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Cisco Unveils Amazing New Wireless Plans
StDave writes "Yesterday Cisco announced a very cool technology. It is a 44Mb wireless technology that doesn't require line of sight and has a range of 30 miles. Take your ADSL line on the road with you. " Wow - they've found a way to use the "ghosting" caused by obstructions to tv and cell signals. Base units will cost around 150,000$ and the transceivers will be under 500$, with start of marketing sometime around June.
This kind of system gives a small to medium size isp a chance to break the monopoly on broadband (DSL/Cable) Internet connections. In my area (SE RI/MA), (Cox) cable internet is unavailable, MediaOne RoadRunner is nonexistant, DSL is a year off, T1 is overpriced and ISDN is crappy. If an existing dialup isp implimented this technology, it would be a great way to move into the high bandwidth market. Someone doing this could force broadband companies to compete, which is good.
What about security though? I assume they'll have link level encryption.
I've been looking for something like this since my days as an undergrad. Wireless has the unique ability to take all your expenditures and put them up front. I can see a local ISP buying two or three of these and having the same coverage as they do now. After that they just have to collect enough money to pay for overhead and the P&I on the loans.
There are problems though. In my area a 30 mile radius encompasses a few million people. Is there the ability for orthogonal coding or seperate channels, or is this bandwidth shared per foot print? How many orthogonal channels are capabale in a footprint? If it's not a lot this could be worse then cable modems (I used to work with cable modems in high density installations about 10 years ago, and after the first large group gets on you wish they hadn't).
If I recall my Future Tech class correctly, a few cable-alternative services have been using MMDS for nearly 20 years. I'm pretty sure that Cleveland and New Orleans services still exist today. It was cheaper to set up MMDS towers than to string cable through an already-dense wire-line infrastructure, apparently. Are there other markets outside of the U.S. that currently make use of MMDS?
;-) Before I get myself into a cosmological debate, I'll just stop here.
Still, it's very cool to have yet another fat pipe, especially since it's wireless. I'm just sort of puzzled that the article seems to be implying that MMDS is some sort of fantastic new invention. The Cisco tech's a novel use of the spectrum, granted, but the bandwidh's been there for a while; since the beginning of time if you want to be literal
-Chris
If shared, then over a radios of 30 miles it's not necessarily a whole lot -- especially in the city.
If per station... err... Please mommy?
-- Slashdot sucks.
While not terribly difficult in theory, that it works over such distances is an impressive feat of engineering. However, I would like to see how it works in the real world. If it compensates for interference by lots of resending, dropping bandwidth, that's fine, but if it cuts out, that's a problem.
While I don't doubt the article, I want to see it in production before I praise them too much.
One thing that I've always wondered, why do we see so few high bandwidth wireless technology. I mean, one should be able to just use more frequencies. I guess that there is a real shortage of available frequencies. I wonder how much of that is technical hurdles and how much is beaurocratic messes between the DOD, FCC, etc., fighting over it.
Well, as IP carries more and more information, I wonder if we'll be able to reclaim all the bandwidth from audio/video broadcasts as the world moves digital. HDTV promises more (over the airwaves) channels because the signal is smaller... that seems a little silly. People that want more channels currently have Cable and DSS options, and Telephone will do so too. I think that society has more uses for the airwaves than broadcasting more garbage. As long as people get reasonable channels for their kids, news, and evening entertainment, I think that society would be better served by allowing new technologies to claim the bandwidth... but that's just me.
On the other hand, more radio stations with lower barriers to entry (licenses trump the real expenses) so that there are real alternative stations instead of the same drivel on all of them.
Alex
1) What kind of security will be implemented? What kind of ecyrption will they use to make sure no one will catch all my "bits and packets" (hehehe kind of like "bits and pieces") and seeing all my pr0n?!?
2) I have a cellular phone from a certain digital provider that will remain nameless (::cough:: sprint pcs
Charlie
-- .sig files go when they die?
Child: Mommy, where do
Mother: HELL! Straight to hell!
I've never been the same since.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
Nice tech and all (I work w/Cisco prod all day long, and am a cheerleader most of the time) but there is no way that this will free us from telecoms. Distance limitations are unacceptable, unless someone wanted to build a system that bounced data from one side of the country to another using this ... and that would be very prohibitively expensive.
I like the tech, on the other hand, if it can be developed as a service-provider based alternative to microwave. I have seen DS3 microwave systems going moderate distances across a metro area, and you end up saving the cost of the hardware very quickly when compared to paying local loop fees for that kind of circuit. If this could be rolled out by a motorola as a point-to-point connection between business buildings, with cpe hardware costing a few hundred dollars, they could bank.
Maybe that mythical Metro Area Network will emerge eventually, after all...
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
Technical specs at http://www.cisco.com/w arp/public/cc/cisco/mkt/servprod/wt2700/
Hmm,
Here in the UK, BT have announced that a 512Kbs ADSL line will cost the end user 50 pounds a month plus installation and equipment costs. If this new Cisco wireless stuff really can give me 44Mbs all to myself with no connect charges... I'll buy one straight away.
Hopefully Cisco won't delay selling this stuff in the UK. (which is what normally happens) I could see quite a few people in the UK switching to this kind of technology if it can deliver what it promises. (Like we all believe press releases...)
Where do I sign up?
On another note, if I could get 44Mbs over 30 miles, would I get 4.4Mbs over 300 miles? I realise that is an oversimplification, but 4Mbs+ over 100s of miles would be a godsend to countries with poor infrastructure (e.g. Africa, Russia)
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Coincidence?
Maybe so, but even if it is, you've now got virtually all the ingredients needed for "car traffic control" systems. All you'd need, to finish it off, would be some decent sensors on the cars, to detect what objects are near, and some means for a central computer to determine optimal paths.
The latter part is almost done, with existing car navigation systems, but this would need to be a bit more refined.
I see a lot of potential for this device, far beyond mere wireless web surfing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
i wonder why this would preclude mobile operations, though? i imagine it would relatively trivial to set up a repeater system, linked to a server bank.
:)
regardless, i can't wait to see the antennae sprouting up everywhere! beautiful!
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
While I'd like some more technical information on this, my first thought was that this may be the (relatively) inexpensive solution we're looking for to solve the infamous "last mile" problem.
I'm not sure how much it costs to lay fiber, but I'm willing to bet it's not cheap. I'm betting it's even more expensive in more dense, urban areas. While your average Joe can't afford to cough up $150K for the base unit, your average telco *can*.
Imagine getting your home net access wirelessly. Your ISP could sell or lease you the receiver unit in much the same way that some people lease their cable modems. The connection speeds are higher anyway (is this 44 megabits shared? anyone know?).
The increasing use of wireless networking technology has us all focused on dinky little PDA things, dreaming of roaming connectivity. It had never even dawned on me that wireless connections might be the solution to the last mile problem.
I'd be a little worried if I was a cable provider...
Anthony
^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
Why do you feel will it blow ISP's out of the water? Someone has to provide the pipe to the backbone and that's what the ISP's are there for. What this will eliminate is the phone company. And lower the costs of phone lines to an ISP. Imagine owning an ISP and not having to pay for 10,000 customer phone lines each month and just paying the one time cost for one $150,000 base station. Looks like a good deal to me.
Why don't telcos just run fiber to each house? Physical connections are very expensive. May I recommend the hobby of packet radio to you? Its a very cheap way to send packets over a network that can be independent of a monopoly or one central location.
Geeks want portable networks and computers because it's generally assumed that if you can bring your network wherever you go, you will suddenly end up going to the pub, discos and friends more often, thus having some sort of life. It wouldn't actually be like that of course, but it's a nice enough thought.
Doesn't it seem like the days of the high powered transmitter broadcasting 80,000 watts of music power are over? I predict there will no longer be high powered TV and radio transmitters but instead we'll have small transcevers on every block covering just that block, channeling TV and radio on demand over the same protocols as internet traffic. They're already going to deallocate the FM, AM, and TV bands. Why not just make that the end of high powered transmissions and make us all use cell recievers.
I'm surprised at the amount of response to what is basically puffery from Cisco marketing. Those of us in DC or San Francisco have been able to use Ricochet wireles for a few years now. True, the speed is 28.8 kbps, but Metricom is rolling out R2 in early 2000 to 28 markets. R2 will be ~128kbps, fully wireless, and work at up to 70 miles per hour, i.e. driving down the highway. It's been testing okay, and should be priced between $50-100 per month. IMHO, this is a lot more interesting right now. Yours truly, Mr. X
Also, European mobile phones generally use the 900mhz band. All US cell phone providers I am aware of use 1900mhz, so unless you have a dual-band phone using that wavelength, you're SOL (many European dual-band phones use 900/1800.) In any case, most dual-band European phones I've tried in the US have poor range compared to local PCS phones.
What I really want to see is the toys Qualcomm was talking about a while back. That'd really make wireless data traffic fun. And if this Cisco bit can do even local roaming, like ricochet, you're still doing very well.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
At 150k/base station it's gotta be comparable to cable/DSL (if you can serve something in the 800 customers range).
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for strong link encryption. The last time I looked at wireless LAN transceivers, the products that had link encryption were limited to NSA friendly 40-bit keys. Digital wireless phones are even worse. The NSA and FBI say "jump", the vendors ask "how high?".
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The article talks about using the ghosting effect caused by office blocks etc.
So, will it work in the areas that need bandwidth the most- RURAL areas?
I don't understand why there is such a rush to provide more and more bandwidth for cities. Surely the bandwidth shortage is in rural areas, which often can't get ISDN let alone cable or ADSL? And why the hell would anyone want to work from home if their office was less than five miles away?
I'll never understand those townie folk... :-)
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Of course encrypted tunneling to a server solves the on-the-air-in-the-clear problem, too. (But it also provides a fixed central location for a physical tap.)
Perhaps a plurality of encrypted-tunnel servers? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Cheaper and *Faster*: http://www.spectrumwireless.net Check out the 2011DS units. With this system, you can get upwards of 150Mbps of aggregate bandwidth per tower/building. The 'trancievers' are more expensive, but are full-fledged routers, with a big feature set, and great throughput. The base station cost is less than 1/3 for a maxxed out rooftop.
The use of ghosting is to get around things that block line-of-sight. In rural areas you don't have a forest of buildings. If it's flat, you have line of sight. If it's hilly, treat the hills as "buildings" and pick up a ghost.
If it's a forest of trees you might have a problem.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
problem A: If you use a non directional antenna (easiest to set up, no alignment issues) you are then presented with the amount of processing needed to weed out signal from reflections - it is enormous.
Your antenna also has no gain - a big problem with lossy low power MMDS or LMDS systems. No signal = lots of noise = low bandwidth or high error rate.
Why not use a vaguely-directional antenna (no serious alignment problems, picks up primary and/or several major ghosts), then pick the strongest handful of unmoving signals, delay them into sync, and add them? (I thought the latter was what Metricom was already doing with their non-directional antenna.)
The box might take a minute or so to train itself on startup. But with the base and remote fixed the training wouldn't have to be tweaked in real-time after that.
Is there something I've missed?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way