Slashdot Mirror
FCC Moves To Boost Wireless Speeds
coondoggie writes "The Federal Communications Commission said it wants to make up to 195 megahertz of additional spectrum in the 5 GHz band available to unlicensed wireless devices with the idea that such a move would enable Wi-Fi equipment that can offer faster speeds of one gigabit per second or more, increase overall capacity, and reduce congestion. 'Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure devices today operate in 555 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, and are used for short range, high speed wireless connections including Wi-Fi enabled local area networks and fixed outdoor broadband transceivers used by wireless Internet service providers to connect smart phones, tablets and laptops to the broadband network,' the FCC stated."
It was discussed a month ago.
It will help, but don't expect this any time soon. Because no existing device (probably 802.11ac or earlier) will support the new spectrum, we're not going to see much advantages to the new spectrum until whatever comes after 802.11ac (unless they try to brand it as a "v2" thing)
What the *fuck* are you talking about? The "previous generation of devices" on part of those spectrums are GOVERNMENT GEOLOCATION devices (among other things), and would most likely require a DFS/U-NII type regulation.
There *can* be a boost in wireless speeds... if you are suddenly able to get a slice of frequency that isn't already in local contention. The only way to increase speeds are: add streams, higher order modulation, increase channel width. By adding more frequency, this increases the possibly that things like those 80+80 channels in 2nd or 3rd gen 802.11ac will be possible.
And 2.4ghz doesn't travel very far? Are you fucking smoking rock?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_Wi-Fi
Italy
The longest unamplified Wi-Fi link is a 304 km link achieved by CISAR (Italian Center for Radio Activities).[9]
link first established on 16-06-2007
it appears to be permanent from Monte Amiata (Tuscany) to Monte Limbara (Sardinia)
frequency: 5765 MHz
IEEE 802.11a (Wi-Fi), bandwidth 5 GHz
Radio: Ubiquiti Networks XR5
Wireless routers: MikroTik RouterBOARD with RouterOS, NStreme optimization enabled
Length: 304 km (189 mi).
Antenna is 120 cm with handmade waveguide. 35dBi estimated
Wait, you challenge his 2.4ghz range assertion with a 5ghz range example?
What can be done in clear air with line of sight means nothing. The fact that 5ghz has very little building penetration is well known. Its great for single rooms (like restaurants or in the cubical-sphere of an office, but even around the house it can be problematic when trying to penetrate some walls.
This is great for apartment dwellers, because 5ghz means less interference from neighbors. But in a typical two story home it gets marginal.
What is needed is small cheap, low powered routers that you can put on each floor or maybe each room. 5Ghz might be just the ticket for that.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
His comment was that 2.4 doesn't travel very far, and 5ghz doesn't go as far as 2.4. I challenged that by posting over a 150+ mile link. What did you miss here? .
I didn't miss anything. Its an established fact that 5Ghz has less range than 2.4Ghs. Range of 5Ghs is usually less than half the range of 2.4.
So what he said was true.
And what you said didn't matter, because if that extreme example were repeated with 2.4Ghz devices it would be even more successful than the 5Ghz devices. So it was a complete non sequitur. (The test was also run in an environment where nothing else existed on 5Ghz. Those days are long gone.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
For me, the issue has never been speed. It has been "not enough channels" and/or "want more range". Of course, this move can at least help with channels. I don't think it will do much for range. But if devices are allowed to just spread spectrum across more and more of the frequencies, it won't help much with channels/congestion either.
What can be done in clear air with line of sight means nothing. The fact that 5ghz has very little building penetration is well known. Its great for single rooms (like restaurants or in the cubical-sphere of an office, but even around the house it can be problematic when trying to penetrate some walls.
Now now, no need to invoke logic in this discussion. The mods already put me down 2 points in 'troll' for pointing out how the FCC is anything but a neutral party in all of this. You keep it up, they'll mod you -99 for being smart. ;)
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Yeah, because all our home routers have 35 dBi antenna. Or not. That antenna only amplifies the signal by about 3000 times. I forgot that's typical of an average user's home wifi. Or not.
His definition of long range is far more apropos to the real world than some laboratory experiment.
Effective wifi range is less than 90 feet in the real world.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If it wasn't for the FCC, we wouldn't have any usable wireless communications (wifi/cell/radio/etc) today
care to elaborate? because when wireless was new, i was working in networking. I even wrote some early drivers for 802.11 and in no way shape or form did anything you said happen. sources please??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Why do we need this? They're saying that it can get 1gbps in speeds, but the distance is going to be crap and that's still substantially faster than typical connections in the US. On the odd case where you're wanting to move data that quickly, you'd probably not mind connecting up a cable anyways.
And in most cases that's too far. I really wish that WAP manufacturers would develop lower powered equipment that would be useful in apartment buildings. Because 1gbps or even 150mbps isn't particularly useful if it's being split 4 or 5 ways because they're overlapping.
Please, radio signals aren't going to go any faster. They're trying to make more frequencies available thereby provide more bandwidth.
And this is a common use of wifi? That's sort of the point, few people out there are saturating even a 150mbps connection at the present, giving 1gbps over wifi makes no sense at the present and just means that when we get closer to the point where it does makes sense, the spectrum will be filled up with all these devices that were made with earlier technology.
And yes, if we never move forward, it took the ISPs in Seattle a decade to move beyond 4mbps connections and in some parts of the city, they still had 1.5mbps max up until recently. The rate at which the country is moving forward on this, we could be talking about 20 years before connections like that are common.
If you have 20 people on that 150mbps wireless network pushing around data, you're lucky if you can get 5mbps out of it. In reality, it'll be a lot slower. With gigabit you can push around data a lot faster with lots of clients.
The other use case is wireless bridges with directional antennas, although you'd probably use 60Ghz for that.
The new spectrum allocation for unlicensed use around 5.9 GHz would conflict with previously-planned allocation for connected vehicle (aka "V2V") technology. The extent of potential interference between these differing uses is not yet understood. I hope this WiFi plan does not blow it for the auto and traffic safety industries.
See http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130221/AUTO01/302210334/1148/auto01/Auto-industry-worried-FCC-decision-open-Wi-Fi-spectrum-could-hinder-technology for more.
I was going to post that, too. I don't give a crap about my wireless speed. My wireless speed's limiting factor is my internet speed, which is quite frankly crap, and I don't have a choice. And I live in the heart of the downtown of one of the bigger cities in one of the biggest states in the US. It's pretty ridiculous. (You want to talk about monopolies... I miss the days when if an ISP sucked, you could use a different one...)
I'd like to see commercial use of this spectrum illegal.
IMHO, the issue isn't too many consumer devices, it's too much commercial use of the spectrum (like the city-granted monopoly wireless franchise) that insists on using the good channels at max power everywhere.
I don't have an issue with businesses using wifi internally or the coffee shop, but I do think it's crappy that the spectrum meant for localized, low-power usage gets stepped on by entities broadcasting everywhere at max power.
It makes me want to point directional antennas at the municipal wifi antennas and just pump noise at them on all channels and let them "accept all interference."
The real problem right now with DFS is that a large chunk of the current 5GHz spectrum (5470-5725) is actually required to use it. So, of the 555MHz, 255 of it is actually more or less unusable for carriers due to the constraints imposed upon it. Since you typically provision a new sector with the current interference in mind, it's possible to set an AP to a "good" channel, and connect a client to it, only to have DFS kick it to a new channel when it hears relevant interference. Causing the AP to move to a subpar channel, possibly one that has a lot of interference on the client end (Because the AP does the choosing, and doesn't take into consideration client noise levels on every channel - too much work when you've got 20-30 clients on one AP).
Anyways, more spectrum is always good. But if we could somehow migrate radar and such away from 5GHz, that would be a huge improvement on wireless broadband speeds. 5GHz is actually used a lot for WISPs as it has a much higher throughput capacity and seems to do better over longer distances than 2.4Ghz.
I'd be interested in seeing what sort of catches comes with this new spectrum being freed up. If it's more DFS spectrum, I don't see how this is really going to help long-term. If it's actually free, clear spectrum being freed than it could actually greatly help WISPs gain more speed as they can reduce the overlap between channels.