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Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card 69

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the wide-open-spaces dept.
krispy78 writes "If you're looking forward to the day your laptop has WiMax built in and can access wireless broadband as easily as WiFi, you're not alone. But the 802.16e mobile WiMax standard is yet to be finalized on paper, and we'll be lucky to see it the first products this side of 2007. In Australia, a wireless PCMCIA card has been released that comes close to the "WiMax ideal". It appears to Windows like a regular WiFi card (no heinous login clients to run) but can pick up wide-area wireless broadband signals. The network that runs the cards ("Navini Ripwave") is apparently being rolled out in USA and other countries too."
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Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card More

Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card

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  • Ireland has had this for a while (Score:5, Informative)

    by donutface ( 847957 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @04:40AM (#13987108)
    Ireland had this for a while, and a lot of people arent happy with the service, hopefully the aussies will do a better job. If your interested check out www.irishbroadband.ie, they also sell "ripwave" modems.
    • I can't find too much info on that site about how they're utilising the features of wimax, but since they only seem to be offering symmetrical 512k, they're missing the best bits....
    • Exactly! I just sent my modem back, glad to get rid of it.

      Problems I had with it were:

      • VERY bad latency (variable from 200 to 2000 ms
      • Some days it dropped out every minute for at least 20 seconds
      • Throughput on busy days was below 2kbyte/s even though it was supposed to be a 512/128 connection.

      Basically it was totally not useable for SSH and Voice-Over-IP (what I wanted to use it for). Also no good for gaming. Downloading was only possible on 'good' days.

      And yes, I wasn't very close to the transmitter

      • ...and you were a lucky bastard with latency from 200-2000ms, mine's 1000ms to infinity and beyond. A long ping to google.com usually comes back with 75%+ packet loss. It's the worst kind of net connection anyone can possibly have. There's a comfort huddle of unhappy ripwave campers here [boards.ie].

        That said, I suspect part of the problem is Irish BB's implementation of Ripwave - even their premium services have severe problems, so who knows? The Aussies may luck out.

        • Yeah, I had the same problem at first. It was REALLY bad then. What I did was I moved the modem to the highest point in the attic (into a little crawlspace right under the top of the roof) and ran a network cable 2 floors down to the computer. Because of the stronger signal I had much better reception there.

          IBB apparently (TV commercial) recommend putting the modem next to the computer which wasn't sufficient in my case. If you have the opportunity (and you can't switch to another provider altogether) I wo

    • Don't .ie and .au both have ISPs which charge per-minute or per-kilobyte fees, mostly because they can get away with it because "it's always been that way?"

      This is what I'm told the situation was like in Dublin last year (ca. middle of 2004), anyway. And I remember from being there in '99-'00 that it was easily as bad - there was essentially no such thing as broadband and the fees for dial-up were outrageous.

  • That's some range! (Score:5, Funny)

    by intmainvoid ( 109559 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @04:44AM (#13987124)
    So this card is being released in Australia... but the network is apparently being rolled out in USA and other countries too.

    That thing must really have an amazing range!

  • Yeah cool. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Spit ( 23158 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @04:47AM (#13987133)
    I'm using a desktop rabbit unit right now, just plug your ethernet in and your on. No phone line, no ADSL bullshit, no headache when moving.

    Also good for test when at a client site. Wireless broadband is the greatest!

  • Great Things About Australia (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1) Unwired (www.unwired.com.au) unleashes this card.
    2) John Howard knows how to take care of the muzzie extremists before they strike.
    3) We will phase out analog TV before the USA.
    4) Topless beaches.
    5) 3G phone systems. How's that UTMS going you AT&T/Cingular tards?
    6) Topless beaches.
    7) It's far from America and even further from England.
    8) Car accidents are called "smashes"
    9) Drunk driving is called "drink driving"

    If you live anywhere else, WAYSA?

  • Lack of info amidst marketing barrage (Score:5, Informative)

    by lightyear4 ( 852813 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @05:07AM (#13987201)

    This device works across a wide range, from 2-6ghz. WiMax, being part of the 802.16 spec, can hop all around that range.

    So then, I have question for the better informed (considering that any real information on Navini's site is very effectively obscured under a deluge of marketing babble). Does this device support the accessing of 802.11 networks as well? The article summary seem to infer it: [the card] appears to Windows like a regular WiFi card... Also, (from TFA) the card's hardware includes a range of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips. Does this mean it COULD support 802.11 with a change of firmware? I imagine this functionality would be welcomed by many.

  • Another DoCoMo ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @05:24AM (#13987241) Homepage Journal
    Somehow I have this feeling that this is giving birth to yet another proprietary standard - ala NTT DoCoMo . Something that works only locally, but works very well in those local conditions.

    And how well could it work on an open platform - like GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. I use two laptops on and off, borrowed from office. They run FreeBSD or RHEL (and are re-imaged on return). I'm still wondering whether I should get a wireless WAN card [financialexpress.com] for India.

  • For those who want wireless broadband now (Score:5, Informative)

    by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @05:28AM (#13987250)
    For those of us who want wireless broadband today, Sprint and Verzion both offer 1x EV-DO (about 512k, 200-300ms latency) in the US for about $60. There aren't any bandwidth caps, but you probably get cut off if you download 80GB.

  • Got it in the UK too (Score:4, Informative)

    by frinkacheese ( 790787 ) * on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @05:40AM (#13987280) Journal
    NOW Broadband www.now.com have a similar service in the UK but it's not PCMCIA yet. They use IP Wireless www.ipwireless.com which is a 3g (but for data only) type system and whom according to their website have a PCMCIA card version so maybe NOW will have PCMCIA soon too. But for now, only in London.
    • welcome our kangaroo riding boomerang wielding overlords?
    • We don't exactly have it in London either.

      I've been trying to get this service (I live in central London), and despite the Now salespeople flogging it in my local shopping centre for the last month, you can't actually get it in my area.

      The salespeople actually use Vodafone 3G PCMCIA cards to demonstrate it.

  • Range? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wondercool ( 460316 )
    What is the range of this product? When I think WiMax I think 15 miles or so. Nowhere is there any mention of how far you can be away of the antenna.

    If the range is the same as iBurst I don't see much improvement. Only pricing will make a difference.
    • Just curious, is range all that important? Usually if the range is far, you would not be able to use the optimal modulation like 64 QAM for best performance due to signal attenuation, noise and interference. So, you would end up with a much lower attainable speed. IMO, it may be better to keep the range at 1 mile but give users in that covered area with more realistic throughputs.

  • Obligatory Windows Sledge (Score:4, Funny)

    by denebola ( 868771 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @07:40AM (#13987650)
    FTFA

    What's particularly impressive about Unwired's card over all other solutions is that it doesn't need any godawful proprietary software clients to log in to the network.

    Except Windows.
  • Unwired - http://www.unwired.com.au/index.php [unwired.com.au] already have a rollout with plenty of coverage around Sydney. http://www.unwired.com.au/availability/index.php [unwired.com.au]
    iBurst (flash warning) - http://www.iburst.com.au/ [iburst.com.au] are implementing rollout now.

    Discussion form for wireless isps here:
    http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?f =18 [whirlpool.net.au]
  • They claim rates of 744Kbit/s but my 802.11b cards get twice that. I know that 802.16 has the advantage of greater range but it also operates in the 10GHz+ so if data rates are proportional to signal baud then data rates should be much higher, right?

    Also, in physics there's measurement called "skin depth" which is the distance a wave travels in a non conducting medium before it's power level drops by 1/e or about 1/3 and for which the formula is (wavelength/2*pi). The higher the freq the greater the drop
    • The 802.16 spec specifies two RF operating ranges. Less than 11GHz for non line of sight (NLOS) channels, and 10 to 66GHz for line of sight channels. Non-line of sight would typically be for links within the urban clutter. Line of sight would typically be for fixed backhaul and hence higher capacity links.

      Assuming a constant modulation and coding scheme, the data rate is proportional to the bandwidth. The bandwidth for 10-66GHz is typically 25MHz or 28MHz, which is wider than the 802.11a/b/g standards.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Is this something that can be bought by an average person and used to set up a FreeWan Cell, or is it just another product that is going to be dominated by some large company. If this is something that used by the average person to set up a network without having to pay a fee to some company, then it just may very well be one of the greatest innovations for amnkind. Imagine being able to transfer information at high speeds and low cost without some government or corporate Kommissar monitoring your every m
  • I live in Australia and for the past year I've had wireless broadband at 1024/512kbps with 12GB (shaped there-after) monthly download limit, for the princely sum of $49/month. And all of this in a tiny little town called Canberra, that's not even a major city. I have both a PCMCIA card and a desktop modem, and these let me roam to every major city in Oz.

    I'm confused how all of this is "new".

    • Just out of curiosity, who's that with? I didn't even know anyone did wireless broadband in Canberra...
      • It's with iBurst. I won't tell you the ISP in case they close the loophole I seem to have found ;) But I joined up in the early days when they had much larger download limits (ie, 12GB for $49/m). They've since reduced all those limits in the new plans because it must not have been sustainable for them, but they seem to have left us first few customers on their existing plans. The plans these days suck royally. I actually only pay for a 256kbps line, but I found out how to get 1024kbps out of it :)

        iB

  • I've used one in the US at an installation, but I'm not sure exactly how much I can say about it. We were considering buying one and requested a demo of a live site by the company.

    Navini has a couple dozen, maybe 100, maybe more installations in the states. They use an antenna array, proprietary and disturbingly expensive multi-antenna controller, and some patented version of orthoganal beam forming. They also only sell one unlicensed product in the 2.4 range. The rest are from 2.1-2.3, 2.6, and a 5.x t

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