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Gigabit Wi-Fi On the Horizon

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Sep 12, 2008 04:09 PM
from the faster-pringles-cans dept.
Wireless Networking Communications Hardware
alphadogg writes to mention that the same working group that brought you the standard for the 802.11n wireless communications is already poised to launch a gigabit Wi-Fi project. "Last year, group members formed the Very High Throughput (VHT) Study Group to explore changes to the 802.11 WLAN standard to support gigabit capacity. The study group is looking at doing so in two frequency bands, high-frequency 60GHz for relatively short ranges and under-6GHz for ranges similar to that of today's WLANs in the 5GHz band, 802.11a and 11n."
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Submission: Gigabit Wi-Fi on the horizon by alphadogg (971356)
[+] Mobile: Replacing Fiber With 10 Gigabit/Second Wireless 107 comments
Chicken_dinner writes "Engineers at Battelle have come up with a way to send data through the air at 10 Gigabits per second using point-to-point millimeter-wave technology. They used standard optical networking equipment and essentially combined two lower bandwidth signals to produce a 10Gb signal from the interference. They say the technology could replace fiber optics around large campuses or companies or even deliver high-bandwidth streaming within the home."
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    • Re:Not for US (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lkypnk (978898) on Friday September 12 2008, @04:14PM (#24984503)
      Yes, because the only thing people ever use LANs for is Internet access!
      • Dang, beat me to it. Absofreakinglutely correct though... massive LAN bandwidth doesn't do shit for me if all I'm doing is downloading torrents from somewhere in Russia or looking at pr0n.

        • Dang, beat me to it. Absofreakinglutely correct though... massive LAN bandwidth doesn't do shit for me if all I'm doing is downloading torrents from somewhere in Russia or looking at pr0n.

          But they are useful for people who actually create things rather than just consuming what others create.

          • and have to move massive amounts of files around. That's where even 100mbit LANs start looking slow. Gigabit, especially if wireless, is a huge advantage.

            That said, it'll probably get less speed on average than gigabit cabled ethernet.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by clang_jangle (975789) *
        Doesn't invalidate my point. The US has fallen way behind many other nations in terms of broadband capability, and that is likely to have a negative impact on US businesses as well as consumers in many ways in the fairly near future.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Pulzar (81031)

          And when it rains, sidewalks are wet. That's also a valid point, but it has nothing to do with the topic! What the hell does US broadband capability have to do with with a group working on short-range gigabit wifi?

          • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            I think the point is that here in the U.S. we are stuck with a megabit infrastructure, while gigabit wireless ( logically, the final component for ubiquitous gigabit networking) is nearly here.
            Maybe you'd understand it better like this: Say our roads were only rated for vehicles traveling at 35 MPH, and we weren't investing in better roads -- while cars are capable of safely traveling at high speeds in may other countries, we remain stuck with 35 MPH limits. Now, you see? It shows how far we've fallen beh
            • That's pretty much what I meant, but I wasn't going to bother explaining the obvious. /. is just overrun these days with stupid, fake geeks who have no foresight.

              • Judging from your UID, you're one of them :). Otherwise you'd understand that short-range gigabit wireless has nothing to do with broadband speeds in US. One solves a problem of home/office LAN connection, and the other is a problem of delivering much higher bandwidths over much larger distances to whole neighbourhoods, towns, and even cities. Even if every one of us walked around with a gigabit wireless router in our pockets, we'd still have the problem of handling all that bandwidth on the next hop.

            • Say our roads were only rated for vehicles traveling at 35 MPH, and we weren't investing in better roads -- while cars are capable of safely traveling at high speeds in may other countries, we remain stuck with 35 MPH limits. Now, you see? It shows how far we've fallen behind, that's what it has to do with it.

              Suppose it would cost a trillion dollars to upgrade your roads to allow speeds of 75mph. At the same time, somebody is working on flying cars, which will cost twice as much as those old cars with whee

    • Perhaps, but this will free up the rest of your LAN by offloading those pesky NetBIOS lookups.
    • Funny I pay for 15 Megabit and I get 15.5 Megabit. Maybe you should switch providers.
      • Sure, and all that would take would be a simple relocation of my home, my business, and my life. Happy for ya, pal, wish we could all afford to be so smug...

    • Re:Not for US (Score:4, Informative)

      by modmans2ndcoming (929661) on Friday September 12 2008, @05:16PM (#24984691)

      uhhh.....

      Gigabit Wireless does not mean that you will be getting your ISP to deliver it, it means that you can set your home office or enterprise up with it.

    • On the other hand, a single consumer HD these days can saturate even wired GigE. I remember upgrading years ago because I was sick of not having the network bandwidth to properly use even a single disk; now I can stream 110MB/s off one, and I can see in a few years I'm going to be hankering after 10GigE, the way I hankered after GigE because disks were several times faster than Fast Ethernet.

  • Sounds pretty awesome for streaming the future generation of high-def to the couch wirelessly.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 0xygen (595606)

      I've always been of the mindset that my laptop has a power lead, so when I want to move things around quickly, I have no real issue plugging in a gigabit network cable from down the side of the couch.

      I guess it's good for not having to run infrastructure though - rented places, student halls, or just making the house prettier!

    • Fix current wifi and wimax first! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by neutrino38 (1037806) on Friday September 12 2008, @06:27PM (#24985435) Homepage Journal

      Before going gigabit, we await a few fixes

      - we should have a true full duplex communication with radio resource allocation. We need this for VoIP
      - we should have better network density (more user per network)
      - we should have better way to avoid interference between neighbouring networks.
      - in case of wimax, high latency has been reported when network becomes really used and bad behaviour inside buildings.
      - next gen wireless network should also be optimised to avoid battery drain.
      - For network pairing, please copy GAP/DECT technology and remove this network key usability nonsense.
      - Innovate by making wireless roaming easy.

      Fix this first. Otherwise, at this rate, big telco and 3G technology will rule.

      • Amen brother, unfortunately the common mentality is speed > quality. Rather than refine and improve what we currently have there seems to be a burning need to increase speed first, maybe fix a few things and then push the speed envelope again. I am all for faster transfer rates but I would like to see some refinements in what we are currently using first.
      • most of your fixes are here already - visit http://www.xirrus.com/ [xirrus.com]

        - voip is already being done successfully over wi-fi. there's plenty of non overlapping channels and multiple phones can run off a single xirrus AP

        - very high user density - 20k users supported at interop

        - rf management built in

        - plays nice with other wireless networks

        - 1/4 the power usage of other wi-fi solutions

        - fast roaming built in between radios and accses points

        wimax is irrelavent. wimax is used for long haul point to

  • Do the airwaves even have the spare bandwidth to pump through a billion bits per second? Right now, providers are fighting over parts of the spectrum with much lower bandwidth.

    • Re:Cool Idea But... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KGIII (973947) * on Friday September 12 2008, @05:37PM (#24984893) Homepage Journal

      Have no fear. They haven't even managed to get 802.11n ratified/completed yet. Expect this to be realistic in Q4 2048.

      • That is overly pessimistic, seeing as how 802.11n has been in development since 2004, and will (hopefully) be ready in 2009. So I'd say gigabit WLAN will be actual in 2013ish.

        However, by that time gigabit speeds will feel like snails pace..

  • From the group who brought us N (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 77Punker (673758) <spencr04@@@highpoint...edu> on Friday September 12 2008, @04:27PM (#24984673)

    Nobody has brought us N yet. According to Wikipedia, it probably won't be ratified until November 2009. They should probably work on that first.

    • You know there's a difference between real life and ISO standards right?

      O right... it's /.

      • Real life right now is using pre-release versions of standards that do not interoperate with each other properly. So at the moment, real life reflects the unfinished nature of the standard very well.

        • And you'd rather have equipment based on a ratified standard that doesn't interoperate with each other? Seriously, just having the standard doesn't mean everyone will follow it correctly. 802.11n interoperates pretty well now, and I don't expect it to be any better in 2009.

    • That's the part that bothers me. I'm in the market for a wireless router but I'm not certain just how much of a minefield "N" is?

    • When 802.11n gets finalized, we'll all be using it to play DN4E over IPv6 from our flying cars.

      "From the people that brought you Pipe Dream Stuck in Committee comes..."

    • Well, i'm certainly enjoying the nice transfers i'm getting from my belkin router to my tx25xx tablet. Now i just wish my internet connection was as fast.

  • Same group as N? (Score:3, Funny)

    by HaeMaker (221642) on Friday September 12 2008, @05:20PM (#24984733) Homepage

    Then we should see it by about 2040.

  • "60GHz and under-6GHz for ranges similar to that of today's WLANs in the 5GHz band, 802.11a and 11n."

    There, fixed that for ya.

  • Time for my aluminum hat! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    With all these radio waves floating around my house (cellular, wi-fi, microwave, wireless USB, wireless HDMI, etc) the tumor in my head will have a new friend!

  • The major pitfalls of wireless at the moment are:
    • unreliable
    • high latency
    • low range
    • low capacity

    In roughly that order. Anyone wanna tackle those problems first?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 (641858)
      High latency? Ping time to a machine on my WLAN is 1.2ms. Ping time to the machine one hop away on my ISP's network is 12ms. What are you doing which requires less than 1ms latency on a LAN?
    • It seems to be fairly reliable to me - whenever I'm in a situation where a wifi network is unreliable, it's either because I'm too far away or the router itself is having issues. Latency is low, as far as I can tell basically the same as pinging another computer by way of a hub. The range is an issue, but it's one which will be difficult to deal with, although there are already ways to do so - for example, you can sacrifice latency for range by using repeaters. As for it being low capacity - which I take to
  • Actual speeds might even be competitive with a 100Mb LAN.
  • Excellent. Whenever I need to shift large files (1GB+) between my laptop and network storage I usually have to disappear to a switch and wire myself in. As long as it doesn't have interference with neighbours I'm sorted.

  • news? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hurfy (735314) on Friday September 12 2008, @07:26PM (#24985887)

    "At a meeting this week in Hawaii, the study group has been finalizing a proposal calling for creation of a new, as yet unnamed task group to carry forward the work of crafting a standard."

    No tech yet, no people yet, no name yet but it's coming soon trust us......

  • Note the location.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thatseattleguy (897282) on Friday September 12 2008, @08:41PM (#24986325)
    TFA says,

    At a meeting this week in Hawaii, the study group has been finalizing a proposal calling for creation of a new, as yet unnamed task group to carry forward the work of crafting a standard.

    Not quoted was a later section, which went on to say:

    "Study group members recommended several more meetings to work on gritty details of the task force proposal, beginning with further "working sessions" to be held in Tahiti, St. Tropez, Rio de Janeiro, and a luxury cruise ship in the Carribean. 'Our work is never truly done', sighed one group member, clearly still feeling the effects of the previous night's 'Bacardi and Bimbos' breakout group. 'We'll keep at it as long as it takes, just like we did with 802.11n', promised another, as two 19-year-old, bikini-clad "adjunct group members" massaged coconut oil into his back."

  • On the horizon doesn't do me any damn good. I need it to be much closer than that!

  • I'm assuming if they claim it's gigabit then surely it's exactly 500mbit a second in real world use, right?
    Just like 802.11g is almost exactly half what it claims.

  • When all the encryption, bandwith sharing, distance and walls/other objects have been taken into account it will run a flaking 2 Mbps. Just like any other wireless connection

    • In my dream home, my highest bandwidth consumption will be internal, not external.

      However, even if I never get my dream home. Mesh networks can help ensure you never 'leave' your home network. And the faster wireless gets, the more incentive there is to actually work on creating them.

      • Re:What's The Point??? (Score:4, Funny)

        by ColdWetDog (752185) * on Saturday September 13 2008, @12:02AM (#24987605) Homepage

        In my dream home, my highest bandwidth consumption will be internal, not external.

        That's nice. In my dream home I'm aiming for the ' two 19-year-old, bikini-clad "adjunct group members" ' mentioned above.

        Keep your wireless ...

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