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Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

How Many Wireless Technologies Can We Handle? 265

Posted by samzenpus from the i-hate-choice dept.
Golygydd Max writes "The space for high-speed wireless networking is getting mighty crowded. Techworld reports that a new company, Sibeam, has entered the fray, hinting at a 60GHz technology to compete with the likes of Wimax, UWB and the others. Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?"
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How Many Wireless Technologies Can We Handle? More

How Many Wireless Technologies Can We Handle?

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  • standardize (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SolusSD ( 680489 )
    We need a robust future expandable standard. My school has changed wireless technologies campus-wide 3 times in 3 years!
    • What are the three standards your school has changed to? That seems incredibly wasteful. I've been using 802.11 b/g for the past 4 years and it is compatible with just about all the devices I've come across. There was the whole Intel 802.11a that sucked, but not many people used that.

      It sounds like your school is being very wasteful and not looking ahead at all.

  • Compete w/ WiMax? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dsginter ( 104154 )
    Just how does one compete with an open standard? Or am I missing something?

  • Yes it does (Score:3, Funny)

    by Arthur B. ( 806360 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:38AM (#13279612)
    Darwinian selection will enventually work its magic through the different standards. P.S Don't answer me betamax, betamax didn't survive because the tape length wasn't suited for pr0n, so it's natural VHS took over.
    • Darwinian selection only works if you have a level playing field. Remember that there is going to be much greasing of palms to influence what technologies get adopted.
    • betamax didn't survive because the tape length wasn't suited for pr0n,

      Ironically enough, the ONLY betamax videos I ever saw when I was younger were owned by my friends father, who only had pr0n. For a few years, I thought betamax's were just used for pr0n.
    • Darwinian selection will not always provide the "best" solution. It also does not really apply to things like WiFi standards.
      In natural selection the only thing that really matters is if you reproduce. With technology it is what sells. The sad thing is what sells is often far from the best. If what was best always won the Amiga, ST, and Mac would have driven a stake in the heart of MS-DOS. OS/2 would have killed Windows 3.1. And slashdot would be using CSS.

  • Frequency goes up... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:38AM (#13279614)
    Narrow the beam more and more, up the frequency more and more, and eventually you get a laser modem :-)
    • Narrow the beam more and more, up the frequency more and more, and eventually you get a laser modem :-)

      Exactly - here's an 850 TeraHertz wireless [lightpointe.com] product (if I did my powers of 10 right...)

      Maybe if they marketed it like that they'd get more "oooh, big number" customers. Oh, right, that market segment doesn't understand "tera" yet. Maybe in 2 years when computers start coming with 1TB disk.

  • Simple answer (Score:4, Funny)

    by BlackCobra43 ( 596714 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:38AM (#13279615)
    42.

    • I never spellcheck and freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies.


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  • When the future is still so unclear? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:38AM (#13279619)
    How the fuck do you think the future becomes clear? Let the competing standards thrash it out and the result will lead us towards are wireless future. The early adopters take the risk that the choices they make may be incorrect, but thats how we get to where we want to be.

  • Sure, Why not. (Score:5, Funny)

    by hungrygrue ( 872970 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:38AM (#13279620) Homepage
    With enough signals bouncing around we won't have to buy microwaves anymore.

  • Survival of the fittest (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phpm0nkey ( 768038 ) * on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:38AM (#13279624) Homepage
    What's the harm in competition here? The wireless spectrum is finite; it's in our interest to kick around technologies until we can agree on one that's the cleanest, most efficient use of the space available.

    A good first step would be to shut off analog TV and radio. That bandwidth is too valuable for us to just sit on.

    • The wireless spectrum is finite

      No, it's not. You can keep going higher and higher in frequencies, but as you get above a few GHz problems start happening -- the attenuation due to air and things like rain increases, you get signals that can't even go through trees or walls, and the cost of the components to deal with these ultra high frequencies goes up -- and eventually you don't have radio at all, but instead infrared. (The edge of the IR range is often given at 300 GHz [wikipedia.org] though of course there is no

      • The wireless spectrum is finite

        Yes, there's lots of spectrum out there if you're willing to go to high enough frequencies. But it's not infinite.

        I'm a little confused, where do you two disagree there?

    • Agreed (Score:3, Informative)

      by cryptochrome ( 303529 )
      The analog dials go up into the 60s, but you're lucky if you can pick up more than five or six stations most places, and most people have cable or satellite anyway. Most of it's going to waste. Open the bandwidth to the public and let TV networks set up video on demand instead. I mean look at this thing [doc.gov]: it's unspeakably crowded. Public channels are tiny slivers, yet they're the hottest use of spectrum around. Surely this could be simplified and opened dramatically.

      Of course, when the government can ju

  • The future becomes as clear as it will ever be (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:39AM (#13279631)
    when it becomes the past.

    We create it in the present.

    KFG
  • Isn't the whole point of releasing it now that it CAN compete with other standards and maybe if its better enough (or more popular enough) it can still win?

    I beleive if they waited for the future to be clearer there could already BE a new standard and they would have lost.

  • Twelve (Score:5, Funny)

    by mnemonic_ ( 164550 ) <jamec@u m i ch.edu> on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:39AM (#13279634) Homepage Journal
    We can handle only twelve wireless technologies.

  • Not a Bad Thing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Evil W1zard ( 832703 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:39AM (#13279639) Journal
    Well they have $15 million in funding to go out and do the R&D work on Gigabit rate wireless. The worst thing that can happen is that they fail miserably, but I'm all for them spending some money on developing a new product.
  • in this case anyway. The telecommunications world is quickly converging on all-IP based networks and services. Switched circuit and non-IP services will become irrelevant shortly. Legislation and taxation will see to this.

    Without more spectrum and technology for ubiquitous IP networks, we will be stuck with whatever gets thrown out to the consumer and at whatever cost the big names can squeeze from our wallets.

    More is better. More dual and tri-band devices, Wireless VoIP, streaming audio and video, until we
  • Wireless network technology, compromising your network at faster speeds every day.

    I kid you not, I cant turn on my notebook without it auto connecting to the law firm upstairs that seems to have a wide open coast to coast WAN. I can see networks in just about every major US city. Whats more it looks to me like this is just an access point some yahoo hooked up so he wouldn't need to plug in his notebook every day. Could be that their IT peopele dont even know about it.

    • There has to be a huge market for something you could put in a location that would effectively nix any rogue WAPs that people installed, either through RF interference (FCC nono?) or by simply drowning the WAPs bandwidth by auto-attaching and spamming the AP to render it non-functional.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:45AM (#13279693)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Not only that but IIRC 60GHz is an Oxygen absorption line. This means the atmospheric range is really low.

      I think there are American military satellites that communicate with each other at 60GHz precisely because the O2 absorption makes ground intercept that much harder.

  • Movies... (Score:3, Funny)

    by CrashRoX ( 783286 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:46AM (#13279699)
    Many movies that take place in the future seem to still use hard lines. The matrix is a prime example. My question is why didnt they just use wireless (WiMAX or the like)? It would hurt less and they could jack in from up to 30 miles away! Granted using current wifi, agent smith could easily hack the poor encryption. But from what I hear WiMAX has good potential.
    • Seriously, though. They used wireless. The implication was that you couldn't fit the high bandwidth transmitter inside your body, so you needed a fat cable coming out of your brain. The ship then moved to "broadcast depth" like a submarine so that they could use their giant antennae to plug into the matrix.

      Once inside the matrix, the implication was that there were special software characteristics of certain wired telephones. It had nothing to do with whether they used copper or 900 mHz, just that they were
    • Perhaps they didnt use wireless in the Matrix for the same reason that they dont on Battlestar Gallactica.

      If you thought that it was bad here and now with people leaching bandwidth via a can-tenna, imagine how efficient a sentient machine race could hack that.

      Especially if your transmitting something essential, like, I dont know, your own consciousness over the signal. Seems to me that all the machines would have to do to KILL you would be to fire up a microwave.

  • Matchbox philosophy: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IainMH ( 176964 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:47AM (#13279711)

      Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?

    Isn't that exactly when you need as many different minds working on a problem? The future will clarify itself.

  • Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @11:48AM (#13279728) Homepage
    Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?"

    What an idiotic statement (and it is a statement, disguised as question). The future is determined by the choices we make today. More choices allows us to pick the best of those available, thus resulting in the "best future".

  • I was wondering if someone in the know could explain how this is known:
    There's a reason for this. 60GHz is interesting, and genuinely can offer Gigabit speeds. However, it is limited by the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic radiation at that frequency.
    I.E. what about this frequency dictates this property?

    • I.E. what about this frequency dictates this property?

      Because the amount of data you can transmit depends on two factors -- 1) the signal to noise ratio and 2) the bandwidth available.

      Suppose you can use 60 to 61 GHz for this -- that gives you one full GHz of bandwidth. Compare this to an 802.11b channel that's only 30 MHz in size, and you can see that you can transmit over 30 times as much data in a given amount of time.

      The higher the frequency, the more bandwidth is generally available, as a

      • then the noise should be attenuated as well.

        I thought about this some more, and realized that I'm basically wrong about this.

        If O2 specifically absorbs 60-64 GHz signals, then it also specifically emits 60-64 GHz signals, which would be ... noise.

        So in order to get good range with a 62 GHz signal, you'd need more power than you'd need with a lower (or higher, for that matter) frequency.

        Of course, with such a high frequency, you could make very directional antennas that are very small, so you

  • The item reads like a late night informercial. I don't know about you, but I bought 3 bottles.

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =5791782530 [ebay.com]
  • "Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?"

    Of course we do! Did we only need one car manufacturer when the automobile was introduced? Or maybe we should have just stuck with one operating system (hmmm...Microsoft perhaps) with no competition. I mean, c'mon...the future of computing was pretty unclear. Did we need new storage devices for computers (Bernouli drives, Syquest, Zip, Jazz, CDs, tape, DVD...) The future seems pretty unclear there too.

    The point is, to sit
    • Hahaha, that's cute. You think companies that have differing standards are "innovating".

      You must work for Microsoft...

      Unfortunately if they could [and they do] they'd change just enough to lock out competitors. It isn't about being better anymore. You think if Intel had standing they'd need exclusive deals? They'd be able to still sell volume to Dell and not lock them in if their product was worth a damn.

      Same for many others [Atrac3 anyone?].

      Business is not about being fair and open market'ish. It's ab

  • None? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
    When companies can't even make cards for 802.11 that support open kernels [bsd, linux] because "it's too hard" or whatever, ..., what hope have we for new standards?

    I mean as it stands most retail wi-fi cards don't work in linux [except for prism54 intersil style which are hit and miss].

    The problem isn't the underlying standard [though I'd say it's overtly complicated for such a simple idea] it's the idiots running the decisions.

    I mean if a handful of ***amateur radio*** folk can make a 56K link work OVER K
    • I mean as it stands most retail wi-fi cards don't work in linux [except for prism54 intersil style which are hit and miss].

      RaLink, Atheros and Centrino chipsets are well-supported in Linux. There is probably more I can't think of too.

  • One less than what we have (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nuintari ( 47926 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @12:11PM (#13279915) Homepage
    They can all exist, except for one, 802.11 needs to be fucking shot.

    Insecure, unscalable, and the newest access points are flooding the 2.4 ghz by using all 11 channels as opposed to behaving and using one.

    802.11 has ruined the 2.4 ghz spectrum, I ever start my own wireless ISP, I won't even try to use 2.4 ghz radios.
    • People have to think of things like filters.

      802.11 should NEVER have had crypto in there.

      It should be JUST the transceive protocol and standards. On top of that you build a crypto stack [like ipsec]. It's when you "re-invent the wheel" that you into trouble.

      Of course that type of thinking is dangerous because then people could use it for something else... e.g. ipsec ontop of wimax or UWB or something.... wowswer!!!

      My big problem with 802.11 isn't the standard it's the shitty implementations that pass as "

      • Re:One less than what we have (Score:4, Interesting)

        by nuintari ( 47926 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @12:43PM (#13280223) Homepage
        Yeah, for the sake of roaming access on my laptop at home, I have an AP, but I use strong crypto from the router (An opnbsd box, running ipsec and pfauth), to secure it. Securing wireless the good way isn't too tough, but my big beef is with how the system was designed.

        They essentially took ethernet, and shoved it into the air. 802.11 uses collision detection, just as ethernet does. The problem is, 802.11 has no ability to notify the clients of each other's existence, so if you are sitting right next to each other, fine, you'll see each other, collision detection does its job. However, stick two clients on opposite sides of the access point, out of range of each other, and you have a problem. Neither client can see the other, so collision detection fails miseraby. You get what is know as the invisable neighbor problem. You are firing, your neighbor is firing, neither of you are aware of the other, and the access point is overwhelmed. Performance suffers for both people, and 802.11 still needs to fucking die.

  • Are you complaining? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bitspotter ( 455598 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @12:17PM (#13279972) Journal
    In this world of unmolested monopolies, cartels, and rampant corporate mergers, have we so lost sight of the benefits of competition that we *complain* when we see it? Are we really that brainwashed?
  • In my view, wireless still sucks. It's still slow and unreliable when compared against a $2 cat 5 cable. I tried several times (802.11B, 802.11G, bluetooth, infrared), but I've been disappointed every time. I just got finished wiring my house with Cat 5, and my business is all wired with Cat 5. I'll let you uber-geeks with extra money fight it out. I'm waiting for a few more years for all of the kinks to get worked out, for real de facto standards to be established, and for prices to drop. For now, I'
    • cat-5 has the added benefit [outside the obvious speed] of not being so supceptible to noise.

      Even if there is noise I still maintain ~190Mbit/sec copying files from one RAID-5 to another RAID-1 at home using a 150$ Ge switch. [never really timed mem-to-mem operations which probably get upwards of 300-500Mbit/sec].

      Let's see some wireless standard get that ;-) [without the microwaving of people action].

      Tom
    • Yeah but try surfing the web from you deck.

      +++
        My last.fm page [www.last.fm]
  • 60 gigahertz? Looks like the next generation of pringles canners will have to switch to Sterno.
  • when the future is still so unclear?

    since when has the future been clear?
  • Start using the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sure, humans and many animals will be confused by the light show, but at least we have some more bandwidth in the sky that way.

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