectivity

Unimonomous writes "CoolTechZone.com analyzes the future of wireless connectivity with WiMax standard. "WiMax is an upgrade from Wi-Fi and offers brilliant advantages over its predecessor. The obvious one being extended range (up to 15 miles), which means that establishing a few towers would pretty much make the entire city connected. Now this probably won't matter to those of us with 24/7 connectivity, but people living in rural and undeveloped areas would surely benefit from it." Update looks like the site buckled. Sorry.

Comments

SQL Error on cooltechzone.com

[TripMaster Monkey]

Looks like CoolTechZone is down...second story today that the referenced article was unavailable...

Anyway, just so we have something to talk about...here's some info on WiMAX:

• The Wikipedia entry
  
• WiMAX Forum
  
• Wi-Fi Planet
  

Wireless

[certel]

Wireless connectivity will open a lot of windows for future products. As mentioned in as EBay article regarding voice calls being free in the future, things like wireless networks will definitely make that a reality.

Article Text (in case of /.)

[Mr. Sketch]

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Line of sight still, though..

[xtal]

The added range will help, but there's lots of antennas out there that will give you good reliability over long distances.

The bigger problem is line of sight distances. I've done some testing with this and have the advantage of living on top of a very big hill, within view of DSL - about 5km over a lake. We've gotten connections with very crude antennas already using GPS to line things up reasonably well.

The big limitation has always been line of sight, and WiMax does nothing to change this - and might hurt, if it fragments 802.11b. Wimax (802.16?) is not compatible with .11, and I'm not sure it will succeed.

Just while we're on the subject of Wi-fi

[fiannaFailMan]

The BBC is running an article about the ongoing debate about municipal wi-fi in the US.

"Recent figures suggest that since 2000, the US has dropped from third to 16th among nations worldwide in terms of per capita broadband access. Bob Hale, owner of American Onion, shows how he uses a laptop with wireless capabitlities from a remote, rural site at his onion fields in Hermiston, Oregon

Studies suggest that 86% of households with income of more than $75,000 have broadband access. But the share is just 38% for those with an income of less than $30,000.

Huge areas of US countryside outside major towns and cities are also poorly served.

Ironically, one of the frontiers of wireless accessibility is found in a rural swathe of Oregon, which is thought to have one of the world's largest wireless hotspots. "

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What about security?

[d'oh89]

Ok, let's say 5 years down the road most folks use WiMax for internet connectivity along the same lines of coverage that broadband follows. How secure are those connections going to be? With my cable modem at least i can stick a firewall between me and all the nasties out there. What I can't imagine is how Joe Schmoe is going to protect his PC enough so that he doesn't get comprimised by a hacker/slacker. People have enough of a time configuring their wireless routers...Now imagine having to connect to a tower 5 miles away where there's a lot of ohter folks doing the same thing. What can one do to protect themselves?

gl hf... not going to see it in rural areas

[Mashdar]

but people living in rural and undeveloped areas would surely benefit from it

Unless you are talking about automating your farm equipment with wifi, I doubt many rural areas will see this until far into the future.

Who is going to pay to set up a tower to give 20 people internet? The reason wimax is so attractive in cities is the user density. I suppose the point is that it is cheaper than laying new land lines in rural areas (where broadband capable lines may be absent)?
It doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon, though. And there is still the matter of wiring the towers. Unless you wanted them to route signals wirelessly... I wouldn't want to risk my data travelling hundreds of miles over air. Fifteen is bad enough.

Of interest to not just rural/remote people

[Safe Sex Goddess]

WiMAX is of interest to those in urban areas who are working to provide universal net access to even those who can't afford $50/month. I think Municipalities could probably find ways to offer free wireless internet in their communities if they are creative. For example, they could offer free municipal wireless with the excuse that they want to provide job search capabilities to everyone in their community. Also providing access to any local, state, or .gov site. And what about include access to any non-profit site, and also to any site offering free e-mail. Add a little peer-to-peer networking between people using the same free networks and who needs any corporate advertisements or sites or access to the "private subscriber" side of the internet?

The problems are not so easy to fix

[zappepcs]

and they all relate to regulations. The FCC has, so far, taken a hands off approach to regulation of data services, both wireless and wired. This approach is having an effect of establishing new networks, or seems to be. The problem is that all these new networks are being built by companies that plan to make money from distributing digital content... and we ALL know how sticky that problem is. For instance, music and video distribution is tightly being strangled by the *AA, and MS is trying to get in on the game too, with DRM'd content. All of these efforts are good, and believe me, WiMax is a *GOOD* thing.

The problems are content and distribution. Right now, plans are being made for IPTV and radio, and many many things that are digital in nature, all of which make life better or easier to cope with. Still, copyright and patent law will fsck it up if changes are not made now... Later is no good, the changes need to be made now....

two cents used

Uhhh

[temojen]

In the future there may be only wireless service for consumers, due to lower cost of deployment. Given a certain spectrum width, wireless has less data carrying capacity due to the need for agressive noise correction. Also, with wireless you can't increase capacity by laying a second piece of coax or fiber beside the first. In congested areas (neighbourhoods of large apartment buildings, etc), the combination of high use, high RF noise, and complex surfaces (walls, etc) could seriously tax WiMAX. Fortunately these same areas are where the cost of deployment for coax and fiber is lowest.

Did you read the wikipedia entry?

[xtal]

It should be noted that these claims, especially that such distances can be achieved without line of sight, represent, at best, a theoretical maximum under ideal circumstances


Line of sight is ALWAYS going to be required in that frequency spectrum, unless you are very close or at very high power levels.

FiMax

[Doc Ruby]

WiFi offers maybe 110Mbps in a 700m radius. WiMax offers maybe 650Mbps in 24000m radius. That's 71bps:m for WiFi vs. 0.36bps:m for WiMax . WiFi is 200x as dense as WiMax. Rural areas have much larger areas which don't account for bandwidth usage, with big users every few miles. While urban areas have much more even distribution of consumption - even stacking 3-4 layers per meter, sometimes 20-50+ layers (like urban centers like Manhattan). Real consumption shows that WiMax is better for rural areas, or long backhauls (attenuated into beams that can carry the network maybe hundreds of miles across gaps like open water). Even in rural areas, WiFi is better for the hotspots, like actual buildings or vehicles. While in urban areas, even public places like streets are very dense, with 655Mbps shared by hundreds of people every block.

So WiFi isn't exactly an "upgrade" to WiFi. It's a complementary technology. Even throttling down the power to cover only a few blocks with each WiMax AP to use its higher bandwidth is only useful as a connection "umbrella" to interconnect denser WiFi hotspots in buildings and cars. Which is also appropriate, because users in public places are usually mobile or casual, without the bandwidth demands of a stationary user. WiMax marketers are selling it as an upgrade to WiFi because WiFi is such a popular brand name, and WiMax has to sell to anyone who will buy. But we should get excited only about the WiMax features that are actually better than WiFi in the scenarios where WiFi is now the round peg in the square hole. Otherwise we'll be sorely disappointed when inappropriate WiMax applications underperform even WiFi, and we'll be stuck with the wrong solution - and the marketdroids will be stuck with our money, without which we can't buy what we actually want.