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."

Comments

Re:still too expensive

[morgan_greywolf]

Yup. You can often get Dish network dishes from Freecycle, and worse comes to worse, I've seen them at yard sales for as little as $5 or so. Throw DD-WRT on a pair of Linksys routers, get the dishes and then follow these or similar instructions and there you go. The whole deal will cost you under $200.

Re:A lot of issues with this

[transporter_ii]

The problem with Canopy, as it is designed, is that the tower sites cost a fortune because the APs only have 60 degrees of coverage and, as designed, it would take 6 APs (900.00 to 1,500.00 each) to have 360 degree coverage. But it is possible to connectorize the APs and use far less APs by adding antennas with more coverage. If you can stomach that, you can get client units for less than 300.00. And add an aftermarket sync unit (200.00 - 300.00), and you can have multiple APs and clients not interfere with each other (just hope the other guy in town with Canopy syncs his equipment).

Let me tell you, two to three times, I have been involved in a 2.4 build-out. Each time it went like this. You spend a lot of time and money going around and swapping out that "expensive" Canopy equipment for the much cheaper 2.4 equipment. Everything works fine for about four days to a week. You run back and swap a few people back to that "expensive" Canopy equipment for various reasons...but within six months, when the crap hits the fan for some reason, and you have to have help scrambling to find enough Canopy equipment to put everyone back on...because its the only thing that "just works." It may not be perfect, but it does work.

After it saves your ass a few times, that Canopy equipment doesn't seem so expensive.

Transporter_ii

Bad article summary

[j.a.mcguire]

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.

Not New or News

[BillyBob23]

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.

Re:still too expensive

[Jon_S]

I know this is /. and you aren't supposed to RTFA, but I did anyway. It's not just the hardware. They redid the commnication protocols from scratch also that greatly increases the speed over these distances. Your Linksys routers will still be doing regular wi-fi.

Re:still too expensive

[billcopc]

It's far more complex than what you suggest. I'll quote from the FCC:

(b)The maximum peak output power of the intentional radiator shall not exceed the following:
(1) For frequency hopping systems operating in the 2400-2483.5 MHz or 5725-5850 MHz band and for all direct sequence systems: 1 watt.

(2) For frequency hopping systems operating in the 902-928 MHz band: 1 watt for systems employing at least 50 hopping channels; and, 0.25 watts for systems employing less than 50 hopping channels, but at least 25 hopping channels, as permitted under paragraph (a)(1)(i) of this section.

(3) Except as shown in paragraphs (b)(3) (i), (ii) and (iii) of this section, if transmitting antennas of directional gain greater than 6 dBi are used the peak output power from the intentional radiator shall be reduced below the stated values in paragraphs (b)(1) or (b)(2) of this section, as appropriate, by the amount in dB that the directional gain of the antenna exceeds 6 dBi.

(i) Systems operating in the 2400-2483.5 MHz band that are used exclusively for fixed, point-to-point operations may employ transmitting antennas with directional gain greater than 6 dBi provided the maximum peak output power of the intentional radiator is reduced by 1 dB for every 3 dB that the directional gain of the antenna exceeds 6 dBi."

Now, is the FCC going to troll around your neighborhood with a scanner ? Probably not, unless you screw up someone else's wireless equipment. Done properly, a high-power point-to-point system shouldn't affect anyone else, so you can probably go nuts. I can't say, I don't even live in the US, but my guess is the intent of the FCC regulation is to prevent, or at least document, people from stomping all over the spectrum with uber amplifiers. If it weren't for such rules, inevitably someone would create a 20-watt cordless phone that fries small birds but gets killer range - and also clobbers everyone else's phones.