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Communications Upgrades Wireless Networking

Samsung's Wi-Fi Upgrades Promise Speeds Up to 4.6Gbps 92

Posted by timothy from the another-shifting-bottleneck dept.
The Register describes an advance in wireless speed announced by Samsung, which could make possible Wi-Fi speeds of up to 4.6Gbps in any device equipped with the new technology. By using “wide-coverage beam-forming antenna” and “eliminating co-channel interference, regardless of the number of devices using the same network” Samsung says it has cracked the problem and that products using its 802.11 ab standard could go on sale next year. Early products to use the technology will include “audio visual and medical devices, as well as telecommunications equipment.” Samsung also says the technology will be “integral to developments relevant to the Samsung Smart Home and other initiatives related to the Internet of Things.”
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Samsung's Wi-Fi Upgrades Promise Speeds Up to 4.6Gbps More

Samsung's Wi-Fi Upgrades Promise Speeds Up to 4.6Gbps

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  • Typo (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:16AM (#48128575)

    It seems that the 60GHz wifi is 802.11ad , not ab (Anno Domini, not Another Bad)

  • And this being samsung... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Torp ( 199297 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:20AM (#48128591)

    ... their software will look like a 2000 era flash app made by a 13 year old, be even slower than that and receive absolutely no updates; if there is even a minor problem with the standard, you will have to buy a new adapter to get the fix.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by MRe_nl ( 306212 )

      As a boy who was 13 in 2000 making flash apps, I resent that...

      (j/k, I'm old).

    • ... their software will look like a 2000 era flash app made by a 13 year old, be even slower than that and receive absolutely no updates; if there is even a minor problem with the standard, you will have to buy a new adapter to get the fix.

      The background of that app is a grey gradient with lots of uneven banding. Over that there is text drawn with white MS Sans Serif font. When you change Windows DPI setting, the text becomes larger, but also horribly aliased and can't fit the window anymore. There is a button to check for updates, but you have never seen it find one. "Check update ..." "No update found !" When you restore the app from system tray you can see how it slowly paints its GUI. Then when you exit the app, it pops up a message box w

    • Disinformation (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Famak1994 ( 3743441 )
      Bullshit much? I own a Samsung smart tv which consistently receives updates and have never had to buy an adapter to anything . What exactly are you pissing and moaning about?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skids ( 119237 )

      And when they do release an update, it will break something more important, and there will be no way to use the user interface to downgrade.

  • Never buying Samsung again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cyber-vandal ( 148830 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:21AM (#48128597) Homepage

    How long did it take to get KitKat to the Note 2? An eternity and it's not even the latest version. The last thing I want is that same disinterest in customer service being applied to my network equipment.

    • 2 years after the release but only once they could create their own stable version of it...But why does it even matter to you? You could have installed a custom rom and got it sooner but instead you'd rather complain about something that does really improve anything. What specific features were you waiting for from kitkat on your Note 2? I thought this was a site for nerds?

      • Re:Never buying Samsung again (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cyber-vandal ( 148830 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @05:22AM (#48128803) Homepage

        All the security fixes and no I don't want to install a custom ROM where half the hardware doesn't work. I did look into that believe me. Stupid fanbois. The state of Android updating is crap and pretending it isn't or telling me to install some random piece of software doesn't absolve the world's largest smartphone manufacturer from its incredibly poor record.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Wow, Samsung apologist fanbois. They really are copying Apple on everything!
    • Btw, it took them 5 months to roll out the kitkat update.

    • CM 11 works fine on my Note 2.

    • How long did it take to get KitKat to the Note 2?

      Not to start an Apple vs Samsung flame war, this is one of the big reasons I've been a little gun shy about certain Android devices, particularly from certain makers. Way too often they get old modified versions of Android and see few if any updates ever. It's very much like the bad old days with my old Nokia smartphones that would never get improved or updated in any meaningful way. If you wanted a fix to a problem you had to buy a new device.

      Of course Apple has it's problems too - big version updates o

  • Err... Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:22AM (#48128609) Homepage Journal

    "Medical devices"?? On a wifi network???!!!

    What could possibly go wrong?

    • Well with ISPs dismantling lan line networks (which many medical and emergency services/devices rely on) what better alternative do you propose?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by wed128 ( 722152 )

        How does the ISP have any say about my internal network? they can pry my cat6 from my cold dead hands.

    • Re:Err... Wait a minute... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday October 13, 2014 @05:49AM (#48128863) Homepage Journal

      What could possibly go wrong?

      Lots of things, but you don't seriously expect medical professionals to use all wireless gear at home and then use all wired gear at work, do you? We live in this place called reality, it has called with your check. Check, one two. Is this thing on?

      With end-to-end encryption, there's really no reason to fear security on wireless networks. And indeed, we should be demanding that all medical devices implement strong encryption (IPSEC, perhaps, in this case, with a proven cipher suite) whether they are wired or not.

      • There's still the reliability issue. Show that some patient won't die because of RFI and we're good.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          A doctor to another in a break room: "Every time I do my rounds with my wireless tablet, people die. #WhatsUpWithThat??"
          The other: "Did the fan of your tablet turn on, by any change? #FanDeath, you see."

        • There's still the reliability issue. Show that some patient won't die because of RFI and we're good.

          The problem isn't the wifi devices, it's all the other shit. None of that stuff would be allowed to radiate in undesired ways if it were consumer electronics. Medical devices have sometimes even used spectrum without permission. There's no excuse for that nonsense.

      • The problem is that the companies and engineers that work on medical devices are completely lost about security, much like when the web first came to be. It will take years for these people to get the proper know how unless they make it their top priority and hire people with expertise in the area (which probably will not happen).

    • A stethoscope is a medical device, and entirely tolerant of network failures. Add a sensor to it and wifi, and what it records could conveniently be saved to a network. It is just an internet of things device. If the network fails, it still performs its primary function.

      Not every medical device is life critical, and obviously (or perhaps it isn't obvious), the ones that are life critical are less likely to be designed around a flakey network connectivity model.

    • What could possibly go wrong?

      People could adopt this attitude, giving medical devices special consideration, the FCC could give medical devices a pass on accepting RF interference, and then respirators could start randomly failing when you walk an 802.11b device past them, while anything without the "medical exception" was already designed to reject the interference.

      BTDTGTTS (1998).

  • Distance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pahles ( 701275 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @04:29AM (#48128641)
    How close do you have to be to the router with 60 GHz? I already have trouble with 5 GHz signals...

    • Re:Distance (Score:5, Funny)

      by alen ( 225700 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @06:01AM (#48128901)

      depends if your home has walls or not

    • My guess is that they use that to actually minimize reception distance.

      Fun fact: 63GHz is the peak of absorption by the atmosphere. So, when the US was designing low-observable links that they didn't want eavesdropped on, they used that spectrum.

      Something similar could be happening here -- it's for devices in the room, and one way to ensure that you don't get room to room interference would be to use a frequency around 60GHz. Well, that and because it's fairly worthless to most major telecoms it's

  • Samsung and wifi/bluetooth clashing (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Ever had something streaming over bluetooth and tried to use wifi on a Samsung device?

    Ping your phone and watch the packets drop.

    Samsungs bluetooth usage basically kills wifi on all their device range, it's a driver problem and something they wont address.

    This likely won't be any different. Their wifi setup will be shit unless you turn the bluetooth off (then it all works magically well)

    Trying to get this issue through their support to devs is like tying to stick a knob of butter up a porcupines arse with a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Bluetooth wifi coexistence is an ugly hack. Get your wifi to 5GHz (or 60GHz...) and leave the 2.5GHz mess to crippled protocols like Bluetooth.

  • 2020: Apple to be granted patent and sue Samsung over this

    • Nope Apple doesn't innovate in that space. They buy that technology. I'm sure Samsung will jack up the per unit cost if Apple ever wants to integrate or Apple will come up with another whiz-bang proprietary standard and then sue others that are "similar." Innovation by Litigation.

  • By using “wide-coverage beam-forming antenna” and “eliminating co-channel interference

    More like:
    By using “High Radiation” and “eliminating Human interference by destroying the brain cells"

  • Always divide by 2, if not significantly more. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Monday October 13, 2014 @05:07AM (#48128765) Journal

    Wifi specs are just bullshit, always have been.
    54mbit wifi
    theoretical maximum 6.75MB/s
    theoretical maximum, allowing for the standard /10 instead of /8 overhead rule: 5.4MB/s
    actual maximum attained speeds, over years and years of multiple networks/ cards / laptops / routers /location. 2.9 / 3.0MB/s

    It's only gotten worse for me, the higher the spec goes.
    If they claim 4.6Gbps I'd probably believe it might do 20 -> 40MB/s, actual, genuine, sustained transfers. Maybe.

    • I have gotten over 5.4MB/s Internet throughput with 802.11g with an Intel wifi card and sitting right under a Cisco AP. I also routinely get over 120MB/s network thoughput over gigabit lan using Intel NICs. It is all about using the right hardware and the right drivers and making sure that everything is configured properly.

    • you have to remember most specs have also relied on over lapping and shared channel maps. So the more networks your device can see the more impact you will suffer. At the same time the "RECEIVER" is the bigger problem, the transmitter only has limited capabilities to try and get the packets to you, it's upto the receiver to be able to decode it and put it back together. You also have to remember that in almost every case of "marketed" and or "consumer spec" the throughput is measured and tested with UDP

    • It's not just the maximum speed you need to account for but also the cochannel interference, dropped packets and retransmits. You can't maintain high bit rates while other devices are using the same wireless channel at the same time. the degradation you have experienced is probably due to your having more devices on your wireless LAN and your neighbors installing wireless LANs on the same radio frequencies.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I have been hitting 30-45MB sustained rates with my ASUS ac66u router and an intel two antenna AC client chipset. My old router on the same setup was at best 6-10MB. The ASUS was the top of the charts when I bought it 2 years ago. Now its top 10. I can regularly stream 2 bluray streams at the same time. As the router has more than one antenna (3 actually).

      Look into your router and pick one that has good numbers. Firmware and settings can also have a huge impact on what happens. I got an extra 5MB jus

  • Laugh (Score:1)

    by koan ( 80826 )

    Great for the rest of the World but here in 'Murica certain ISP's lobby to have the term broadband regulated to the lower speed rather than have to upgrade their networks.

    Not surprising when you see who runs Comcast.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • The Medical of Things. (Score:3)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday October 13, 2014 @05:57AM (#48128887)

    "...Early products to use the technology will include 'audio visual and medical devices'..."

    Uh, I'm sorry. Any company mentioning medical devices and the Internet of Things in the same sentence brings the death knell in my mind.

    Whatever pathetic security model they're thinking of shoveling into this device at the last minute before trying to ride the next billion-dollar revenue wave won't be enough.

    Keep your damn Internet of Things away from medical devices until you learn to implement at least common sense security. This ain't the next iPod killer, someone's life is at stake.

    While you're drooling over the projected revenue numbers, you might want to listen to your lawyers during the risk analysis part of the presentation...

  • Can't write in my journal, have to wait five minutes between posts. You're trying to kill off, Slashdot, right? So that DICE can just write off their acquisition or something?

    • I don't get the point of the aggressive post rate limiting. It really gets annoying when you try to post as AC and someone else in your IP range has locked you out with their own earlier post. It's sad that in the past year I have been able to get first post on articles that have been up for 10+ minutes on multiple occasions. The user base has receded significantly but they persist in these silly policies that inhibit the active users.

  • Oh goody (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now my wireless devices can talk to my router at 4.8Gbps so that they can talk over my Comcast connection at 2Mbps.

  • This is a wisely move of Samsung, because current network users needs broandband connection and this products will satisfy most of internet users.

  • Give me a wifi router that whose signal can penetrate the walls and floors of your average 10-story building.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Do you have lots of 10-story buildings with less than 10 wifi users? That seems like a very small market.

      • The goal is obstacle penetration.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Holi ( 250190 )

          Not at 60ghz it's not.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by amorsen ( 7485 )

          You do not want obstacle penetration, unless you have that 10-story building with less than 10 wifi users. Obstacle penetration is just a nice word for interference these days. 2.5GHz is TOO good at obstacle penetration; in many places you can reach dozens of access points at 2.5GHz and the result is that none of them get decent performance.

          • Needing lots of access points is bad engineering. Take, for example, the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas. When they wanted to have coverage throughout the building, one vendor quoted 1500 access points. Fifteen hundred. That's godawful. Think of the power requirements alone. But that's for a permanent installation. Let's say you wanted to set up a temporary, secure, wireless network in a few minutes for something like an active shooter scenario in a school so that SWAT teams could use it to tran

  • Almost every tech site on the planet has that story and you pick the National Enquirer styled tech site?

    Tsk, tsk. The submitter should be ashamed. The Register has shown itself to be completely untrustworthy.

  • I am a little more concerned with why they think my frig is gonna need 4.6Gbps :O

  • According to the fine press release, this is 802.11ad, a standard published in 2012 and which had been under formal development since 2007.

    802.11ad is not intended as a LAN protocol; think of it as a wireless 10 meter cable. The short range is actually a benefit; short range means that your neighbors won't be conflicting with your system.

    The press release is just puffery rewritten by someone who doesn't know the technology. âoeWide-coverage beam-forming antennaâ should have given it away. Beam

  • .. to use that on my "broadband" connection at home that's 3 Mb/s down and 384k up.

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