FCC Moves To Boost Wireless Speeds 40
coondoggie writes "The Federal Communications Commission said it wants to make up to 195 megahertz of additional spectrum in the 5 GHz band available to unlicensed wireless devices with the idea that such a move would enable Wi-Fi equipment that can offer faster speeds of one gigabit per second or more, increase overall capacity, and reduce congestion. 'Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure devices today operate in 555 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, and are used for short range, high speed wireless connections including Wi-Fi enabled local area networks and fixed outdoor broadband transceivers used by wireless Internet service providers to connect smart phones, tablets and laptops to the broadband network,' the FCC stated."
We know (Score:2, Informative)
It was discussed a month ago [slashdot.org].
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If it wasn't for the FCC, we wouldn't have any usable wireless communications (wifi/cell/radio/etc) today
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Why do we need this? They're saying that it can get 1gbps in speeds, but the distance is going to be crap and that's still substantially faster than typical connections in the US. On the odd case where you're wanting to move data that quickly, you'd probably not mind connecting up a cable anyways.
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And this is a common use of wifi? That's sort of the point, few people out there are saturating even a 150mbps connection at the present, giving 1gbps over wifi makes no sense at the present and just means that when we get closer to the point where it does makes sense, the spectrum will be filled up with all these devices that were made with earlier technology.
And yes, if we never move forward, it took the ISPs in Seattle a decade to move beyond 4mbps connections and in some parts of the city, they still ha
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If you have 20 people on that 150mbps wireless network pushing around data, you're lucky if you can get 5mbps out of it. In reality, it'll be a lot slower. With gigabit you can push around data a lot faster with lots of clients.
The other use case is wireless bridges with directional antennas, although you'd probably use 60Ghz for that.
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What the *fuck* are you talking about? The "previous generation of devices" on part of those spectrums are GOVERNMENT GEOLOCATION devices (among other things), and would most likely require a DFS/U-NII type regulation.
There *can* be a boost in wireless speeds... if you are suddenly able to get a slice of frequency that isn't already in local contention. The only way to increase speeds are: add streams, higher order modulation, increase channel width. By adding more frequency, this increases the possibly tha
Re:Yeah, and? (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, you challenge his 2.4ghz range assertion with a 5ghz range example?
What can be done in clear air with line of sight means nothing. The fact that 5ghz has very little building penetration is well known. Its great for single rooms (like restaurants or in the cubical-sphere of an office, but even around the house it can be problematic when trying to penetrate some walls.
This is great for apartment dwellers, because 5ghz means less interference from neighbors. But in a typical two story home it gets marginal.
What is needed is small cheap, low powered routers that you can put on each floor or maybe each room. 5Ghz might be just the ticket for that.
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His comment was that 2.4 doesn't travel very far, and 5ghz doesn't go as far as 2.4. I challenged that by posting over a 150+ mile link. What did you miss here? .
I didn't miss anything. Its an established fact [speedguide.net] that 5Ghz has less range than 2.4Ghs. Range of 5Ghs is usually less than half the range of 2.4. [guardian.co.uk]
So what he said was true.
And what you said didn't matter, because if that extreme example were repeated with 2.4Ghz devices it would be even more successful than the 5Ghz devices. So it was a complete non sequitur. (The test was also run in an environment where nothing else existed on 5Ghz. Those days are long gone.
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His definition of long range is far more apropos to the real world than some laboratory experiment.
Effective wifi range is less than 90 feet in the real world.
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And in most cases that's too far. I really wish that WAP manufacturers would develop lower powered equipment that would be useful in apartment buildings. Because 1gbps or even 150mbps isn't particularly useful if it's being split 4 or 5 ways because they're overlapping.
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What can be done in clear air with line of sight means nothing. The fact that 5ghz has very little building penetration is well known. Its great for single rooms (like restaurants or in the cubical-sphere of an office, but even around the house it can be problematic when trying to penetrate some walls.
Now now, no need to invoke logic in this discussion. The mods already put me down 2 points in 'troll' for pointing out how the FCC is anything but a neutral party in all of this. You keep it up, they'll mod you -99 for being smart. ;)
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Yeah, because all our home routers have 35 dBi antenna. Or not. That antenna only amplifies the signal by about 3000 times. I forgot that's typical of an average user's home wifi. Or not.
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It helps, but... (Score:3)
It will help, but don't expect this any time soon. Because no existing device (probably 802.11ac or earlier) will support the new spectrum, we're not going to see much advantages to the new spectrum until whatever comes after 802.11ac (unless they try to brand it as a "v2" thing)
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Actually that's untrue. The FCC is putting a process in place to certify existing devices for the new frequencies. Ubiquiti, Cambium, Mikrotik, and others will have a streamlined approval process to go through, and then the new bands will be unlocked via a firmware change. This is no different from the DDFS/U-NII approval process they went through awhile back.
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This presumes you can actually get those chipsets to make use of these additional frequencies with firmware. In the best of cases, firmware fixes for routers may be possible, (unless the chip designers built filters in silicone so that software would be powerless to do anything).
And it also presumes you can get firmware for all the chips in your devices, laptops, phones, tablets, etc. That seems less likely.
You essentially have to wait 5 years for for the product development cycle, all the way from software
Not speed (Score:2)
For me, the issue has never been speed. It has been "not enough channels" and/or "want more range". Of course, this move can at least help with channels. I don't think it will do much for range. But if devices are allowed to just spread spectrum across more and more of the frequencies, it won't help much with channels/congestion either.
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This would help the not enough channels out a bit, because 5ghz signals don't penetrate as well as 2.4ghz signals do. But, really, what needs to happen is the WAP manufacturers need to offer lower powered gear for apartment dwellers and others in urban environments.
It's NOT Speed, it's Bandwidth (Score:1)
Please, radio signals aren't going to go any faster. They're trying to make more frequencies available thereby provide more bandwidth.
This would be bad for connected vehicles. (Score:1)
The new spectrum allocation for unlicensed use around 5.9 GHz would conflict with previously-planned allocation for connected vehicle (aka "V2V") technology. The extent of potential interference between these differing uses is not yet understood. I hope this WiFi plan does not blow it for the auto and traffic safety industries.
See http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130221/AUTO01/302210334/1148/auto01/Auto-industry-worried-FCC-decision-open-Wi-Fi-spectrum-could-hinder-technology [detroitnews.com] for more.
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I was going to post that, too. I don't give a crap about my wireless speed. My wireless speed's limiting factor is my internet speed, which is quite frankly crap, and I don't have a choice. And I live in the heart of the downtown of one of the bigger cities in one of the biggest states in the US. It's pretty ridiculous. (You want to talk about monopolies... I miss the days when if an ISP sucked, you could use a different one...)
Bar commercial use of this spectrum (Score:2)
I'd like to see commercial use of this spectrum illegal.
IMHO, the issue isn't too many consumer devices, it's too much commercial use of the spectrum (like the city-granted monopoly wireless franchise) that insists on using the good channels at max power everywhere.
I don't have an issue with businesses using wifi internally or the coffee shop, but I do think it's crappy that the spectrum meant for localized, low-power usage gets stepped on by entities broadcasting everywhere at max power.
It makes me want to
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That's actually incredibly illegal. You're not allowed by the FCC to intentionally put noise out that interferes with other people's equipment.
Also, ALL wifi stuff is considered 'low power' because of it's power levels. It's not talking about 50mw cards in your home router vs the 200mw cards put up on the towers. It's talking about devices which compared to traditional radio equipment is 'low power'. Generally speaking, this is stuff which has a transmission radius of approximately 10-15 miles without amps,
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Finally, commercial wireless carriers are a way of providing an alternate means of internet connectivity in places which are notoriously hard to get connected such as dense urban areas
Yeah, before Minneapolis put in its 802.11 wireless system, I "only" had six choices for Internet access. True, four of the cellular providers were kind of expensive and limited for the usual kind of home internet access, but there was also DSL (with multiple ISP choices) and Cable for high bandwidth and lower cost.
I'm fine w
Fixing DFS would actually do more. (Score:2)
The real problem right now with DFS is that a large chunk of the current 5GHz spectrum (5470-5725) is actually required to use it. So, of the 555MHz, 255 of it is actually more or less unusable for carriers due to the constraints imposed upon it. Since you typically provision a new sector with the current interference in mind, it's possible to set an AP to a "good" channel, and connect a client to it, only to have DFS kick it to a new channel when it hears relevant interference. Causing the AP to move to a