WiMAX For Business Internet?

William writes "Does anyone have firsthand experience with using WiMAX for internet access? Our company is on a T1 line right now and we are looking to upgrade our internet speeds. WiMAX seems to be the most affordable and cost-effective solution in our area [San Francisco], but I have no personal experience with it so far. How is the performance and reliability with WiMAX? I would appreciate any insight you all might have. Thanks in advance!"

Test

[MindStalker]

They won't let you try it out? Its not like they have to run any wires anywhere.

Re:

[TheLink]

I second that. You should test (try get a free test ;) ).

However just because the test is great doesn't mean it will be great months down the line when more users come on board.

If they have been providing wimax for a while in your area then your test would be indicative of what it might be even a year or so later. Otherwise if it's just been released, a test might not be useful.

With ADSL and leased lines the users tend to fight for their share of bandwidth (aka have contention) at the ISP's gateways to othe

Re:

[TheLink]

Tests you can do:

Compare with your existing connection.

ping tests. Keep two pings running overnight, one for small packets and one for big packets (you can specify the size/length of the packet). Compare packet loss and latency.

Test sustained download speeds. Download an ISO. Some ISPs actually throttle after X megabytes of download or Y seconds.

We've also informally tested some wireless tech before by streaming internet radio, when the music stops you know the connection has stopped, and it did stop often,

Re:

[GrenDel Fuego]

With ADSL and leased lines the users tend to fight for their share of bandwidth (aka have contention) at the ISP's gateways to other ISPs.

That is going to be true with ANY form of internet access. The question is going to be how over subscribed their links are.

Re:

[amorsen]

They won't let you try it out? Its not like they have to run any wires anywhere.

Putting up WiMAX is the expensive bit. It means getting permission to put up the antenna and installing the antenna plus the cable to the wiring closet. If there isn't an antenna on the base station pointed in the right direction, add that too. The equipment itself is reasonably cheap these days.

The WiMAX company would have to be pretty desperate to do that without a contract.

It works well

[The Ancients]

We offer it [nzwireless.co.nz] here in NZ, complete with two phone lines, and the feedback from clients has been overwhelmingly positive (possibly due to the fact connectivity here is expensive). It's not comparable with fibre, but is definitely better than frame, ADSL, and T1/T3.

As long as you go in with reasonable expectations, you shouldn't be disappointed.

Depends on Local RF Conditions

[billstewart]

WiMAX can go a long distance, and it can get high bandwidths, but you don't really get both at once, and it's going to be very dependent on the RF conditions in whatever frequency band you're using with whatever collection of buildings are in the way between you and the carrier's antenna, and on how many WiMAX users are sharing the chunk of spectrum you're in as well as competing technologies. So it can be anything from excellent to terrible, or fast to slow.

The carrier you're dealing with should be able t

Clearwire Seattle isn't so hot

[ShadowRangerRIT]

No personal experience, but my coworkers who have tried the Clearwire service in Seattle have been unimpressed. Relatively low speed (1 Mbps, or about 120 KB/s), high latency. Can't speak for San Francisco though.

Is Clearwire really WiMax?

[transporter_ii]

Was doing a little research and found a lot of people claiming Clearwire wasn't fully WiMax. For instance, here is a recent comment I just found:

Clearwire is NOT Wimax. The existing network is in place to scale to Wimax

I have seen this question asked on Slashdot before, but it went unanswered at the time.

transporter_ii

Re:

[Man On Pink Corner]

I'll second that. Clearwire == garbage. Useful only as a last-ditch backup service.

It depends

[Bender0x7D1]

The only thing you can do is ask people who are using your local WiMAX service.

There have been people who have been really happy with the technology and those who have terrible service. Here is a story [commsday.com] where an early adopter in Australia has abandoned WiMAX because of poor range - less than 400m indoor and 2km for non-line-of-sight outside - poor latency and jitter. The same story also talks about another provider that has had nothing but success with it.

So, talk to local users and see what performance they get. If it is good performance, make sure you check what equipment and settings they are using. Also, check what range they are operating at and make sure that there aren't any large buildings in your way.

The Real Winners in Wireless

[transporter_ii]

I think one of the real benefits of WiMax will be that it will use a semi-licensed spectrum, which should really help with the interference issues being experienced with other wireless equipment in the unlicensed bands.

But if I wanted to be in any one part of the WiMax supply chain, it would be either a sales person at one of the big vendors supplying it...or the person that owned a company that sold the equipment. Or in other words, like in much of the wireless industry, the real winners will be the people

WiMax Spectrum depends on carrier, YMMV

[billstewart]

Some carriers are using licensed spectrum, others are using unlicensed. There's no such thing as "semi-licensed". Licensed spectrum is less likely to have interference, but it costs the carriers money and limits where they can use it, so it's a tradeoff. From a carrier perspective, one of the things that that affects is what you can do for Service Level Agreements - the less control you've got, the less assurance you can provide, and the more you've got to worry about the service degrading.

Back when I wa

Re:

[transporter_ii]

Actually, it is kind of a semi-licensed process, because if you are the first one in the area on this frequency, you kind of get it.

The Alvarian sales person we talked to said there is basically a "land grab" going on at the moment, as people try to put up systems to be the first one in a certain area.

Also, the public safety 4.9 band is somewhat of a semi-licensed band. It works similar, because you just have to apply for a license and you get one if you qualify. However, it is still a quirky process, and y

Bell Unplugged/WiMAX wasn't a great experience

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a 2.5ghz service that's a quiet partnership between Rogers and Bell up here in Canada, with the technology having been developed by a third company, called Inukshuk.

I experienced variable service (anywhere between 2.8 of the promised 3 meg down and 384 kbit of the promised 384 to less than 500 down/75 up), plus latency (upward of 300ms) and packet loss (as high as 18%). This service is particularly vulnerable to the number of users making use of your tower (mine became unusable after there was a 'sale' on the service and the number of subscribers in my area went up significantly). As I understand it, not all WiMax services are susceptible to the users issue, but the other thing you're going to have to deal with is the fact that a lot of these are line-of-sight based, and I'm not sure what that would be like in SF--isn't it the place with all the crazy hills, like we see in the movies? :) I think I'd be looking for other alternatives. Is there fibre available in SF? What about SDSL, or aggregating your router across multiple connections?

Re:

[compwizrd]

we have the service at a facility with bell, and experience similar issues.. we're about 11 km away from the tower though.

I don't want to sound pragmatic or anything

[zappepcs]

especially here on /. but why doesn't your company get a WiMax connection AND and ADSL connection and bridge them through your router?

That gives you both improved performance and redundancy in the case of an outage.

Yep, that disaster recovery planning is for small businesses also. You'll enjoy the greater speeds on normal days, and when there is an outage you'll be very glad to have the reduced performance.

Of course, that is just a suggestion. Not like I'm a CTO or anything. I just act like one on /.

Cheers

Try Wiline

[ScottFree2600]

Depending on where you are in the city, Wiline Networks provides great service at a low cost and is &*%&*%@& fast! We get 40 mbps down and 10 mbps up. We pay $500 and get 8 statics. We are in the Embarcadero area.

Hit and Miss

[rueger]

My experiences with WIMAX trials in Hamilton, Ontario [threesquirrels.com] were disappointing. What I don't know is whether the problems were entirely WIMAX specific, or if the provider, Primus Canada, just never managed to configure things properly.

In any event now that I'm back with DSL and Cable I can really appreciate the lack of latency. No more of the giant lag with every web qaccess.

It can work excellently

[amorsen]

Disclaimer: I work for a company which resells ADSL, fiber and WiMAX (and other technologies). WiMAX lines can be very reliable when set up right. First of all, you need line-of-sight from the antenna to the base station. For business lines, forget about using units with built-in antennas for indoor use. You need professionals to install the antenna, there are lots of things which can break line-of-sight. Building cranes are a favourite...

Anyway, a proper WiMAX installation has latency less than 3ms for the

I have WiMAX

[GrayCalx]

I am out in more rural area of Virginia and had to decide between WiMAX and Satellite. I went with WiMAX because it had higher bandwidth limits and apparently the latency was better than satellite.

So far I'm disappointed compared to my previous cable connection. The speeds are significantly slower. I'm paying about double what I used to. And I consistently go over my bandwidth limit and have to shell out a few extra bucks.

On the other side of things, at least I have an internet connection that all

Why Not Cable or DSL?

[gbulmash]

Unless you just can't get cable or DSL, why go with WiMax? It's neat, but business grade cable or business grade DSL can give you 3-15 megabit speeds for prices that run less than your T1 line. Is there a reason your only options are a T1 or WiMax or are you limiting yourself.

- Greg

Works well in Vancouver, BC

[Maow]

We're using it (apparently) through MetroBridge in Vancouver (no affiliation other than a client).

We like it.

Don't know if they service your area (don't think so), but check here: http://metrobridge.net/ [metrobridge.net].