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802.11ad Will Knock Your Socks Off, Says Interop Panel
alphadogg writes "While the Wi-Fi world is rightly abuzz over the rapidly approaching large-scale deployment of the new 802.11ac standard, experts at an Interop NY panel said this week that the 802.11ad standard is likely to be even more transformative. '802.11ac is an extension for pure mainstream Wi-Fi,' said Sean Coffey, Realtek's director of standards and business development. 'It's evolutionary. ... You're not going to see dramatically new use cases." By contrast, 802.11ad adds 60GHz connectivity to the previously used 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, potentially providing multi-gigabit connection speeds and dramatically broadening the number of applications for which wireless can be used."
The problem with wireless is that the range sucks. 802.11n has a maximum speed of 600 mbps but I've never been able to get anywhere close to that. The speed is respectable if I'm standing right next to the router, but if I'm 2 floors away (router in bottom floor of 3 storey no basement house) then the speed is just atrocious. 60 GHz won't travel that far anyway. The only thing that's good for is when you're right next to the router, which means you might as well have a wired connection.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
> You're lucky if you can get 20 feet from the router before the signal goes to hell in some places.
Ohai. I'm a San-Franciscan. I live in an apartment building in North Tenderloin, and can see ~15->30 802.11g APs, most of which are screaming on channel 6. I have a bog-standard 802.11g router sitting in my window, which serves my apartment very well, and can reach the bus stop, and the nearby coffee shop ~150 feet away.
> It happened with 802.11b, when we switched to g. Then n was released, and it oblitherated b and g.
What? b, g, and n all co-exist. I say this as an operator of an abgn AP that has devices from all of those flavors of 802.11 connected simultaneously.
> Eventually, the entire situation de-evolves into the same thing that happened with CB radios...
I grew up with a CB radio in our family vehicles, and had one in the van that I drove as a teenager. The situation you describe is neither the one that exists today, nor is it the one has existed for the past fifty years.
> Face it guys: We need regulated airspace. We need black vans. We need licensing...
There are many ISPs that use unlicensed microwave spectrum for long-to-medium wireless backhaul links. These guys are doing very well, and don't run into the doomsday situation that you've described. For short-haul wireless, unlicensed 802.11 works fine. But, don't be a cheapass, buy 5Ghz gear! You get better range, and 802.11n has more space to do the frequency multiplexing stuff that makes it reach 100->200mbps.
IEEE 802.12 is not WLAN - it's 100BaseVG While that group may have been disbanded, IEEE 802 is their set of standards dealing w/ LANs and MANs, and then, the number after the period deals w/ different aspects of it, such as 1 for bridging, 3 for ethernet, 11 for WLAN (all the ones in b/w were used by other networking technologies, such as Token Bus, Fiber Optic TAG and so on, but are mostly currently disbanded.) IEEE 15 through 22 are the next active standards, but none having much to do w/ WLAN.
Not sure why this is modded funny. 60 GHz is license-free because oxygen is opaque at that frequency.
Anybody want a peanut?
Reading /. during your job: NSFW
I would think that people nowadays are aware that links might contain content their company will not be happy about.
If you work for a company that fires people because of this, don't use their network for private surfing.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I don't know why the consumer market would be excited for it, though. The main use of WiFi is networking of devices in separate room/floors of a house without having to go to the expense of running actual Cat5 all around. According to Wikipedia these waves would be line-of-sight only. And if everything's in the same room unless it's a portable device my feeling is I might as well just use ethernet and get a more reliable, lower latency connection instead.