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Intel Wi-Fi Provides 6 Mbps Over 100 km
MIT Technology Review describes a new Wi-Fi router from Intel capable of sending a Wi-Fi signal tens of miles with 6-Mbps performance. This is perfect for rural areas without Internet service, and for less developed countries interested in building out their Internet infrastructure but no means to lay expensive cable or fiber optics. The routers cost about $500 each, and you need two of them for a point-to-point connection. Quoting: "Intel's RCP platform rewrites the communication rules of Wi-Fi radios. Galinvosky explains that the software creates specific time slots in which each of the two radios listens and talks, so there's no extra data being sent confirming transmissions. 'We're not taking up all the bandwidth waiting for acknowledgments,' he says. Since there is an inherent trade-off between the amount of available bandwidth and the distance that a signal can travel, the more bandwidth is available, the farther a signal can travel."
1. first post
2. You can do this point-to-point with DD-WRT. it helps to have directional antenna's over general omni-directional.
i love how intel is touting how (even though wifi has been tech since the late 90's early 2000's) that they finally got around to making it work over "long" distances.
When a pair of linksys routers, 2 old and free Dish network dishes and $30.00 worth of parts can to the exact same thing.
Even if they were available when I helped start a community wifi, we would not use them. they are too expensive. We are getting WRT54GL routers for $50.00 each, and tere is a never ending supply of free dish network dish assemblies with mounts.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...does it blend?
There are so many areas within range of regional cities that only have dialup.
Didn't read TFA yet, but I know this will work fine with two units, you just set one to provide sync. But if you have four units in an area, they can interfere with each other. What you can do then is add a gps unit to the AP side, sync to that, and all four units Tx/Rx at the same time. So MIT really just created a Wi-Fi Canopy system...or what WiMax will be if it is ever released.
The biggest issue is that 2.4, with only 3 non-overlaping channels, is it almost unusable for long distance shots. I'm working in a WISP that has some 2.4 and it will make you pull your hair out. At one tower, in somewhat of a rural area, we could see 121 different SSIDs from an omni antenna a couple of hundred feet off the ground.
At 500.00 a unit, I doubt this will see high deployment, but if all of these things don't play nice with each other, it will be yet more interference.
And last, 2.4 could already do ten miles easy already, and much cheaper. You could build a Mikrotik AP for 600.00ish and have 20 clients at 10 miles for 200ish a client unit, if they are all line of sight. But note that you have stretched 2.4 well beyound what it was designed for, and in no time you will understand exactly why WISPs startup and fold like crazy...and the only people who made ANY money are the ones who sold you the equipment.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
if you don't require privacy. Hopefully, they put in an extremely good encryption scheme with this and not one merely "good 'nough'. Still a good leap forward in many areas, our country is way behind as it is, and it has next to nothing to do with population density for the east and west coasts many areas of which has poor, overpriced service as well.
I often wondered what is stopping a mesh network from spreading. It would be basically the type which the OLPC has, except essentially a router with an antenna could be put on top of your house and connect with others of its type, from spreading. Of course, there would have to be a central hub connected into a fat pipe every so often so the signal doesn't hop around like mad.
The routers cost about $500 each, and you need two of them for a point-to-point connection.
Well.. Duh.
The connection can only be established between two nuclear power stations.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
You can taste the waves!
It seems that discovering hot water goes a long way.
While my friends enjoy 21km link using two 20Eur Atheros-based WiFi cards pluged in PC's (routers) running linux, I just don't see what's the big fuss. Not to mention that You can buy a pair of routers for 50Eur and do the same trick using DD-WRT firmware and two parabolic 19-24dBi antenas.
You won't get my $500 for that box.
Doing a good job is like spilling coffee on a dark suit, you feel warm all over, but nobody notices.
This is poorly summed up, the point of this is not the range or the speed, its the fact that it only uses 6Watts firing data at that range and speed and could use stand alone, solar powered units to maintain data links.
... freak accident leaves several Intel employees hairless.
I go back to the first poster alternative about cheaper alternatives, I've seen some extremely interesting work with mesh networks, and they provide a level of redundancy not present in this system. And that's important if your going to talk Canopy or WiMax or something because now your talking about infrastructure. If you have one tower covering this kind of range imagine the amount of customers a failure effects. We can create mesh networks with existing technology and for a lot less money.
Oh honey look... How cute... an angry slashdotter!
This was done almost 2 years ago by some college students who tested various dishes, omni and uni directional antennas, and some common objects. Best bang they got was an antenna contructed from a Pringles can.
Good Job Intel, you've made a $500 can for chips...
There are dozens of companies (MikroTik) that has been selling technology like this for a very long time. This summer I worked in Mountain Home AR for VistaVox wireless. Using $250 worth of equipment (router, cable, dish, mounts, etc) we were able to provide 18Mbs/s connections up to 30 miles. If you check the MikroTik forum you will find people who have sent signals 150+ miles using similar equipment to what we used this summer.
"Galinvosky explains that the software creates specific time slots in which each of the two radios listens and talks, so there's no extra data being sent confirming transmissions. 'We're not taking up all the bandwidth waiting for acknowledgments,' he says."
.. Huge difference in the later early modem data transfer protocols was (1) variable packet size (if noise went up, packet size would drop down) and (most important): No ACK/NAK! Sender just sent as fast as its little chips could push the data out. Receiver would just receive and stuff the data away. It was only when the receiver did NOT get a good packet that it would do a NAK (and send the number of the bad / required packet). The sender would stop what it was doing, drop back to the bad packet number, and retransmit from there. (With more memory and speed, it would've been better to buffer packets so sender only had to send the single bad packet, and then could resume where it was further down the data stream. But I digress.)
Doh
So signal conditions are so lousy with wireless data transmit protocols that they're still doing ACK/NAK for every single steenking packet? That's pretty dumb, eh?
Toad-san
Oh look, we've got Token Ring for wireless!
The summary says:
I'm confused - in what way are bandwidth and the distance a signal can travel related?
That's great, now stop being cheap and install the fibre optic lines we all want, we've paid enough in call charges, access charges and any other charges you can think of. We don't want over-the-air hacker bonanza, we want lines that don't encourage every script kiddie with a WiFi receiver to try their luck.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Line of sight.
What would be the ping on these beauties?
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
I was on the road touring all week with my band "The LeperKhanz", and we really wanted to surf the web while we were driving, since you are usually stuck with nothing to do while you are in the car. I'd love it if technology like this allowed you to get a wifi connection while you were moving down the freeway.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
...reach fiber speeds (4 Gbps at 50 km).
If you don't understand my point: those WiFi speeds are reached on calibrated stationary equipment using special antennas.
BRAIN CANCER!
Maybe something for USA? With your monopolies you are about the less developed broadband country in the world, possibly with the exception of some african countries.
It's only a matter of time before the issues are resolved and these babies start popping up all over the place. Free Internet everywhere! W00t!
"This is what I love about Slashdot. Highly educated and experienced researchers at a global technology powerhouse make a discovery and its instantly shot down by dilettantes who claim their sting-and-can solution does exactly what the redesign does already."
Ok, so if you don't like home-brew, then how about off-the shelf ready to go? http://www.airaya.com/ If you order the right antenna and aim it really well, then you can get 6 mps at 40 miles.
if you don't require privacy. Hopefully, they put in an extremely good encryption scheme with this and not one merely "good 'nough'.
Don't rely on wireless encryption - they all seem to fall eventually.
Use TLS/SSH/VPN as needed and taunt the script kiddies to thwart you. OK, maybe skip the taunting part.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)