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IEEE Standards Board Passes 802.16a 188

Posted by CowboyNeal from the movin-on-up dept.
papason writes "Welcome the birth of the IEEE's first wireless MAN standard for broadband wireless access in bands ranging from 2GHz to 11GHz. Yes, the same group that brought you 802.11b has brought you a real broadband wireless access standard. See wirelessman.org for more details."
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IEEE Standards Board Passes 802.16a More

IEEE Standards Board Passes 802.16a

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  • Why must MAN always come before WOMAN? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:06AM (#5194288)
    When will that wireless WOMAN standard come out?
  • Will this increse the range and quality/speed of the wireless internet then?

    • Re:Wireless (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I assume so. 802.11 (both a and b, I think) was originally intended for wireless connectivity in smaller areas. However, due to the increasing demand for wireless coverage on a wider scale, we're seeing this standard get perverted and hacked on to accomplish this. A standard created for this purpose alone would help quite a bit.

    • Re:Wireless (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What "wireless Internet"? If anything, a wireless MAN standard is a step toward creating such a thing in the first place. But it's going to be tough sledding against the established wireless phone operators who are coming at the same thing from a different direction.

    • Re:Wireless (Score:3, Insightful)

      by c.emmertfoster ( 577356 )
      No, only adherence to standards and a widespread adoption of such hardware will increase the quality and speed of the wireless internet.

      Internet Explorer still has a market majority of browsers and has for years jizzed in the face of standards. People to lazy and companies to complacent too bitch have for years accepted this. As another example, BETA videotapes were a "standard" for about five minutes.

      Standards are meaningless unless implemented properly and widely accepted by a consumer base.

  • Great, now only if my ISP cared. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:13AM (#5194296) Homepage Journal
    I use a wireless ISP at home as it is my only form of broadband. From my perspective, wireless is great! I've loved it since day one. It kicks the crap out of satellite.. I can actually play games now with a decent ping!

    But the problem is, my ISP is cheap. 100% stingy. All of the some 200 people who use this little local service are shoved onto a single IP. Yep. My IP is used by 200 people. That's so much fun when some stupid kid using my internet service gets everyone IP banned from some service.

    Furthermore, when some fool decides to put his entire hard drive out for grabs on Kazaa, everyone on the network suffers. Our service is subject to frequent bottlenecks and complete downages regularly .

    My ISP hasn't given a crap about the standards for years and I don't see that changing anytime soon. :(
    • Furthermore, when some fool decides to put his entire hard drive out for grabs on Kazaa, everyone on the network suffers. Our service is subject to frequent bottlenecks and complete downages regularly

      SCORE 1 RIAA

      Dude, the Riaa is using special ops to bust you!
      Do not fall for this! You Have Been Warned!

    • Re:Traffic Shaping anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hageshii ( 581106 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:35AM (#5194389) Homepage
      Furthermore, when some fool decides to put his entire hard drive out for grabs on Kazaa, everyone on the network suffers. Our service is subject to frequent bottlenecks and complete downages regularly.
      Has your ISP ever heard of traffic shaping? Give top priority to SSH-like stuff, then web-browsing, then ftp, etc. etc. etc., then finally P2P. I run a Gnutella node that constantly uploads at +20KB/sec with no slowdown on web-browsing, etc.
      • I think you missed the part where they "don't give a crap" - as long as the money keeps coming in, the less work they do, the better - as far as they are concerned.
      • pretty soon KaZaA will start using SSH for its x-fers. This was a big topic for portioning at COMNET this week (at least in the Network Infrastructure seminars, everyone else was ga-ga over wireless and web services.)

        OKay, KaZaA doesn't use SSH yet, but its been known to masquerade as/in other protocols... so it takes a little bit more keener insight to find it.

        NOW go back to the comment "the ISP doesn't care"
        and if they have to put forth effort? Please...
    • Leave. Why pay them for shitty service?

      • Re:Great, now only if my ISP cared. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @01:02AM (#5194470) Homepage Journal
        Has your ISP ever heard of traffic shaping?

        *Hangs head* My ISP uses MS DOS on their servers. They also claim to be incapable of capping user's bandwidth. Leave. Why pay them for shitty service?

        It's either this, dialup, or satellite. I play games, so low ping is a priority. Since dialup is bad pings and satellite is even worse, I'm stuck with what I'm on.

        • Re:Great, now only if my ISP cared. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Tripster ( 23407 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @04:49AM (#5195027) Homepage
          Why not offer to help them out, a small 200 seat ISP probably isn't making a whole lotta moola but if it improves YOUR speed that's all that matters :)

          I'd start with a nice Linux box at the front end to handle gateway, firewall and transparent squid duties, you won't need to get overly fancy, especially if you skip the cache (although it would really be in their best interests).

          For a couple G in hardware you could likely save them 25% in bandwidth at the proxy, plus you could use iptables etc. for traffic shaping, throttle using iptables or squid, etc.

          I've done it, I've installed 2 headend gateways for small cable/wireless ISPs here in BC, works like a dream and it does save about 25% at the proxy. Mind you, they also have the luxury of being able to throttle users at the cable modem, so they only offer 384/128 service residentially but it beats dialup, although they also own the only dialup service in town too.
    • "From my perspective, wireless is great! I've loved it since day one. It kicks the crap out of satellite.. I can actually play games now with a decent ping!". ...
      "Our service is subject to frequent bottlenecks and complete downages regularly "

      Umm... need I say more??? What is wrong with moderators who mod this up to +5 Interesting?? The only thing interesting about it is the double standard and the complete stupidity of this statement.

      Go ahead mod me -1 troll I care not. Who said life is fair?! This guy got +5 for these ridiculous comments, I may as well get -5 for pointing it out.
    • My dad runs a dial-up ISP, and is currently in the process of setting up high-speed wireless access across a good third or so of Iowa, and i can tell you, it's expensive. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars, just for the antennas that have to go on the water towers. Now multiply that by two or three, in our case, because we need multiple antennas on multiple towers to get such a huge coverage area. So we're already up in the ~60 or 70 thousand dollars range, and we haven't even started selling our service yet. Plus the fact that getting an OC-3/T3/whatever your line is (we happen to be using two "OC-3s" worth of bandwidth right now, which is upgradeable to like, 24 OC-12s worth) is really expensive. So what are we at now? Like ~60 or 70 thousand, plus however many dozen thousands of dollars a dedicated line from Qwest or UUNet or whatever costs (not sure on the exact price of that). And we still haven't sold any wireless accounts. Now the customers need wireless modems. $350 a piece. At $5 a month to lease them, we're losing money on the modems for almost 6 years. Plus, if you want customers (in our case, again), you want to keep all your prices below Mediacom's cable prices (which are currently horrible, by the way), but you also need those low prices to correspond to speeds comparable to cable. That puts you in the hole a bit too, because providing such high-speed access at such low prices is really really difficult.

      I don't know, maybe your ISP is genuinely horrible. I couldn't say. But try to think about all that stuff next time you say a wireless service doesn't give a crap. It's really hard to set all this stuff up, and really hard to find some middle ground between price and speed.

      • A wireless 'modem' is $350? If 'your' ISP is anything like most of the other wireless ISPs out there, you're also using 802.11b. This makes me wonder, why are you paying so much for your wireless NICs? Last I checked, you could get a good 802.11b PCI nic with an external antenna port for $100. Shoot, you can buy one of the more expensive WAPs for $350 these days.

        If you're not using 802.11b, then ignore everything I said =)

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:16AM (#5194309)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ... gets two-hundred bucks, and moves onto 802.16b ...
    • I got stuck here:

      you may not further copy, prepare, and/or distribute copies of this Documen,t or derivative works based on this Document, in any form, without prior written permission from the IEEE.

      Does the IEEE really mean that I can't hold onto a copy of their PDF and give it to my friends? While it's great to be able to refrence the site and the latest revisions, it sucks to be at the mercy of the organization and the goodwill of the sponsors to keep the site running. What am I supposed to do, delete my copy until my friend brings his copy back?

      Kudos to the members for hashing out the standard. I'm looking forward to more like it.

  • We have enough fucking standards.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ..how about affordable and easily obtainable access at the lesser standards we've had for years!
    • That's not the realm of the organizations mentioned here. It's not within their power or realm of responsibility to force deployment of standards, nor does it make sense for them to hold back on development of better standards until the older ones are heavily used. What if the older standard isn't as useful as predicted?

      And finally, WHAT standard? What lesser standard exists for MAN (Metropolitan-Area-Networks, a far cry from anything you can do with 802.11x) over wireless signals? This isn't like something you'll use on your home network, this is the wireless equivalent of a SONET ring.

  • um.. Typo? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Derg ( 557233 ) <alex.nunley@gmail.com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:18AM (#5194319) Journal
    From the site:NEW! IEEE 802.16a approved as IEEE standard on 29 January 2002! [emphasis mine]

    I do so hope that is a typo.. or this isnt really news... on the assumption that this is new, and that is supposed to be 2003, what does this mean for mobile users? I assume, due to the higher frequencies used that all new antennae are needed, but at what sort of cost?
    • From the site:NEW! IEEE 802.16a approved as IEEE standard on 29 January 2002! [emphasis mine]

      I do so hope that is a typo.. or this isnt really news...

      If you look at the e-mail thread in the other link on the page, you'll see that it is indeed 2003. So it's just a typo on wirelessman.org.
    • typo? no, it is the right date and this is a just in news. Now, you see how fast this 802.16a MAN works.
    • Welcome to Checkuary.

      *honk*

  • Standards? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We DON'T need no stinkin standards!

  • What is the speed? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ruiner13 ( 527499 )
    All I can find in that article is them beating to death that it uses a wider frequency band than the existing standards (which is a good thing as the other wireless connectivity standards i feel will saturate the frequency bands quickly). I may have missed it in the artice (and I apologize if i did), but have they released bandwidth figures yet?
    • I believe that the speeds are somewhere around 54 Mbps area, essentially this is bring OFDM ( Orthogonal Frequency Divison Multiplexing) to lower frequencies. This being a frequency hopping. Some companies like alvarion and some others will be able to upgrade there exsisting technology via flash, not 802.11b stuff but most of the 5.8 gear outdoor stuff that is out on the market, or I could be totally wrong!

    • Re:What is the speed? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:33AM (#5194738) Homepage
      This PDF [wirelessman.org] indicates data reates between 6-54 Mbps. Apparently 27 might be the goal to start with, if I'm reading the figures right (Halfway on page 2).

    • Since that is such a broad range of frequencies, one of two things will happen --

      1) They will form the maximum rate at the lowest possible maximum in that whole spectrum or

      2) Make the maximum rate variable over the given frequencies

      Personally I hope it is variable because otherwise you are wasting potential bandwidth.
  • this is all well and good, but what i really want to know is if this would give wireless the power to have communities start migrating to that type of connection. and, if not, when is that gonna be, cause that would be pretty slick..

    xao

  • Putting my money where my mouth is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by wiresquire ( 457486 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:27AM (#5194356) Journal
    I've got $40 per month that says this never comes to anything ;-)

  • Sexism out the wazoo (Score:5, Funny)

    by jonman_d ( 465049 ) <{ten.enilnotpo} {ta} {ralimen}> on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:29AM (#5194363) Homepage Journal
    wireless MAN standard

    How sexist! Haven't they heard about politically correct computing [fiction.net]?!?

    • Re:Sexism out the wazoo (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Let's Sue em! ;) Imagine if they Had Wired Outside Metro` Area Network. And called it a Wired Woman.
      OR wireless even... I think there would be a court case. :D

  • Can anyone find the speed?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CyberBill ( 526285 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:29AM (#5194365)
    I saw it said "T1 or greater", so thats 1.5Mbit, and there was some other stuff saying up to 2Mbit. So, if thats all it can handle then that sucks. Sure, greater area is awesome, but we need something extremely fast and extremely directional in a more residential market so we can get a free wireless backbone that can have hot spots on the ends. I see a day where we no longer have ISPs, we are just all connected to each other in a huge mesh.

    w00t, man... w00t.

    -Bill
    • Excellent comment that last one. "all connected to each other in a huge mesh". And the fun part is, most people are convinced that "tree structures" are the only solution for vast networks like the internet, when the truth is a true mesh, not just "I'm connected to you and you are connected to my uncle" but "I'm connected both to you and my uncle" could work really really, nicely and with less downtime. I, too wait for that day.

      • Re:Can anyone find the speed?? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LS ( 57954 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:55AM (#5194787) Homepage
        The mesh idea is a wonderful concept and something I hope for in the future, but has a number of problems yet to be solved:

        * A way to guarantee high quality of service from one side of the globe to another, or even one US state to another.

        Who is going to lay down the pipes across the ocean and across the desert? And even if some benevolent souls on the edges of civilization decide to donate long distance pipes, will they be large enough to handle all that multiplexed traffic?

        * Manufacturers of Internet equipment and standards committees working together towards this goal.

        Decentralization could potentially kill off markets, so what incentive do manufacturers have for designing protocols and building equipment for distributed routing?

        * Technological barriers

        How would this be implemented? I'm sure there has probably been research done on distributed routing and name lookup services, but will it work at a large scale? And would it be reliable?

        * Adoption

        With cable, DSL, and wireless, you give someone some money, and all of a sudden you have a connection. With a distributed system, you would need to coordinate with your neighbors, since you can't rely on a company to keep things running. A possible solution would be that companies could be highered to organize and setup a neighborhood network, and then be hands off after that, except for maintanence and upgrades.

        Anyway, I hope that the work is done to make this feasible, and that people could be convinced to join a distributed network and get off the "feed".

        LS
    • I see a day where we no longer have ISPs, we are just all connected to each other in a huge mesh.

      Gee, doesn't that sound great... So, assuming we eventually have some incredible wireless technology that allows citizens to communicate over the incredibly long hauls required just in the USA, how do you propose other continents communicate with the US? Maybe a group of trained dolphins can carry DVDs back and forth... And you think your delay is bad right now?

      Sure, even if there is a few links that can reach from Alaska to Russia, that still means the whole world will be communicating over a handful of slow, low-signal links, which likely go down in bad weather (I'm sure they never have bad weather in Alaska and Siberia...). And those boys down-under are really out of luck, aren't they?

    • I remember reading that it supports speeds up to 98Mbps full duplex, but that probably depends on what band it's operating in.
    • I see a day where we no longer have ISPs, we are just all connected to each other in a huge mesh.

      There are already groups trying to do this in various cities. One of the more advanced ones is in Seattle. Seattle Wireless [seattlewireless.net] is a not-for-profit effort to develop a wireless broadband community network in Seattle.

      I think the critical factor is as much signal range as it is bandwidth. The Seattle group above is using the 802.11b devices with directional antennas to make their backbone. They've defined classes of nodes in terms of how dedicated the node is to serving just as a backbone. The better the range, the more "connections" happen and the faster the backbone will grow. Looking at their backbone node map [seattlewireless.net] shows they are just getting started, but it kind of makes me wish I lived in Seattle.

  • compared to 802.11g (Score:4, Interesting)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:30AM (#5194368)
    So all I know is what steve jobs tells me. And jobs said at mac world that the A standard was dead beacuse it was not backward compatible and G was backward compatible with B (and just as speedy as A). Apparently MS and the INtel gang are going with A (e.g. the smart screens use it). So can anyone explain this to me. What is the merit of A over G. Also do A or G do anything to address weak WEP security?

    • Re:compared to 802.11g (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:43AM (#5194421)
      This isn't 802.11a, this is 802.16a. 802.11 standards are for wireless LANs, 802.16 standards are for wireless MANs. And just in case you don't know, a LAN is a "local area network," and a MAN is a "metro area network."

      I doubt Apple will use this standard much, but I imagine your phone company and/or cable company will bitch to high heaven to keep this out of your home.

    • Re:compared to 802.11g (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31, 2003 @01:01AM (#5194466)
      There are two significant differences between 802.11a and 802.11g.

      1. Backward compatiblity with 802.11b.

      802.11g understands 802.11b, and is capable of sharing the air with it in a cleaner fashion. This theoretically results in fewer collisions, and therefore faster throughput for all involved.
      The more useful part of 802.11g understanding 802.11b is that it is very easy (and pretty much standard) to build your 802.11g radio to step down to 802.11b if that's the only thing around. This means that you should be able to use your new 802.11g card with existing wireless layouts.
      802.11a does not understand 802.11b -- they mutually consider each other to be interference. This theoretically results in more collisions than 802.11g when used around 802.11b stations.

      2. Number of channels. Channels are essentially the sub-bands the radio spectrum gets chopped up into, and traffic on different channels is not supposed to interefere with each other.
      802.11g and 802.11b both have very few channels available (3 or 4, depending on who you talk to). The home user doesn't really care, but for someone trying to lay out a grid of receiving radios to provide maximum area coverage, this limitation can be a challenge.
      802.11a provides 8 channels (once again, there is some dispute plus or minus one), and hence is preferable when laying out large spreads.

      Opinion: 802.11g is a good thing for consumers with small private wireless networks. 802.11a is a good thing for large companies with large networks.
      • they mutually consider each other to be interference

        No, they're on different freqencies, so they don't see each other.
      • 802.11a and 802.11b will never collide or interfere because they are on entirely different chunks of spectrum (2.4Ghz for .11b/g and 5.4Ghz for .11a) so in actuallity if you want the most bandwidth possible place both .11g and .11a and you get 54Mbps*3 channels for 2.4Ghz amd 54Mbps*4 channels for 5.4Ghz, these are for non interfering channels overlapping. In 2D space you can do some neat tiling with falloff levels that allow even more bandwidth than this for a given area.

    • Re:compared to 802.11g (Score:5, Informative)

      by afidel ( 530433 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @01:03AM (#5194475)
      All major manufacturers that I am aware of have a tri-band 802.11a/b/g chip/system in the works. Because 802.11a and 802.11g both use the same encoding scheme a lot of the core logic can be shared between the two, now add backward logic for 802.11b and you have a complete package. You need two phys and two antenna systems (though they will usually use the same antenna substrate for space) and thats about it. As for security that too is in the works, I believe the 802.11x comitee is working on WEP2. Besides there are a variety of solutions on the market that are already secure. For instance Cisco uses dynamic user authentication through RADIUS to dynamically give out keys to each user and the keys change on a user specified interval (make the interval small enough and cracking the keys goes back to cracking a 128bit key, most difficult), this is an oversimplification of the system but enough to get the point across.
    • What is the merit of A over G.

      802.11a runs in licensed band. So you don't have to worry about your cordless phone, microwave or garage door opener stepping on your wireless LAN.

      Also do A or G do anything to address weak WEP security?

      802.11i will improve encryption.
      • .11a does not run in a liscensed band, it operates in the 5.4Ghz UNI-III band which is just like the 2.4Ghz UNI-II band in that it is regulated but no liscense in required. 5.4Ghz can potentially have the same problems with portable phones etc that 2.4Ghz has, it's just that right now there are not many devices in this spectrum because of rather high development costs with little payoff.

    • I would not use .11a (Score:4, Informative)

      by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:55AM (#5194930) Journal
      Not that 54M / 72M is not cool, but what's up with the 5GHz band? It might be that these guys did not realize there are countries out there that does not have an ISM band at 5GHz?

      2.4GHz is about as universal as you can get as far as ISM band is concerned - but you still run into trouble. In the US, say, 2.400-2.465 or somesuch is the ISM band. In Japan it is 2.450-2.900 (or 2.83, I can't remember).

      That's not a lot of overlap people! That's exactly why I am staying away from D-Link cards right now - only goes up 2.465GHz, which means that I have to operate out of a 15MHz band when I am in Japan. Considering that 2.400-2.450 is used by the military last I checked, I have no intention of jumping this border.

      Similarly, .11a is completely out of question - 5GHz is not even an ISM band in japan, along with a slew of other countries. When they get this mess worked out, I will consider it - but that does not seem to be anytime soon.

  • Define Broadband (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:31AM (#5194378) Homepage
    broadband wireless access in bands ranging from 2GHz to 11GHz.
    What do they mean by broadband? High throughput of data, or is this UWB(ulta wideband)and uses a broad range of the RF spectrum?

  • security (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does this mean that it is 60% more of a homeland security threat?

  • The Speed (Score:5, Informative)

    by Arcticfox24 ( 646123 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @12:46AM (#5194429)
    According to this [nwfusion.com] site, the speed of "IEEE 801.16.1 is intended to support individual channel data rates of from 2M to 155M bit/sec."

  • What about security? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After all, we don't want a Wide Open Metro Open Network (WOMAN) screwing everything up for us! ;)

  • IEEE 802.16 spec could disrupt wireless landscape (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What Intel is saying:
    IEEE 802.16 spec could disrupt wireless landscape [commsdesign.com]

  • What the heck? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by phr2 ( 545169 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @01:33AM (#5194566)
    How are all those bits going to fit in the air? What will the transmitter power requirements be?

    I seriously doubt if this is going to use unlicensed spectrum like 802.11. You just can't move that amount of data over that much distance with those little 15 milliwatt(?) transmitters that 802.11 uses. And you can't have thousands of the things active in a city at the same time without clobbering each other.

    So expect yet more monopolies given to whichever corporate greedheads have the best political connections, just like in radio and TV broadcasting. Sigh.

    • 802.16 can run in either licensed or unlicensed spectrum. And there is plenty of spectrum: 802.11a has 8(?) non-overlapping channels which can each carry 54Mbps. IIRC in the ISM and U-NII bands the power limit is much higher than 15mW -- more like 300mW.
      • when you're talking about a city-wide network. Imagine a city phone switch which could only handle 8 conversations at a time. Plenty of spectrum in this situation means tens of thousands of channels.
        • My point was that the total throughput available in the U-NII band is around 8*54 = 432Mbps per sector. That sure seems like a lot to me.
          • Remember that a metro area has a diameter of miles. How many 100 mbit ethernets do you think are operating in the downtown area of any big city? Probably thousands. Don't you think a lot of them will want to extend their reach to the whole metro area? Just think of the big web sites trying to deliver pr0n: who wants to pay $2/GB to some ISP when you can get bandwidth for nothing, at least within that city?

            Also, with some gain antennas you should be able to get quite a bit better range than with 802.11, which is already miles. So maybe with some bridges we'll start getting medium and long haul networks bypassing telecoms. I can't see that happening without the transmitters clobbering each other, but even if it was possible, regulators would go nuts.

  • some info (Score:4, Informative)

    by itzdandy ( 183397 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @01:53AM (#5194628) Homepage
    subscribers send and recieve at speeds of 2Mbit to 155Mbit / second.
    bands between 10-66Ghz with mesh topology capabilities, also recently amended for a 2-11Ghz band range as well.

    support for QoS in devices, and also support for traffic shaping to improve web browsing experience while higher band protocals are being used.

    --

    basically, 802.16a is capable of 155Mbit ul/dl speeds in a zone, and use of directional antenea and focused areas allow degree zones to be set up allowing 155MBit/sec in as little as 2degree arc from antenea or better with better equipment. you could conceivably cover a circular area with ~27900MBit/sec agregate bandwidth.

    --

    please note that this info is from grouper.ieee.org and put into my own unorganized words, please read the docs for more precise info.
    • 2-11 GHz? That's all over the S and X bands!
      Anybody remember the story about U.S. destroyers and cruisers visiting a port in Australia and all the garage doors going crazy?

  • woman? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maskirovka ( 255712 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @01:55AM (#5194637)
    Just to clear a few things up...
    Should our latest acronym WMAN (Wireless Metropolitan Area Network) be pronounced 'woman'? So if someone asks me about my administration experiance, should I brag about how many women I've designed, configured, upgraded, and troubleshot over the years? Sounds like grounds for a certification in network pimping.
    • Well, it would give some geeks a chance to say that they've hopped on a "woman" without lying through through their teeth....

      Although I worry about the definition of a "woman" being simply a "wireless man" - "a man without wires". I don't know what's worse: the implication that, as a man, I'm bound by wires... or the one that, whenever I use my wireless connection, I'm a woman?

  • Could somebody please explain what this standard does, who will use it, etc., in less technical words, please?
    • What many folks don't know is that there is a new standard that has finally
      been approved for the important 2-11 GHz frequency bands, including licensed
      and unlicensed spectrum allocations - 802.16a. Huh? This is a specification
      developed under the auspices of the IEEE, the same group that guides the
      802.11 standards. 802.11x are standards for Wireless LOCAL Area Networks
      (WLAN). 802.16a is that standard for Wireless METRO Area Networks (WMAN or
      WirelessMAN).

      What is the "problem" with 802.11? The greatest problem is that it was
      designed for relatively short distances of about 300 feet in doors (if you
      are lucky) and 1,200 feet out of doors. While 802.11 gear can be pushed into
      service over longer links, even up to several miles, it was not designed
      from the ground up to be used for such distances. It also was not designed
      to serve a large number of users. WirelessMAN, on the other hand, was
      designed from the "ground up" specifically to tackle the tough requirements
      of making wireless broadband work over longer distances and through more
      difficult environments, such as heavily wooded areas. With 802.16a systems
      can be devised that get around many of the line of sight problems of older
      systems. The most important thing about WirelessMAN is the simple fact that
      it is a standard that is recognized by the IEEE in conjunction with other
      world wide authorization bodies. Along with the standard, a compliance
      testing group has been established, similar to 802.11, to make sure that the
      basic air interface standards are met between the various equipment
      suppliers. With 802.16a there will be core air interface standards
      compatibility but individual vendors will go beyond that to offer systems
      with added features and capabilities.

      What does this mean to users (ergo 'market momentum')? It means that users
      will be able to get WBB that operates over entire cities or large geographic
      area, such a an entire highway corridor. It will be like WLAN but able to be
      used at distances up to several miles. "Great, where can I buy it today?"
      How this rolls out into the marketplace is a huge topic of discussion. While
      a lot remains to be seen and will be shaped by many complex forces,
      including the role of merchant chip suppliers similar to those supplying
      parts for WLAN devices, some movement is already under way that will shape
      the early going.
  • Be careful who you're with before blurting this out:
    "I just spent the weekend at a MAN Party, and I'm exhausted. I just got my pictures developed. Want to see them? Seriously, you should come next time."
    Not that there's anything wrong with that.
  • Here you go:
    http://www.ieee802.org/16/docs/01/80216-01_58 r1.pd f

    About the speed, they state (page 20) that with a 28Mhz frequency range, you can put up to 132 Mbps of data. Of course, it also depends on the distance from the base station.

    Not sure this is what is in their IEEE approved draft but I suppose it hasn't changed.

    I'm no expert but I like it. If a manufacturer would quickly get some products out, it would be awesome. We can choose the frequency, the frequency range and provide wireless at speeds way beyond 802.11a/g.

  • A Good Overview (Score:5, Informative)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:02AM (#5194806) Journal
    On the IEEE page [wirelessman.org] there is a good overview document [wirelessman.org] (zipped PDF).

    It covers the basics, such as:
    Bandwidth: Up to 134Mbps
    Hub Radius: A few kilometers
    Line of sight propogation

    ¥ Compared to a Wireless LAN:
    --Multimedia QoS, not only contention-based
    --Many more users Many more users
    --Much higher data rates Much higher data rates
    --Much longer Much longer distances

    802.16 MAC: Overview
    ¥ Point-to-Multipoint Point-to-Multipoint
    ¥ Metropolitan Area Network Metropolitan Area Network
    ¥ Connection-oriented Connection-oriented
    ¥ Supports difficult user environments Supports difficult user environments
    --High bandwidth, hundreds of users per channel
    --Continuous and burst traffic
    --Very efficient use of spectrum
    ¥ Protocol-Independent core (ATM, IP, Ethernet, ) ¥ Balances between stability of Balances between stability of contentionless contentionless and
    efficiency of contention-based operation
    ¥ Flexible QoS offerings Flexible QoS offerings
    --CBR, CBR, rt rt-VBR, -VBR, nrt nrt-VBR, BE, with granularity within classes
    ¥ Supports multiple 802.16

    • --Many more users Many more users
      --Much higher data rates Much higher data rates
      --Much longer Much longer distances

      So I guess it's much so I guess it's much better?

      *ducks*

  • Would somebody with some technical know-how please, pretty please with Laetitia Casta on top, please set up some kind of broadband wireless for Boston's North End. Right now we got nuthin'!

    No DSL (sorry, that fancy fiber cable that replaced your old telephone lines doesn't work with copper-based DSL), no Cable modem (sorry, we here at AT&T are working hard to solve your problems, but have to roll back the date of AT&T Broadband to your area because we've overextended ourselves), and no 802.11b (sorry, no line of sight at all).

    It looks like this new standard could be just what this area needs, if someone would just do it. There are tons of people in this area that would subscribe if given the opportunity.
  • I have not studied the final 802.16a yet, but from looking at 802.16 about a year ago, I got the impression that 802.16 is to 802.11 as 802.12 VG-AnyLAN was to 802.3 Fast (100Mbps) Ethernet.

    802.3 100bT Fast Ethernet and 802.12 VG-AnyLan were considered competitors in 1994 [networkmagazine.com] with VG-AnyLan offering "advanced QoS features making it more suitable for Enterprise applications"

    The claims [unm.edu] even sound similar:

    The 802.12 standard for 100 VG-AnyLAN allows for a backbone supporting both the 802.3 frames and the 802.5 frames. This means that an existing enterprise network with both token ring, ethernet, and some central backbone can easily migrate to the 100 VG-AnyLAN environment. This is due to the diverse media architecture this new technology can utilize: Cat. 3,4,&5 four pair UTP, Cat. 2 two pair STP, and single/multimode optical fiber. Meaning that if there is an existing FDDI, token ring, or 10baseT backbone in place all that need be done is simply replace the endpoints (router or HUB blades), connect the 100 VG-AnyLAN repeaters together, and voila a network structure based on a high speed new technology.

    Highlights
    # Support for those applications demanding a not only high bandwidth, but that are also time sensitive (this is due to the media access method called demand priority)
    # Adapt legacy ethernet and tokenring networks to a high speed backbone with great ease because nodes with 100 VG adapters can be configured to transmit either tokenring or ethernet
    # Extremely expandable when compared to tokenring, and all forms of ethernet
    # Maximum network diameter 8000 meters
    # Cascading up to five levels


    Here's an obituary from a 100VG AnyLan FAQ [io.com]

    Hi! Welcome to V1.2 of Richard's Unofficial 100VG AnyLan Web FAQ! This substance of this FAQ was last updated on Sunday, January 28, 1997.

    January, 2001: At one time, 100VG AnyLan was a very promising technology. However, due to market forces (Fast Ethernet slaughtered it in the market), VG is a dead technology. To my knowledge, there no currently no VG products for sale.
  • Geeze, that's gonna take a *big* piece of chalk...
  • Have you noticed that "I tripple E" rhymes with "802.11b" That's cool! huh huh

    What does "802.16a" have going for it?


  • If you read the MAC layer for 802.11, which can be found in Matthew S Gast's excellent O'Reilly book on 802.11 networks, you'll discover that all 802.11 systems are carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance.

    I won't bore you with the details - just trust me - when your media access depends on station cooperation, its not something you want running in the great outdoors where you have two stations on the same cell separated by four air miles and lots of tall buildings. Throughput suckage will ensue shortly if you don't know what you're doing with a system like that, and its inevitable under load even if you're a guru.

    The 802.16 family of standards specifies a MAC layer that is meant to provide wireless access, not wireless lan service. I haven't read that one in detail yet, since it would only make me fear & loathe my 802.11b stuff, but its almost certainly got some sort of polling scheme along the lines of good ol' Arcnet, rather than the ethernet like CSMA/CA in 802.11.

    We've had a generation of wireless ISPs cobbling 802.11b with a few running Alvarion's fine Breeze Access II product, now with 802.16 coming on strong we'll see *every* WISP of any size running that kind of gear.

    I'd write more, but I'm slobbering on some lit I got from http://www.apertonet.com

    • Just a bit of amplification for those not familiar with wireless systems.

      Ethernet is CSMA/CD - Carrier Sense, Multiple Access with Collision Detection. Carrier Sense simply means you can hear anyone else on channel when they talk. Multiple Access means that anyone can talk any time they want. Collision Detection means that if two people happen to talk at the same time, they can actually detect that they have done so, back off and try again. Ethernet can do CSMA/CD because, to oversimplify, it can listen at the same time as it transmits, therefore it can hear the collisions.

      CSMA/CA systems, by contrast, are the same as far as the CSMA part goes, but CA stands for Collision Avoidance. This is really just spin. It means that the station's cannot listen at the same time as they transmit. This is typical for peer-to-peer wireless systems. It's like CB radio. When you push the push-to-talk button, the receiver stops receiving. You need this to happen, because the transmitter is relatively powerful and the receiver is relatively sensitive. Even if the receiver would not be damaged by having the transmitter key up right next to it, the transmitter would easily drown out the signal from any other on-channel transmitter.

      "But wait," I hear you cry, "What about cell phones? They can transmit and receive at the same time." This is true. But in this case, the transmitter and receiver are not on the same frequency, but instead on frequencies very far apart. This allows the receiver to have a band-reject filter tuned for the transmitter's output. In fact, the closer in frequency a full-duplex (receive and transmit simultaneously on independent channels) receiver and transmitter are, the more elaborate the filtering must be. Extreme examples can be had by looking at a typical Amateur Radio 3 kHz FM voice in-band VHF repeater. The frequency separation between receiver and transmitter on the 2 meter band is typically 600 kHz. To achieve sufficient isolation, you actually need to use tuned cavities. They're rather large and ticklish to get dialed in. But although the repeater can use the cavities to achieve full-duplex, the user radios are still half-duplex (transmit and receive on independent channels, but not at the same time). Which means that the only way you know that you and your fellow repeater user keyed up at the same time is when the other repeater users tell you that they didn't hear you.

      Full- or half-duplex is only an attractive solution in cases where either it's not a peer-to-peer system or where it's a point-to-point system. So it's a lot like 10baseT, where you can either wire two peers directly together or you can connect multiple stations to a repeater (aka a hub or a switch). 802.11b radios are simplex (they transmit and receive on the same channel). This means that you're not going to be able to do collision detection. And that means that either throughput will suffer much more heavily than CSMA/CD systems when demand rises, or you need to have a much more asymetric model, probably with the server station polling the clients, or you need some sort of variation on token rings or some other dining-philosopher-like solution.

      One thing they could have done would be to make 802.11b infrastructure mode a half-duplex mode. On the plus side, this means that the downlink from the base station would be collision free since user stations (at least those on the same network) would not be expected. On the minus side, this means, of course, that all of the base stations would take two channels.

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