Intel Wi-Fi Provides 6 Mbps Over 100 km 77
MIT Technology Review describes a new Wi-Fi router from Intel capable of sending a Wi-Fi signal tens of miles with 6-Mbps performance. This is perfect for rural areas without Internet service, and for less developed countries interested in building out their Internet infrastructure but no means to lay expensive cable or fiber optics. The routers cost about $500 each, and you need two of them for a point-to-point connection. Quoting: "Intel's RCP platform rewrites the communication rules of Wi-Fi radios. Galinvosky explains that the software creates specific time slots in which each of the two radios listens and talks, so there's no extra data being sent confirming transmissions. 'We're not taking up all the bandwidth waiting for acknowledgments,' he says. Since there is an inherent trade-off between the amount of available bandwidth and the distance that a signal can travel, the more bandwidth is available, the farther a signal can travel."
Re:still too expensive (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A lot of issues with this (Score:5, Informative)
Let me tell you, two to three times, I have been involved in a 2.4 build-out. Each time it went like this. You spend a lot of time and money going around and swapping out that "expensive" Canopy equipment for the much cheaper 2.4 equipment. Everything works fine for about four days to a week. You run back and swap a few people back to that "expensive" Canopy equipment for various reasons...but within six months, when the crap hits the fan for some reason, and you have to have help scrambling to find enough Canopy equipment to put everyone back on...because its the only thing that "just works." It may not be perfect, but it does work.
After it saves your ass a few times, that Canopy equipment doesn't seem so expensive.
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Bad article summary (Score:5, Informative)
Not New or News (Score:1, Informative)
Re:still too expensive (Score:5, Informative)
Re:still too expensive (Score:2, Informative)
Now, is the FCC going to troll around your neighborhood with a scanner ? Probably not, unless you screw up someone else's wireless equipment. Done properly, a high-power point-to-point system shouldn't affect anyone else, so you can probably go nuts. I can't say, I don't even live in the US, but my guess is the intent of the FCC regulation is to prevent, or at least document, people from stomping all over the spectrum with uber amplifiers. If it weren't for such rules, inevitably someone would create a 20-watt cordless phone that fries small birds but gets killer range - and also clobbers everyone else's phones.