WiMax Is Finally Coming — Here's How It Performs 112
GMGruman writes "Carriers have promised WiMax networks for years. But will they deliver the goods, or be slow like many early 3G networks or patchy in coverage like the metro Wi-Fi attempts in most cities? This hands-on review looks at a nearly-WiMax deployment (technically, OFDM) in Reno, testing its speeds and reach, as a measure of what Sprint and Clearwire will deliver in their joint WiMax rollouts starting next month. The good news is that this time, the carrier promises look to be delivered on."
So a nearly-wimax review of something else? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Re:So a nearly-wimax review of something else? (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
"To be completely accurate, the Clearwire service is not officially WiMax but OFDM, the underlying technology behind the WiMax standard. Clearwire deployed the Reno network before the WiMax standard was final, but it is practically the same technology."
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Clearwire currently uses Expedience wireless technology, dubbed Pre-WiMax, transmitted from cell sites over licensed spectrum of 2.5-2.6 GHz in the U.S. and 3.5 GHz in Europe.
On May 7, 2008, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel's wireless broadband unit Xohm announced their intent to merge, combining Sprint's 4G WiMax network (Xohm) with Clearwire's existing pre-Wimax broadband network.
Perhaps the cheaper slower access plans will use the older tech? Either way, they seem similar enough to warrant talking about them both in this instance. But as someone who in the past used Clearwire for 1+ years. I will say it was generally acceptable. Latency was an issue and Bittorrent wasn't usuable, though I've heard otherwise from a few people. However, in the end it was the latency that made me move on... I just couldn't justify paying what they wanted when h
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What in the world does that mean? Why is it not WiMax? WiMax can be implemented using OFDM. Which WiMax standard was not final? 802.16e?
I think this whole thing needs [citation needed]
.
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Likely it means they do not use the same MAC layer messaging and control, but the PHY layers have much in common. Perhaps they even use the same subcarrier arrangement?
Difference may be: different bandwidth (WiMax can use up to 20MHz bands), different coding schemes (WiMax can go up to 64QAM + several different ECC methods), lack of MIMO (WiMax can have a 4x4 antenna arrangement, but I doubt that this will become a reality anytime soon).
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That sounds a lot like what Bell Canada did; they launched a pre-spec WiMax service years ago.
Saying that "WiMax Is Finally Coming" is a bit late, though; Wikipedia lists hundreds of existing deployments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deployed_WiMAX_networks [wikipedia.org]
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"Practically the same technology"?! Let's call things what they are, please... This "review" is of a wimax-like network; the "test" may or may not be indicative of any future wimax implementation.
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well, the success of this test shows that orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing can be used to implement wireless last-mile broadband.
the fact that this is a less-mature technology (was deployed before the WiMAX standard was finalized, so it is likely using an old draft of the WiMAX standard) means that we might be able to expect better performance from the official WiMAX protocol.
if anything, this test shows how WiMAX will perform under real-life conditions involving steel buildings, electronic noise,
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So, this is a review of WIMAX, except it's not of WIMAX it's of something else? Can we review Wifi next to see how T-Mobile's 3G service is in my area too?
Much of the WiMax standard settled early. The physical layer was part of that. But there was a long time while some details were being hammered out.
During this time a number of vendors came to market with equipment that conformed to as much of the standard as seemed stable and took a guess at how to fill in the rest or how the arguments would settle out
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the thing that's relevant here, which i think is often missed, is the difference between WiMAX and 802.16. ISO, in 802.16, specifies most of the technical issues, especially at the lower levels,
Bandwidth limits? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are already cellular broadband cards available from most carriers that seem to perform at fairly similar speeds. My main concern is what type of (monthly) bandwidth they offer. Standard practice from MOST carriers seems to be a 5GB per month limit, which is just ridiculously low (you could literally kill your monthly bandwidth with a single HD video rental from iTunes or Xbox live). In looking the main carrier that I couldn't find had a limit stated was Cricket - but their service area doesn't quite reach out to my house.
So long as my DSL offers effectively unlimited bandwidth (I only have a 1Mbps DSL connection so it'd hard to pull down more than the connection support anyways), I'll stick with them, even with some reliability problems.
Re:Bandwidth limits? (Score:5, Informative)
See my other post, but according to my friend that works for the WiMax project, there will not be any bandwidth cap. The reason the cellular data cards needed bandwidth caps is because the problem with the towers. Each tower for 3G technologies have about a T1 running to them, so the line can easily get saturated. From what I understand, the WiMax towers have something crazy like a 10GB line running to them, thus not having to have the same caps as the cellular networks to artificially keep usage low. He also said that the WiMax team will re-evaluate the unlimited usage after a year or so to see if it is still feasible.
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WiiMax? Is that a Nintendo console with 720p or 1080i output? I bet there will be a long waiting line; and probably scalpers on Ebay charging $1000 to get one.. I'll wait and pick mine up after Christmas.
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>>>for the WiMax project, there will not be any bandwidth cap.
Riiiiight. And Comcast actually gives me the 10 megabits/second I paid for. Yep. Uh huh. Sure. Last I checked my Utorrent is maxing-out at just 100 kilobytes/s, aka ~1 Mbps, not 10.
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I can vouch for the T1 to the 3G towers. A friend of mine spent a year setting these up. Now, this may be fine if you are out in someplace like Venus, Texas on an iPhone, as there will only be a few people on this tower at any given time. However, what about in someplace like Downtown Dallas? There are times when I cannot place a call because the network is jamed (although that is seeming to happen less and less, it seems like my carrier has recently upgraded their capacity).
The train between Fort Worth and
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I think you might be missing the point for a cellular modem. It's not meant to be your primary internet gateway for all of your multimedia needs. I have an EVDO modem built into my laptop and a 5GB subscription. The point is when I'm on the road or out of the office working with a client I can send/check e-mail, use jabber, ssh, and load web pages. None of these activities come close to taxing my 5GB limit.
Re:Bandwidth limits? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but for many people, particularly in rural areas, cellular is the only way to get a decent connection speed (without resorting to satellite was has reliability problems and similar bandwidth caps - though you do get to at least revert to dial up speeds after exceeding those).
In that case it's not really a question of what it's "meant for". It's a question of what it can do. For rural people with no other options, cellular is a valid solution if they could get the bandwidth cap to something more reasonable.
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If rural residents have phone lines running into their house, they should be able to get some kind of DSL which would be ~10 times faster than dialup (300-500 kbit/s) or maybe 20 times faster (600-1000 kb/s). ----- Plus DSL would be a lot cheaper than either cellular or satellite (~$15 versus $60 a month). The Verizons of the world just need to stop dragging their feet & install the necessary equipment to make DSL work. The phoneline wiring into everybody's home is already present and waiting to
Line noise (Score:3, Informative)
If rural residents have phone lines running into their house, they should be able to get some kind of DSL which would be ~10 times faster than dialup (300-500 kbit/s) or maybe 20 times faster (600-1000 kb/s).
You can't get DSL if the connection from the closest access multiplexer has an unacceptable amount of line noise above the audio band. Runs of longer than two miles tend to do this.
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You can't get DSL if the connection from the closest access multiplexer has an unacceptable amount of line noise above the audio band. Runs of longer than two miles tend to do this.
You're right, though I suspect that's what electrictoy meant by 'proper equipment'.
Our local line has a junction box that went open for six months before Verizon stopped by one day last year and threw a black trash bag over it.
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Not sure where you're getting your info, but TONS of customers have access to phone lines but not DSL. DSL is good for at most a few miles from the switching station. Phone lines can extend out dozens of miles from those stations (if not farther). Not to mention your $15 price estimate is WAY off base. The starting package here (for people who even have access to it) is $50/month for 1Mbps (and then $60/month for 3Mbps and $70/month for 5Mbps). While the speeds are generally higher for most DSL provide
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att.com shows $14.99 "basic" DSL with a 2 year price guarantee. They were advertising that price for a while, then went up to $19.99 for a while.. now I guess they're back down again.
(Hmm, I still can't get their 'DSL', but I apparently finally can get some of their "High Speed Internet" options. Is it different from DSL? I'm not sure.. they sure seem to list them differently.)
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DSL does not work if there is fiber between you and the access point
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I have no access to DSL and I'm in Silicon Valley!
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And what can be done under a 5G/mo cap is a shitload: basically, everything you were doing on the internet 10 years ago. Of course you want more, but it's pretty awesome as-is.
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I'll not argue that a lot can be done on 5GB's - and if it was between that and going back to dial up I'd suffer with the 5GB limit (I know several people doing that - I have crappy DSL so I'm not down to that yet), but there's no denying that for MODERN usage, 5GB is pretty low. Low enough for me that I'd probably do my general browsing with image downloading turned off and saving my bandwidth for more important pages and file downloads. I mean the next WoW patch alone is taking nearly a gigabyte (and wh
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I know at least 2 people who use celular network exclusively for internet access. The reason is celular is the only kind of "broadband" (ie: not dialup) available at their location.
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They're certainly selling it as such. My brother uses one of these and the local office touted it as the perfect solution for them since they're out of range of DSL or cable modem. He also referred to the 5GB monthly cap as "virtually unlimited" (so there are some reputation qualms I have there), but that office certainly was marketing it as a primary connectivity option. I'm sure they're not alone.
And even in the absence of such marketing by a local office, I see nothing in any of the national marketin
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My 3G modem costs £5 ($10) a month for a 1gb cap, which is fine for out and about.. If I want more I plug it into the home connection.
For $50 a month I'd expect unlimited, personally.
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You know, $10/GB wouldn't even be as bad if they would scale it up linearly.
The cell providers here normally charge $60/month for 5GB, but if you go over that, it's $0.25 per MB (yep, megabyte).
So your first 5/GB is $60 and your second would be $1280. That's just ridiculous.
BTW, for Verizon at least, the only step DOWN from that $60 plan is a $40 plan where you get 50MB per month (again, that really is fifty megabytes - only stressing as if I hadn't checked on this myself I'd read that and assume that some
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Literally? Was my monthly bandwidth even alive in the first place?
hardware (Score:1, Interesting)
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Yes, a wireless router would do the trick - The DWL-G730AP would be like what your looking for. It can be powered by USB also so it fits all your stated reqs. The unit would plug into your wimax modem, which would not be battery powered as you had hoped - but most places have electric outlets.
Thats as close as you are going to get to a continuously mobile wifi connection that travels with you from currently available products.
Cheese State Ahead of the Curve (Score:5, Informative)
Madison, WI has had WiMAX for over a year, but it wasn't been publicly launched until January. TDS Telecom offers WiMAX not just for internet, but for phone! You get indoor or outdoor WiMAX equipment depending on how the survey of your location goes, and you also get a UPS for the equipment so it doesn't go down when the power's out.
Residents using it report that it gives better call quality (which is probably due to poor phone lines) and say their connection is faster than landline DSL (also probably line quality, but could be less congested networks).
Here's some infos on what we have:
http://www.tdstelecom.com/absolutenews/templates/news_template.asp?articleid=496&zoneid=5 [tdstelecom.com]
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hrmm... so is the phone service basically just VoIP over WiMAX? if so, then i see a lot of other cities following in Madison's footsteps.
it makes perfect sense to merge specialized communications networks, such as telecommunication, with internet access. nowadays an internet connection is just as important as a phone line, and you can transfer digital audio/video/text and any other data over the internet. so a dedicated telecommunications line is just redundant.
and when municipal Wi-Fi/WiMAX becomes as stan
I've had it in SE Idaho (Score:3, Informative)
From TFS (Score:2)
The good news is that this time, the carrier promises look to be delivered on.
Is there something I missed? I don't understand...
WiMax is indeed coming (Score:4, Informative)
I have a good friend that works directly for the WiMax team. According to him, there are many cities all ready to go with WiMax, and the first city to sell it will be Baltimore, with two months later Washington DC and LA I believe coming on next. Then, if all turns out well, 30 cities in 2009, and by 2010, most all major metro areas being covered. My friend already has a working WiMax card at his house (here in DC) and has been using it for the past 2 months. He said Baltimore was going to be first because it is the city with the most "complete" coverage. There is even suppose to be some sort of ceremony going on with the mayor of Baltimore attending. I am also told that anyone from the DC area could potentially drive to DC to buy the WiMax cards and use it back home in DC no problem.
My friend also said that the current limitations are with the WiMax cards, only getting about 2 megs a sec, while the ones coming next year will be almost twice as fast.
This is a good friend, so I trust what he says, but, as always, YMMV.
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MOBILE WiMAX (Score:4, Informative)
WiMAX has been around for a while - the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard has been around a while, mostly for stationary links in rural or semi-wilderness areas. I know that AT&T has deployed some stationary WiMAX services in Alaska.
The XOHM network that Sprint is unrolling is a MOBILE WiMAX network. This is IEEE 802.16e-2005. It adds additional features meant to help with mobility (e.g. Hybrid ARQ). Some of these features may or may not be present in the Clearwire service.
There are a lot of vendors that are implementing WiMAX hardware, so one review isn't going to say everything.
So the most important question (Score:2, Insightful)
Is WiMax intended to upgrade/replace Wifi (eg, I buy my own WiMax router, connect it to my own Ethernet network, and can then access said network wirelessly at extended range and/or speed with off-the-shelf hardware?) or is it intended to replace GPRS/3G/etc cell data networks (Eg, I bend over and get fscked with a long overpriced contract to a cellco, have to buy their proprietary hardware to use with it [which isnt of using standards like ethernet, plugs in with pcmcia only, and requires windoze-only prop
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Mobile WiMax does not replace Wifi - it's the latter. But I doubt all of those negative statements are true.
Re:So the most important question (Score:4, Informative)
1. No. Wimax has nothing to do with wifi. Wimax is a last-mile type connection, much like DSL, cable, etc, with the capability to act like cellular broadband in the sense it does not necessarily require a fixed antenna and thus can be mobile.
2. Maybe. I've heard thoughts of cellular service along the lines of VOIP-over-wimax, though I imagine this is several years away, if it even pans out.
3. Provided it uses actual wimax and not a similar non-standard, it would act like a modem and connect via ethernet/wifi in a fixed mode and usb/pcmcia/expresscard/built-in/etc. when used in a mobile mode.
WiMax and OFDM (Score:3, Informative)
Just to clarify - OFDM is the modulation method used to convery data. Modulation methodology doesnt really tell you much about bandwidth and data rate, since a communication channel design can trade these properties off in an interactive manner when the design standard is defined.
The good news is that WiMax is designed to do data over long distance (measured in Km's) rather than the the duct tape installations of WiFi, which was never supposed to be used for distance data communication. Some of the crazy WiFi installations that are out there are 5 star silly, trying to do things that WiFi systems were never designed to do.
Some useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax [wikipedia.org]
http://www.wimaxforum.org/ [wimaxforum.org]
http://www.wimax.com/ [wimax.com]
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/wimax.html [networkworld.com]
If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the details, the IEEE has the 802.16 standards for all the details as well.
The good news is that this time around it actualy seems to be happening. It's out there in a big way (read some of the deployments in the above links) but not widespread yet.
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Just to clarify - OFDM is the modulation method used to convery data.
Is "OFDM" a real thing or is it just some dyslexic's way of spelling ODFM?
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Just to clarify - OFDM is the modulation method used to convery data.
Is "OFDM" a real thing or is it just some dyslexic's way of spelling ODFM?
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex. But you already knew that.
OFDM variants of 802.16 have been around for a while. OFDM is a generic term for a form of modulation. However in 802.16, OFDM is a specific physical layer specification that covers more than modulation. It covers the frame structure and things that in other specs would be considered a MAC.
There are other PHYs in 802.16. SC, SCa, OFDMA etc.
The one that is the basis of the promised mobile WiMAX networks is OFDMA. The point being it has super
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The one that is the basis of the promised mobile WiMAX networks is OFDMA. The point being it has super sexy multiple access in the uplink where the multiple users transmit at the same time, on the same frequency with the orthogonal subcarriers from the same OFDM symbol magically interleaving.
I have been investigating digital radio design and have a couple questions about this. My specific interest is in digital radio design for use in hostile RF environments.
Are the radios full duplex allowing continuous c
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The standard supports both half and full duplex radios. The BS scheduler takes into account the capability of the SS when scheduling when it can receive or transmit.
The advanced pilot structures in OFDMA permit rapid doppler compensation, MIMO and other funky stuff.
The period ranging is increased in rate for mobile terminals to provide for estimation of the more rapidly changing channel and appropriate power and timing adjustment.
Every radio, especially a super linear one needed for OFDM will have dynamic r
WiMax (Score:1)
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Yes, many countries are way ahead of the US on this, especially Korea.
See WiBro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiBro [wikipedia.org]
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Live WiMax test in Baltimore! (Score:4, Informative)
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Ah, thank you - I heard conflicting reports on whether or not XOHM would be available at all in October.
For those that want to check coverage, go here:
http://www.xohm.com/baltimore/ [xohm.com]
It looks like almost full coverage for downtown, Fells Point/East Baltimore, Charles Villige, etc. Considering Comcast mistakenly physically disconnected my internet on Thursday and I still have no internet, I'm in the mood to switch!
Clearwire - Security through Obscurity (Score:2, Interesting)
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FYI - The WiMAX Standard Profiles require that all devices support strong payload encryption over-the-air, as spelled out in the 802.16 standard.
Whether a network is configured to enable that feature is an operator choice; this generation of equipment may still have 'compromises', as in "It's supported!", but if you turn it on for everybody the scheduling of users gets crappy and packets dropped because the network processor's memory bandwidth is eaten up by 2x more users data going to and from the HW crypto accelerator.
Yes, I've worked in wireless telco.
The crypto overhead is 12 bytes per MPDU. Given the packing and fragmentation, this doesn't mean 12 bytes per MSDU aka IP packet.
Carriers want it on not because it protects users, but because it protects them from theft of service.
The per packet processing overhead is effectively zero if you implement it right. The spec was written the way it was written to permit an inline AES-CCM unit in the datapath with a latency of no more than 11 clocks. A tiny sliver of silicon can cope with all the crypto load of a
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Isn't this what firewall software and SSL/SSH is for?
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I agree that anything requiring real security should be done over SSL/SSH to provide end to end encryption. If I am using a wired connection and not using SSL/SSH, anyone between my host and the other endpoint can tap in and see my traffic. This would typically be people at my ISP, their peering ISPs, backbone providers, etc. With unencrypted wireless, in addition to people providing the infrastructure, anyone with the right type of radio receiver can see the traffic that is not sent over SSL/SSH.
I'm not
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As before, crypto in 802.16 is link security. Good for hiding your on air packets but that is a side effect of the primary purpose of preventing theft of service.
It has nothing to do with end to end security. Use SSL/SSH/TLS/IPSec or whatever for that.
And the prize for most stilted sentence ever... (Score:2)
Really? What exactly is being delivered, and to whom is it being delivered?
If the carrier promises look, then can I get some, and does it come in Kilograms?
I think that what they're trying to say is:
Of course, that's still horribly confusing. Let's move that around:
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While your sentence is vastly better, I would further fix it to read "it looks like the carrier will deliver on its promises."
-b
High latency (Score:2, Informative)
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I also have Clearwire in Seattle. When playing WOW, my latency can be all over the map, depending on who's using the connection. This summer, I was usually lagging 210-550 milliseconds, which for a newb was tolerable. Sometimes though it would spike to 2000-3000 milliseconds, which made playing the game quite a pain. It was highly dependent on the time of day -- early morning was always the best for gaming, dinner hour th
And latency...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Another review that pretends that latency is irrelevant.
A Solution in Search of a Question (Score:1)
The problem is that WiMax is really just a method to get higher revenues from an unsuspecting mobile wireless public - a solution, in other words, in search of a question for which it can be the answer.
But this leads us to the end result that we don't Need WiMax, we don't Want WiMax, and we sure as heck don't want to pay $100 a month for something when the slightly slower but much more available alternative is mostly free.
It's like a Hedge Fund. The markets got along fine without them, and they cause more t
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(note - when I say $100 a month I'm tallying up True Cost - basic fee, standard add ons, local sales tax, county sales tax, state sales tax, fed sales tax, fed fees - your mileage may vary but it will probably be in the $90 to $120 a month range when you add it all up)
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Clearwire starts at $25 (they try to get you with a much lower promotional price) and I don't believe that they will add $75 in taxes. It's $5 more if you don't own a modem. (or purchase for $100)
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Strange, a number of people posting on here have directly quoted prices that work out to what I said.
You must mean the initial teaser price.
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It only gets that expensive if you also have VoIP phone service with them or also more expensive for the higher speeds but the people that I know that get it go with the slowest speed or the twice the speed for $5 more. For the people that just want cheap internet it is pretty good but for everyone else that wants to pay 10-30 more for more speed are better off with DSL or cable.
Here are the prices of clearwire:
ClearPremium /mo
Up to 1.5Mbps download
5 email accounts
2 yr term
Regular Price: $ 34.99
NOW $ 9.99
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note the phrase ... "for the first x months"
I said the ACTUAL PRICE.
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The list has both prices!
Regular Price and NOW are two different prices. The "NOW" prices is the promotional price. The regular price is the actual price.
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thank you for agreeing with my truthful statement.
What about the latency? (Score:1)
Clearwire in Daytona (Score:1)
Here in the Daytona Beach Area, we got Clearwire as WiMax provider since about 2 years and a lot of people like it because it is cheaper than DSL and cable. Clearwire also advertised itself to work on the beach. Who doesn't want to sit on the beach and have Internet access? (even though I know nobody that has ever used it like that)
WiMax deployment in Pakistan (Score:1)
Pakistan apparently has one of the largest WiMax deployment in the world. I have been a user of WiMax for over five months now, and been nothing but happy with it.
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