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Huawei Successfully Tests New 802.11ax WiFi Standard At 10.53Gbps

Mark.JUK (1222360) writes "Chinese ICT developer Huawei has confirmed that it was able to achieve a record transmission data rate of 10.53Gbps on 5GHz frequency bands in laboratory trials of their new 802.11ax WiFi (WLAN) wireless networking standard. The testing, which was conducted at Huawei's campus in Shenzhen, used a mix of MIMO-OFDA, intelligence spectrum allocation, interference coordination and hybrid access to achieve the result and the new technology could hit the market during 2018."

85 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. I'm so excited by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

    Better, faster ways to access inept content.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:I'm so excited by haruchai · · Score: 3, Funny

      Of course.
        If you had access crappy content slowly, you'd be royally pissed when it finally loads. Used to happen to me all the time on 14.4k dialup.
      At least if it loads quickly, I can write it off faster and go look for slightly less inept content.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    2. Re:I'm so excited by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Indeed! I don't care what speed marks they hit, I still would not use one of their back door infested devices even if you gave me one. They got their start by sending out a flood of "workers" who stole code from other high end manufacturers. I worked at one manufacturer of large telecom devices who lost a metric ass load of data to them in a breach (estimated 1/2tb of source code and schematics). Mostly the manufacturers fault for having extremely poor security, and happened before my contract stint with them. I didn't renew my contract because management didn't care about security for end users either.

      Yes it was proven that the code was stolen because Huawei started selling knock off devices in Asia and Europe which were reverse engineered. That also happens to be how I know they had back doors built in.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    3. Re:I'm so excited by amorsen · · Score: 1

      So you know that Huawei devices are back-doored because they are knock-offs of back-doored devices from Western manufacturers?

      I must have read that wrong somehow.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    4. Re:I'm so excited by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      came here to say this. yo dawg, I heard you like getting owned so I built faster wifi so I could own you while you surf the internet at the same speed because the wifi speed >>> your crappy internet connection anyway.

    5. Re:I'm so excited by s.petry · · Score: 1

      I must have read that wrong somehow.

      Either that or you don't understand how easy it is to add additional code and circuits (containing logic) to a big ass ISP router.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    6. Re:I'm so excited by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      Better, faster ways to access inept content.

      Its not the content that matters, but the bragging rights on how you access that content.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    7. Re:I'm so excited by amorsen · · Score: 1

      I have not claimed it is difficult. You did not correct my reading.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    8. Re:I'm so excited by dougisfunny · · Score: 1

      How about the Dewalt DW616?

      --
      This is not the funny you're looking for.
    9. Re:I'm so excited by russotto · · Score: 1

      I don't know, I'm really impressed that they managed that sort of data transfer rate while also sending copies of all the data to both the NSA AND Chinese Intelligence.

    10. Re:I'm so excited by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Funny, but remember where this company is from. NSA installs their back doors after manufacturers make devices. This particular company _is_ the Chinese government as all large Chines companies are. No middle man needed, and the embedding of back doors because it's done in production is not as easy to spot.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    11. Re:I'm so excited by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Name a router that has no backdoors.

      A round one?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    12. Re:I'm so excited by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh shut the fuck up.

      You American perverts back-door and monitor everything under the sun, but then you cry like little girls the moment there is the slightest chance someone else can do it, before there is even proof.

      Fucking cry babies.

    13. Re:I'm so excited by Thor+Ablestar · · Score: 1

      NSA: Put this backdoor in your router.
      US COMPANY: fuck you.
      NSA: read this magic letter.
      US COMPANY: Ok do anything you like.

      MYSELF: Oh, such a nice hardware! Is it supported by OpenWRT?

    14. Re:I'm so excited by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed! I don't care what speed marks they hit, I still would not use one of their back door infested devices even if you gave me one.

      Hey! Calm down, we're talking about Huawei here, not Cisco.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    15. Re:I'm so excited by Mark+of+the+North · · Score: 1

      Exactly. There are lots of decent router distributions (and not all are Linux). I haven't tried all of them, but so far my favourite is pfSense. But for the sort of hardware in wireless routers (the subject of this article) OpenWRT is more appropriate. Not having to worry as much about spying is nice.

      Just be prepared for a significant wait between the release of 802.11ax hardware and OpenWRT support. Support for 802.11n took quite some time.

    16. Re:I'm so excited by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      NSA: Put this backdoor in your router.
      US COMPANY: fuck you.
      NSA: read this magic letter.
      US COMPANY: Ok do anything you like.

      MYSELF: Oh, such a nice hardware! Is it supported by OpenWRT?

      NSA: Hahaha, another sucker that thinks the bits he can see is the whole packege.

    17. Re:I'm so excited by eric_harris_76 · · Score: 1

      or slightly more ept content.

      --
      There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
    18. Re:I'm so excited by bhiestand · · Score: 1

      ... you really think China isn't doing the same with Huawei? As an added bonus, we know China will pass trade secrets to Chinese corporations.

      --
      SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
    19. Re:I'm so excited by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      ... you really think China isn't doing the same with Huawei?

      I was aiming for insightful-funny and you know what? So far, that's precisely what I've got. And because this is slashdot, I also got a whoosh! Thanks for that.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    20. Re:I'm so excited by bhiestand · · Score: 1

      Damnit. That's what I get for posting within 30 minutes of waking up.

      In my defense, I do hear people seriously arguing that position.

      --
      SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
    21. Re:I'm so excited by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      In my defense, I do hear people seriously arguing that position.

      Well, you must not be new here.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    22. Re:I'm so excited by haruchai · · Score: 1

      I suppose but none of the ept content appeals to me

      http://www.acronymfinder.com/E...

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    23. Re:I'm so excited by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      An even faster way for me to hit my chintzy Suddenlink usage cap earlier in the month.

  2. Now the real question is by kungfuj35u5 · · Score: 2

    When if ever will 10gigE be affordable. Is the asic design on those switches really that insane?

    1. Re:Now the real question is by silas_moeckel · · Score: 1

      It's affordable now, your looking at about 100 bucks a port.

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
    2. Re:Now the real question is by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      You do that with materials like 2 mils (or 0.05mm if you prefer), or half the thickness of a typical sheet of paper.

      that's not that hard. I usually slice my paper in half anyway so I get two sheets for the price of one.

    3. Re:Now the real question is by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      You should put up a YouTube how-to on that.

    4. Re:Now the real question is by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      Gin-Su, bitches!

    5. Re:Now the real question is by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Let me know when it's built into a $80 home router.

    6. Re:Now the real question is by silas_moeckel · · Score: 1

      For what purpose? Do you think you need more bandwidth to saturate 802.11ac? It takes a couple sata/sas attached SSD's to read/write (or a dozen conventional hard drives) at 1.25GBs. Do you think you need that sort of speeds for your laptop?

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
    7. Re:Now the real question is by symbolset · · Score: 1

      Google is working on 10Gbps fiber to the home, with a 3 year timeline. When asked why they should do such a crazy thing the project manager replied: "We can, so why not?"

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    8. Re:Now the real question is by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Thin clients are back, streaming games from your PC to your Steam box will suck for 8k resolutions. Encoding 8k in real time will be hard, expect it to be at most lightly compressed. It could use a lot of bandwidth at 120fps.

    9. Re:Now the real question is by silas_moeckel · · Score: 1

      Latency alone is a reason you do not want to compress the output stream to send over the network to decompress. Actual video 8k fits with reasonable encoding over gigabit. Uncompressed 1080p 30fps 8 bit encoding is just under gigabit speeds. I doubt your going to find any thin client that is not going to pack hardware decoding.

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
    10. Re:Now the real question is by danknight48 · · Score: 1

      your you're

      You're You are

    11. Re:Now the real question is by GNious · · Score: 1

      Thinking that if transport-layer can handle 10gb/sec/channel(?), then when the 35-or-so APs around here are using this system, perhaps I can get more than 5mb/sec on my connection to my AP?

      Sure, we don't need it if we we're completely isolated, but here's to hoping that the next version of WiFi improves on how interference from near-by APs is handled :)

    12. Re:Now the real question is by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      It's a hardware encoder called NVENC on nvidia GPUs, it is used on GRID but also as a consumer solution - "Shadowplay", to record gaming sessions instead of doing it the CPU intensive way with something like FRAPS, and streaming the game to a Tegra 4 or a Steam box.

      AMD has the "VCE" but I don't know if it's partial or full hardware encoding.
      Microsoft sells RemoteFX which has dedicated encoder cards, proprietary and may only work with Direct3D apps.

    13. Re:Now the real question is by silas_moeckel · · Score: 1

      You have 35 AP's already using 5ghz?

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
    14. Re:Now the real question is by Bitmanhome · · Score: 1

      See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Yup, I've been watching too much How It's Made.

      --
      Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
    15. Re:Now the real question is by GNious · · Score: 1

      2.4GHz, and I'm not the owner of those APs, people in other apartments are. Not a single single 5GHz network around here, since I had to stop using my shitty Linksys-by-CISCO router.
      If I open the list of WLAN networks on my mac (the one in the menu-bar), the list occassionally happen to be long enough to actually break the UI.
      Best part is that the majority of the networks are on channel 1; local ISP is now, by default, telling anyone complaining about issues with their internet, how to change channel.

      Note: Most of the time, it tops out around 20 networks - no idea why it fluctuates that much.

    16. Re:Now the real question is by laie_techie · · Score: 1

      Uncompressed video is almost always stored in YUV420 format. This uses 1.5 words/pixel (1 for luminance for each pixel, 2 for chroma for each 4 pixels).

      1920 * 1080 * 1.5 * 8 * 30 = 746 Mbps

      We call an architecture 32 bits or 64 bits because that's the size of a word. Eight bits is an octet, which is almost always the same size as a byte.

      According to Wikipedia, YUV420 uses 6 bytes per 4 pixel. Your math is correct (746.5 Mbps), but you should be careful with the terms you use.

  3. Nyquist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Granted I didn't RTFA but doesn't that contradict the Nyquist rate of the channel? Or is there something more sophisticated going on here.

    1. Re:Nyquist by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Most likely there's still enough room to play with modulation.

    2. Re:Nyquist by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      I didn't see much in the article, but seeing the following PDF there appears to be multiple technologies at play. One of them being 'channel bonding':

      http://www.kics.or.kr/Home/Use...

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    3. Re:Nyquist by indeterminator · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For data transmission rates, you'll want Shannon's channel capacity, which is not contradicted:
      (a) SNR is a factor of channel capacity
      (b) It applies for a single channel. With MIMO you have multiple channels (not independent from each other, but with smart channel coding you get gains over SISO).

    4. Re:Nyquist by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Which basically means it will have a range of three meters or something like that. ;-)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Nyquist by skids · · Score: 1

      Or is there something more sophisticated going on here.

      Spatial channels. You actually transmit on the same wavelength from multiple antenna, but (oversimplification) you aim one beam at one antenna and a different beam at a different antenna.

    6. Re:Nyquist by willy_me · · Score: 1

      With MIMO you have multiple channels

      I was under the impression that MIMO gives you multiple antenna to facilitate beam forming. Channel bandwidth requirements do not change nor does the number of channels required. MIMO still only requires 1 channel. A quick wiki search appears to agree with this impression.

      Now you can also use multiple channels but this is independent of MIMO technology. Both techniques can be used together - and typically are which might explain the confusion. Either that or I am confused which is always a possibility....

  4. laboratory setting missing real world issues with by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

    laboratory setting missing real world issues with wifi that will slow it down.

  5. Cap by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So I'll be able to hit my monthly Comcast cap in 60 secs?

    SUPER!!

  6. Re:laboratory setting missing real world issues wi by hjf · · Score: 1

    it was probably tested at 10cm...

  7. More bits then hertz? by forty-2 · · Score: 1

    I call shenanigans.

    --
    never drink kool-aid from a big vat
    1. Re:More bits then hertz? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why?? Standards from the 50s supports multiple symbols per period?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-shift_keying

    2. Re:More bits then hertz? by forty-2 · · Score: 1

      Good read, thanks!

      --
      never drink kool-aid from a big vat
    3. Re:More bits then hertz? by isdnip · · Score: 1

      That's multiple bits per symbol, not symbols per period.
      1024QAM, for instance, has 10 bits encoded in 1024 possible values of the phase and amplitude. It's one symbol though. High-speed communications uses a combination of techniques, including OFDM (parallel, lower-speed carriers) and MIMO (separate transmitters).

  8. Huawei is a Big NO in USA by Greg666NYC · · Score: 1

    For now, this technology is out of reach for average American. Huawei refused to bribe D.C politicians. Until we see some money flowing, new cars on driveways in Virginia suburbs we can only dream of higher WLAN speeds.

    1. Re:Huawei is a Big NO in USA by symbolset · · Score: 1

      They can license the radio modulation technologies to others for implementation.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
  9. Huh? by suso · · Score: 1

    Maybe its still too early in the day and I should finish my coffee first before posting to Slashdot, but I'd be interested to know how a frequency of 5 billion per second could carry 10 billion bits of information per second. Hopefully someone could explain.

    1. Re:Huh? by amorsen · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nothing limits you to one bit-per-second per baud. 9600 bps modems were, IIRC, 2400 baud with 4 bits per Hz. (Higher than that it got a bit shady because they started optimizing for being encoded in a digital phone line).

      VDSL2 goes up to 32768-QAM, which is 15 bits per symbol. I do not know whether any actual phone lines exist with a sufficient signal-to-noise-ratio to make that coding useful.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    2. Re:Huh? by suso · · Score: 1

      Thanks, looks like several Slashdotters will be learning something new today.

    3. Re:Huh? by ledow · · Score: 1

      You just make sure there's more than one bit of information per "cycle" in the signal.

      That's achieved by various methods, many clever and mathematical, some as simple as changing the phase of the signal (imagine a perfect sine wave at 5Hz - now suddenly change it to a bit further through the wave, you get a spike, a tangent, a visible change, but you're still on 5Hz) - the same way you can have AM (amplitude modulation) on a certain frequency, and FM (frequency modulation) over the top of it, this is called PM (phase modulation). When you join all these techniques together, get into MIMO, add all sorts of clever coding theory, you can get as much as you like from the signal - the only limit is how accurate you are sending and receiving.

      Modems used this. Your car stereo uses some of it. Your mobile phone uses it. And wireless access points basically would be awful without it (equivalent to "radio modems", which can be pretty atrocious in their speeds for consumer-level tech).

    4. Re:Huh? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      When you join all these techniques together, get into MIMO, add all sorts of clever coding theory, you can get as much as you like from the signal - the only limit is how accurate you are sending and receiving.

      Noise and interference limit how many bits you can have per symbol on a channel and the lack of independence in the channels limits the gains from MIMO*. There are still gains to be had but you get into diminishing returns in terms of bandwidth delivered to a given location (bandwidth delivered to many different locations is another matter, there are major gains to be had from cross-cell mimo in cellular systems but also major implementation difficulties).

      * MIMO relies on some clever maths to create inddependent channels out of non-independent channels but that math has the side affect of amplifying the noice.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    5. Re:Huh? by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      I wonder how much marketing jargon has contributed to these misunderstandings. Using terms such as "bandwidth" and "broadband" when referring to data rate will not make information theory any easier.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    6. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Channels in the 5Gz band are wider than a single frequency. So you can transmit on multiple frequencies in parallel within your band.

      Even within a band you can encode bits at both the high and low points of the carrier wave, which gives you two bits per Hz. You could divide the wave up further to get even more.

  10. Re:blah !! by bobstreo · · Score: 1

    what the big deal if the router to the ISP is a measly 1.5mbps or 10mbps ? like you can download faster than your ISP can provide
    The bottle neck is the up and download link to your ISP. They need to solve that problem.

    Perhaps the 802.xx working group should work with the ISP to find that solution first.

    Perhaps to stream the 4k or higher videos from your storage to your display device.

  11. Shannon by Erich · · Score: 2

    Information Capacity Frequency Bandwidth * log2(1+signal-to-noise ratio) "In the lab" typically means "BNC cables" which give you very high signal-to-noise ratios. And in MIMO you can potentially treat each pair of antennas a separate channel. You use fancy techniques to increase the SNR for each channel. The nice thing about the 5GHz spectrum is that the frequency band is pretty large up there, and not as much interference with other unlicensed things (phones, microwaves, other wireless communication users... though as it gets more popular that will change) as the lower bands. The not-so-nice thing about the higher frequencies is that they tend to attenuate rapidly when the signal is going through something thicker than air.

    --

    -- Erich

    Slashdot reader since 1997

    1. Re:Shannon by Erich · · Score: 2

      Aw, crap. That should read: Information capacity < frequency bandwidth * log2(1+SNR)

      --

      -- Erich

      Slashdot reader since 1997

    2. Re:Shannon by poptix · · Score: 1

      The not-so-nice thing about the higher frequencies is that they tend to attenuate rapidly when the signal is going through something thicker than air.

      Not necessarily a bad thing, since it means that you can have your strong local signals but don't pollute the spectrum in an entire neighborhood. We would have all been a lot better off if baby monitors, cordless phones, etc had all started in the mid GHz range.

      --
      Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
    3. Re:Shannon by sgt+scrub · · Score: 1

      Having multiple connection points for things like MPTCP, to "complicate your traffic", is a good thing though.

      --
      Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
  12. Great. My WiFi will be much faster than my ISP. by mmell · · Score: 1
    Not that it isn't already - and not that it takes away one bit from the significance of this new technology - but I'd really love to see someone fix that "last mile" of my internet connection.

    Hey, if this is really that fast - I wonder if it could make mesh networking a viable alternative to the current (centralized) form of internet access? After all, why should all of those OLPC recipients be the only beneficiaries of mesh network technology? It would be like TOR for internet access, making it a free, publicly available utility instead of a luxury (and for those who don't think internet access is a luxury, let's remember that there are a lot of us who lived and functioned quite well before the internet was invented).

    Wardriving and free WiFi hotspots are only the first, feeble attempts to make the internet the free and open communications mechanism it needs to be, because despite my previous assertion that we did just fine before the internet it's nearly impossible to function nowadays without internet access. More and more entities require an email address, the way they used to require telephone or postal mail access.

  13. Re:laboratory setting missing real world issues wi by Cley+Faye · · Score: 1

    You're joking, but there is probably a market for very fast, short-range communications. If only to connect all devices on a desk.

  14. It that throuoghput in native mode... by Glasswire · · Score: 1

    ...or monitored mode (where all traffic is spoofed to a Chinese gov't collection site)?
     

  15. Re: Not really interested in faster wifi by markus · · Score: 1

    Sounds like interference from a microwave oven. You need to find the frequency that this microwave operates on, and you should then avoid that channel. The good news is that it is most likely one of your immediate neighbors. So, you could ask them to check on the label or in the manual for the microwave.

  16. Re:Great. My WiFi will be much faster than my ISP. by Glasswire · · Score: 1

    If you ever had a situation where your ISP connection was faster than local routing/networking gear, then you either have some kind of fantastic high bandwidth fiber ISP connection and you've cheaped-out on the quality of your infrastructure gear (very slow equipment) or you have a normal ISP connection and you got REALLY cheap about the quality of your infrastructure gear. (which is almost impossible unless you're using ~10MB stuff from the last century) You internal network wireless/wired should always be much faster than your ISP.

  17. WiGig will be here faster by isdnip · · Score: 1

    Huawei is playing with the 5 GHz band which is becoming crowded, and whose availability has country-by-country exclusions. US rule were just liberalized a smidge but it still has exclusions for radar.

    WIGig uses the 60 GHz band (57-64 GHz) which has a lot more space. It is not quite ready for the mass market, price-wise, but becoming possible in the $100 rage soon. It doesn't penetrate walls well but it's fine for cross-room very fast links.

    1. Re:WiGig will be here faster by Overzeetop · · Score: 1

      That's great, except that most homes happen to have walls. It's like putting railroad tracks down to fix the problem of poor efficiency of rubber tired vehicles, only to find that the majority of cars don't have steel wheels, but rubber tires. But for those folks who have steel wheels, it's gonna be awesome!

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    2. Re:WiGig will be here faster by vandamme · · Score: 1

      I'd rather have across-town links, because I don't need to stream stuff around my house that fast. I need to get it from the internet.

  18. What?! My AC router is out of date?!? by the_skywise · · Score: 1
  19. Re:Cloud computing makes more sense now by ledow · · Score: 2

    Doesn't matter how fast you do that, you won't sell it to gamers just through added latency, control (how the hell are you going to game via a tablet?) and screen-size. Plus who the hell wants to buy two home computers just so they can use one of them from a distance? Look at Steam Home Streaming if you want to do this - I assure you, it has a multitude of limitations even with beefy PC's at both ends.

    The thin-client problem is one that solves only a handful of the problems people have with larger systems (not home installs) and has limitations that see everyone go through "thin-client / fat client / thin client" switches endlessly.

    Fact is, if you have to have two machines to game on one, you're causing yourself problems.

    As someone who's just ripped out a thin-client install in a school (where it was slow, un-updateable, had lots of limitations, etc. and where it's actually been cheaper all along just to put "real" machines into the rooms) I assure you that it's something we would all like the idea of until we tried to use it.

    Not that I can't find a use case for faster Wifi. But, as you point out, 99% of people won't need it until it becomes almost obsolete.

  20. Re:Great. My WiFi will be much faster than my ISP. by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 2

    Hey, if this is really that fast - I wonder if it could make mesh networking a viable alternative to the current (centralized) form of internet access? After all, why should all of those OLPC recipients be the only beneficiaries of mesh network technology?

    Yes. And no. At least, there's no technical reason why not. 5 GHz is attenuated by most residential structural materials by only 1 dB more than 2.4 GHz and there are no microwave ovens and very few cordless phones to contend with in that spectrum. Range and throughput for non-line-of-sight is better than for 802.11a and 802.11b. People in fancy houses would probably want a roof-mounted antennae—red brick attenuates 5 GHz 10.1dB more than 2.4 GHz. Of course, if everybody had an antennae in their attic, everybody would benefit. And therein lies the rub.

    The throughput is possible, the range is there, the compatibility with suburban realities is there, the mesh-compatible spanning tree algorithms are there, but the public will to buy a product that incorporates mesh networking is very nearly nonexistent. It spells doom for a product that depends on the network effect to have zero network effect.

    The problem is connectivity to the rest of the internet.

    Suppose we assume that a given neighborhood has nothing but ancient DSL1 available hardwired. Suppose we further assume that the majority of people in the neighborhood want something better. Suppose we get really generous and assume this device that enables mesh networking is affordable to a presumably somewhat lower income neighborhood (because the cable and phone companies only ignore low income neighborhoods). So all these neighbors buy the device and successfully cover the entire region. Congratulations, they can now talk... to each other.

    Somebody, somewhere, has to connect their device to "the other networks," which we call the Internet, and it had better be a very high bandwidth connection because an entire neighborhood is going to funnel through it. 10 Gbit would be ideal. No individual can pay for that, so everybody in the neighborhood has to chip in every month and oh look, you just created an ISP. Or not, because nobody is going to actually take that last step to provide the required organization and get that connection established. Leastwise, not in most places.

    Meanwhile the adjacent, probably more affluent neighborhood didn't even look up from their lattés—they already have acceptable hardwired connections and inaction is always easier than action and there's very little incentive for them to enable their own mesh. They already have tens of megabits and 10 gigabits shared out 100 ways is... what they already have, but they'd have to actually do something and once again inaction wins.

    Device manufacturers have already followed this line of reasoning from beginning to end and won't even bother to take the first step of manufacturing and affordably pricing a device that can do off-the-shelf mesh networking.

    This is why we can't have nice things.

  21. Re:Great. My WiFi will be much faster than my ISP. by mmell · · Score: 1
    Got it. Thanks.

    I guess this is the same kind of problem which prevents the "WiFi umbrella" concept from taking hold. If not the same, similar.

    (Incidentally - really great explanation. Again, thanks.)

  22. Re:laboratory setting missing real world issues wi by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    And this one would even be NSA- and CIA-friendly! Now I'd rather prefer fiber cables for that myself, though.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  23. Re:blah !! by petermgreen · · Score: 1

    what the big deal if the router to the ISP is a measly 1.5mbps or 10mbps ? like you can download faster than your ISP can provide

    There is a world beyond your shitty little home or small buisness "broadband" connection.

    While theoretical maximum speeds make good headlines the real purpose of advances in wireless communications is not so much supporting higher speeds to a single user as supporting more users of a given speed in a given area.

    The bottle neck is the up and download link to your ISP. They need to solve that problem.

    Other working groups in the IEEE and otherwise have been working on both getting more out of existing infrastructure and producing standards for new infrastructure.

    Unfortunately slow home/small buisness broadband speeds are mostly an economic and/or regulatory problem. We have tapped out what conventional phone lines to the phone exchange can can deliver given their attenuation and noise/interference characteristics and while cable TV cables can carry much more data than phone lines they are fundamentally broadcast networks so available bandwidth per user is limited. To significantly improve from the current point in areas with conventional copper ADSL requires some or all of the infrastructure to be replaced with fiber.

    New last mile infrastructure providers face large hurdles both economic and regulatory and existing monopoly/duopoly providers often see little gain in doing a large scale forklift upgrade of their infrastructure when only a minority will pay significantly more for the higher speeds and when the technology is still improving (so the more they delay the upgrade the better the system they will get in the end).

    Don't get me wrong, I understand your frustration but it's not really something that the IEEE working groups can solve.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  24. No QoS by UberVegeta · · Score: 1

    TFA makes no mention of any kind of Quality of Service support. It's still 802.11, so I guess there wouldn't be (since it's not 802.11e). Given that the 802.11 MAC efficiency tops out at around PHY = 100 Mbps and doesn't really increase thereafter because of collisions (or overheads from preventing collisions), it's probably time we looked for MAC efficiency over PHY rates, as supported in 802.16. But hey, PHY rates let you put a BIGGER NUMBER on the box which means we can SELL FASTER INTERNETS.

    --
    I knew I needed to stop reading Slashdot and finish my PhD when I started to miss articles by Bennett Haselton.
  25. Re:laboratory setting missing real world issues wi by GNious · · Score: 1

    Weren't Intel working on this? Some kind of 60GHz wireless dock, if I recall an old /. article.