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New MU-MIMO Standard Could Allow For Gigabit WiFi Throughput
MojoKid (1002251) writes "Today, Qualcomm is announcing full support for a new wireless transmission method that could significantly boost performance on crowded networks. The new standard, MU-MIMO (Multiple User — Multiple Input and Multiple Output) has a clunky name — but could make a significant difference to home network speeds and make gigabit WiFi a practical reality. MU-MIMO is part of the 802.11ac Release 2 standard, so this isn't just a custom, Qualcomm-only feature. In SU-MIMO mode, a wireless router creates time slices for every device it detects on the network. Every active device on the network slows down the total system bandwidth — the router has to pay attention to every device, and it can only pay attention to one phone, tablet, or laptop at a time. The difference between single-user and multi-user configurations is that where SU can only serve one client at a time and can therefore only allocate a fraction of total bandwidth to any given device, MU can create groups of devices and communicate with all three simultaneously."
And whats stopping you from plugging in your own WIFI router? Which you should have done anyway.
Are they providing you a Gig Internet connection? If not, then it doesn't really matter so much if you have a Gigabit-capable wireless connection. On the other hand, if you need Gig wireless connectivity between devices/systems within your network - you might consider springing for a wireless infrastructure to support that kind of connectivity.
I guess I thought this kind of thing was already out there, if not sounds solid to me.
The title could lead some to believe that MU-MIMO is increasing the peak throughput, which is not the case. Spatial multiplexing (SM) MIMO allows to have as many independent concurrent streams as there are antennas on receiver and transceiver (the min of both sides actually). So with 4 antennas on the AP and 3 on the station for example, you can have 3 streams. With SU-MIMO, all three streams are used between the AP and a single station. With MU-MIMO the AP can use its streams with more stations: for example 1 stream to station A, and 2 streams to station B. There is a little bit of degradation of course compared to single use. It's a win when you have for example a 4 antennas AP and only 2 antennas stations, then instead of leaving half the capacity on the floor you can make use of all the streams. But it doesn't increase the peak rate possible with SU-MIMO, it increases the AP capacity when devices do not have as many antennas as the AP, which is the usual case.
What would be interesting is if the groups of devices could have their own individual WPA2 encryption key. That way, one wireless segment can use multiple keys in PSK mode. This way, if a smartphone is lost or changed out, just one password needs deleted rather than rekeying every device on the subnet.
Couldn't make it all the way to his third sentence, eh?
What a great, informative reply! I learned something. So rare on Slashdot lately. :-/
So, is 802.11ac a polling MAC layer?
-- Sent from a computer.
...Token Ring is back?
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
You can do that easily enough as it is. One way is to set up multiple SSIDs per radio with separate PSKs. Another way is to use WPA2 Enterprise with one username/password pair per device.
They did that to me too, no longer offering modem purchases, or modem only.
I was able to get it into bridging mode, but it was a big pain on the phone (they asked for a reason, and I just said work VPN equipment, and every rep I spoke too (I talked to 3 because switching modes revealed the one they shipped me was broken and I had to get a new one) knew what I meant and was super helpful, but I was kinda cranky that they locked the ability to bridge from the admin interface. The Modem / AP where I work allows the customer to turn on bridge mode.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
...what we need more is connectivity and reliability.
The new standard, MU-MIMO (Multiple User — Multiple Input and Multiple Output) has a clunky name — but could make a significant difference...
I thought clunky names were an engineering tradition, like CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection), which means, Listening Among Others for a Chance to Speak.
MU-MIMO is part of wave 2 of the 802.11ac standard. Right now every shipping product is wave 1.
If we are lucky the routers will get wave 2 this year, or if not this year definitely next. Apart from allowing more devices to share the same cell MU-MIMO is nice in that it reduces power consumption of devices like phones, as they only see the packets for their stream. Wave 2 also bring doubling of the bandwidth (if the spectrum is available) and other efficiences which translates to 2..3 times the speeds of wave 1. This means unlike wave 1, wave 2 should be able get 1Gb/s in the real world.
All very nice. The only issue is we won't see wave 2 client chips in laptops, phone and the like until 2016 at the earliest. So unless you are doing back to back routers or range extending, don't expect this shiny new Qualcomm chip to make see any measurable improvement in any of your existing 802.11ac devices, or in any you buy in the next 2 years.