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Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card
krispy78 writes "If you're looking forward to the day your laptop has WiMax built in and can access wireless broadband as easily as WiFi, you're not alone. But the 802.16e mobile WiMax standard is yet to be finalized on paper, and we'll be lucky to see it the first products this side of 2007. In Australia, a wireless PCMCIA card has been released that comes close to the "WiMax ideal". It appears to Windows like a regular WiFi card (no heinous login clients to run) but can pick up wide-area wireless broadband signals. The network that runs the cards ("Navini Ripwave") is apparently being rolled out in USA and other countries too."
Ireland had this for a while, and a lot of people arent happy with the service, hopefully the aussies will do a better job. If your interested check out www.irishbroadband.ie, they also sell "ripwave" modems.
That thing must really have an amazing range!
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I'm using a desktop rabbit unit right now, just plug your ethernet in and your on. No phone line, no ADSL bullshit, no headache when moving.
Also good for test when at a client site. Wireless broadband is the greatest!
POKE 36879,8
1) Unwired (www.unwired.com.au) unleashes this card.
2) John Howard knows how to take care of the muzzie extremists before they strike.
3) We will phase out analog TV before the USA.
4) Topless beaches.
5) 3G phone systems. How's that UTMS going you AT&T/Cingular tards?
6) Topless beaches.
7) It's far from America and even further from England.
8) Car accidents are called "smashes"
9) Drunk driving is called "drink driving"
If you live anywhere else, WAYSA?
As an Aussie, I'm sick of seeing submissions on Slashdot from other Australians that hype the Australian angle to every story. This is typical Australian insecurity. Since we are isolated down here at the opposite end of the world to the USA and Europe, most Australians see a need to shout "Don't forget about us!!" constantly, as if to remind the world that we are still here.
If this technology was being trialled by an ISP in any other country, the story would primarily be about the technology, maybe with a note about where it was being trialled. But since this is being trialled in Australia first, the headline and summary hype up the Australian angle. Hopefully one day us Australians will be secure enough that we can stop constantly worrying about what everyone else thinks about us.
This device works across a wide range, from 2-6ghz. WiMax, being part of the 802.16 spec, can hop all around that range.
So then, I have question for the better informed (considering that any real information on Navini's site is very effectively obscured under a deluge of marketing babble). Does this device support the accessing of 802.11 networks as well? The article summary seem to infer it: [the card] appears to Windows like a regular WiFi card... Also, (from TFA) the card's hardware includes a range of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips. Does this mean it COULD support 802.11 with a change of firmware? I imagine this functionality would be welcomed by many.
WiMax Like Card? What is a "Like Card"? Once we have answered this question then we can apply the other adjective to this term and figure out what a "WiMax Like Card" is.
OH oh oh . . . you meant WiMax-Like Card . . . seriously, some proof-reading/English lessons?
And how well could it work on an open platform - like GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. I use two laptops on and off, borrowed from office. They run FreeBSD or RHEL (and are re-imaged on return). I'm still wondering whether I should get a wireless WAN card for India.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
For those of us who want wireless broadband today, Sprint and Verzion both offer 1x EV-DO (about 512k, 200-300ms latency) in the US for about $60. There aren't any bandwidth caps, but you probably get cut off if you download 80GB.
There was one thing that richochet modems had that really made them cool. you were not forced to use their portal but could connecte from serial number to serial serial number for direct modem to modem connections. This was great until the SOB's at the company turned that functionality off just before they started their death spiral.
I would look at wimax with more of a gleaming eye if I know that I can buy my own wimax accesspoint or connect from wimax card to wimax card WITHOUT having to pay a monthly service fee. I can do that with my 56K modem that is rotting on the shelf in the storage room.
Irish Broadband have offered this is Ireland for Years now .
The only problem is there a FUCKING CRAP ISP .
NOW Broadband www.now.com have a similar service in the UK but it's not PCMCIA yet. They use IP Wireless www.ipwireless.com which is a 3g (but for data only) type system and whom according to their website have a PCMCIA card version so maybe NOW will have PCMCIA soon too. But for now, only in London.
welcome our kangaroo riding boomerang wielding overlords?
What is the range of this product? When I think WiMax I think 15 miles or so. Nowhere is there any mention of how far you can be away of the antenna.
If the range is the same as iBurst I don't see much improvement. Only pricing will make a difference.
Troll? Heh, I figured that would be an informative post.
At any rate, until I can get it and use it... Until at least a good number of us can... it sucks. Flat out. Kinda like FIOS.
Ability is one thing. But without availability, it's useless.
Mod me troll again, won't bother me. I read more than I post anyway. Just keep in mind, though, I could just as easily have posted as an AC and saved my posts for karma whoring.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
FTFA
What's particularly impressive about Unwired's card over all other solutions is that it doesn't need any godawful proprietary software clients to log in to the network.
Except Windows.
Unwired - http://www.unwired.com.au/index.php already have a rollout with plenty of coverage around Sydney. http://www.unwired.com.au/availability/index.php
f =18
iBurst (flash warning) - http://www.iburst.com.au/ are implementing rollout now.
Discussion form for wireless isps here:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?
Navini uses a proprietary MAC layer that is not 802.16 compatible. Sprint did extensive testing with them in 2002-2003. Sprint/Nextel now owns about 80% of the 2.5 GHz MMDS spectrum in the US. If anyone had a real product they would be deploying it instead of sitting on a billion plus dollar investment.
They claim rates of 744Kbit/s but my 802.11b cards get twice that. I know that 802.16 has the advantage of greater range but it also operates in the 10GHz+ so if data rates are proportional to signal baud then data rates should be much higher, right?
Also, in physics there's measurement called "skin depth" which is the distance a wave travels in a non conducting medium before it's power level drops by 1/e or about 1/3 and for which the formula is (wavelength/2*pi). The higher the freq the greater the drop off.
I'm not doubting the 20km+ claims of 802.16 but given the FCC power limits of about 10mW per channel I can't figure out how they're getting a greater range than the lower freq 802.11.
That said, I suspect part of the problem is Irish BB's implementation of Ripwave - even their premium services have severe problems, so who knows? The Aussies may luck out.
Totally agree ... it is absolutely hilarious to see the major carriers rushing at 3G following the success of the Hutch network, when the success is more due to the call rates being 1/3 of the GSM network rates offered by the majors. Having had a video phone for more than 2 years, can honestly say that I\\\'ve only ever made one video call, and used the net like 2 times
That's nice.
How does it work with (for instance) Mac OS X, Linux 2.4, Linux 2.6, or the current versions of NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD?
It's fucking sick that EVEN ON SLASHDOT, it's usually safe (and considered, by the majority, to be inoffensive) to assume that Everyone Runs Windows.
(I guess that's why it's "News for Nerds". "Nerds" run Windows; "Geeks" run Unix, eh?)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Is this something that can be bought by an average person and used to set up a FreeWan Cell, or is it just another product that is going to be dominated by some large company. If this is something that used by the average person to set up a network without having to pay a fee to some company, then it just may very well be one of the greatest innovations for amnkind. Imagine being able to transfer information at high speeds and low cost without some government or corporate Kommissar monitoring your every move. This would sound very nice to me.
Don't .ie and .au both have ISPs which charge per-minute or per-kilobyte fees, mostly because they can get away with it because "it's always been that way?"
This is what I'm told the situation was like in Dublin last year (ca. middle of 2004), anyway. And I remember from being there in '99-'00 that it was easily as bad - there was essentially no such thing as broadband and the fees for dial-up were outrageous.
+++ATH0
I'm confused how all of this is "new".
I've used one in the US at an installation, but I'm not sure exactly how much I can say about it. We were considering buying one and requested a demo of a live site by the company.
Navini has a couple dozen, maybe 100, maybe more installations in the states. They use an antenna array, proprietary and disturbingly expensive multi-antenna controller, and some patented version of orthoganal beam forming. They also only sell one unlicensed product in the 2.4 range. The rest are from 2.1-2.3, 2.6, and a 5.x that I don't recall.
In our real life tests on a live system, the portable USB/ethernet modem device was good for about 5-6 miles outdoors in a moving vehicle, and 2-3 miles if it was indoors. The entire backplane was 12MBps..which as anybody will tell you, under load, will barely qualify as "Broadband."
Additionally, a telco has deployed an older Navini system where I live. It..doesn't work so well inside. It *does* work, however, with a laptop and a modem about anywhere in town (their installation is on a *very* high peak).
Overall, we decided against the system because it just didn't perform that well. It would have been a multi-hundred-thousand dollar install, potentially, for a 12Mbit backplan to deliver rural-only broadband. Navini, though, has done amazing work and real-life data aside, the implementation is brilliantly conceived. It's not exactly WiMax. Since the WiMax 'standard' is still sort of....*shrug*...they can say about anyting they want. It's similar to the standard, and it does work in some limited fashion...but it's still wireless.
-Y
A tiny litte town called Canberra? The nation's capital Canberra. Not a major city. FFS. You are unworthy of wirelss broadband. I'll swap you for the ONE wireless hotspot in Hobart. A phone booth. I shit you not.
Just out of curiosity, who's that with? I didn't even know anyone did wireless broadband in Canberra...
iBurst's coverage is really good in Canberra now. They've pretty much got most of the city covered.