Microsoft Partners With D-Link To Deliver Speedier Wi-Fi in Rural Regions (zdnet.com) 41
Microsoft has partnered with networking equipment manufacturer D-Link to deliver speedier Wi-Fi to rural communities around the world. From a report on ZDNet:Dubbed "Super Wi-Fi", the wireless infrastructure is set to be based on the 802.11af protocol, and will take advantage of unused bandwidth in the lower-frequency white spaces between television channel frequencies where signals travel further than at higher frequencies. A pilot of the first phase is commencing in an unnamed American state, with trials also slated to run in three other countries. "D-Link sees ourselves at the very heart of this kind of technical innovation and development. We also acknowledge that we have a role to play in helping all countries and future generations better connect," said Sydney-based D-Link managing director for ANZ Graeme Reardon. "Our goal is to use all of our 30 years' experience and expertise and our global footprint to help deliver Super Wi-Fi as a technological platform for growth to the world's underdeveloped regions."
802.11af (Score:1)
I've been lazily not reading about those new protocols, does af means 'as fuck' in that context?
filing under what can possibly go wrong files (Score:2)
Two companies that exemplifies "fuck you all, I got your money" that doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone else but themselves. M$ everyone already knows about Win10 (among numerous other infractions that they sleaze their way out of through an army of lawyers and deep pocket.) DLink that lifts GPL code into closed source products (got caught and sued several times) and hardcodes IP addresses into product FW resulting in DDoS time servers. What can possibly go wrong?
M$ partners with Dlink (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
This project is to make use of radio frequencies better suited for the task at hand, which is longer-range wireless than WiFi. This can achieve 1km range without the use of directional antennas. I like having options and an array of technologies to choose from, so I don't see anything wrong with them developing hardware to take advantage of this underused radio band.
Re: (Score:2)
1km? on 70cm band (one used for UHF TV and the band allowed for 802.11af in the US), simplex FM (voice) has been done over 43 miles at 5W PEP, that is 69.2018km on a good day... It's a little better than 1km even on a bad day.
Re: (Score:2)
And no, the company was known as D-link, way before the D stood for Democrat, in mainstream media.
Considering that D-Link was founded in 1986, I suspect that this is not true.
Sounds Nice (Score:2)
I pay $100/mo for 6/1 from a local WISP and they suck eggs. Service is poor. No web bill payment, have to call them to process a CC. But they don't cash checks in a timely fashion so you can't use those either. (My CU has about a week's delay before they send a bill payment, and their website is garbage... that's not their fault, but most other ISPs mitigate these problems.) If the same hosers had better technology at least they would fail less and I might get faster speeds for the same money.
I think they a
Re: (Score:3)
Service is poor. No web bill payment...
A rural WISP, serving a handful of customers and not part of a chain, is a small operation. A "Mom-and-POP" if you will. ("POP" = "Point of Presence", the term of art for the site to which the customers are connected.)
Such operations don't have enough revenue to do fancy web design and e-commerce systems. The may be one or a handful of people, some or even all part time, maybe not even the "day job" for the principals. They may even be a hobbiest or some other Net
Re: (Score:3)
A rural WISP, serving a handful of customers and not part of a chain, is a small operation.
My rural WISP, which got bought out by these jokers, had all of this stuff. (They got it from Quicken.) And I paid $70/mo for the same level of service.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they voted for him because the opposing party is so corrupt
Oh, ok. Which party is that?
Re: (Score:1)
Both actually. But the democrats are more arrogant and condescending on the one side and total wimps on the other. And they shall continue to lose for it. That is a good thing. Fuck them. Though I wish the voters would use their options and vote the republicans out too. The situation won't improve while they both completely monopolize the process.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe that's why the voted a clown into the WH by the droves
How exactly were they supposed to know how much of a clown he was? There are people without access to the internet period. Those that do have have internet don't have fast internet. It's why I think those fake news sites are optimized for very slow connections.
HuffingtonPost's front page weighs in at 7 MB. That's a complete non-starter if your internet connection is below a certain threshold.
Great news (Score:4, Funny)
With the availability of this new low-cost wireless solution for connectivity, I'm looking forward to the elimination of the Universal Service Fee from my phone bill.
Re: (Score:2)
That's funny, you think things will go away from your bill because the ISP has lower costs?
technical details? (Score:5, Informative)
Article contains few technical details. This one is just slightly better: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
Quotes:
"The 2013 amendment to Wi-Fi is an air interface for “white space” frequencies (from 54 MHz to 698 MHz in the USA; Europe and the UK use a more realistic 490 to 790 MHz), with a maximum per-channel 35.6 Mbps (16 channels can be bonded together to get nearly 600 Mbps)."
And:
"The standard is designed for links up to 1 km in range, the kind of reach that 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi can only manage with a cantenna."
For the metric challenged, 1km = 0.6 miles.
Missed opportunity (Score:1)
This would go a lot farther if they tried to develop low latency ad hoc (neural?) networking ultimately linking to the nearest municipal backbone. Then they could simultaneously deal with the ongoing ISP problem that plagues virtually all users of the internet.
Whatever happened to WiMax? (Score:2)
802.16, IIRC, was supposed to solve these problems. About 10 years ago one of the cell phone companies was offering it.
Re: (Score:2)
LTE happened. WiMax didn't demonstrate any significant advantages over LTE, and as a result WiMax spectrum has been getting reallocated to LTE.
Sounds so simplistic (Score:2)
But it's not. This requires - at present - a databasing system that can methodically lower interference between nodes and divvy up the bandwidth between different houses. Because the frequency penetrates so well and has so much distance capability, interference is a constant and potentially crippling problem. That also causes major issues with country borders, since it is easily possible to interfere with transmissions of another base station from 100+ miles distance.
The article makes it all sound like y
The bullet has entered my brain (Score:2)
If there is anyone on the planet that is so good, I would be very, very surprised. I love them.
Re: (Score:2)
My Old Rant (Score:2)
What ever happened to 802.11y? (Score:2)
Does 802.11y-2008 hardware actually exist as a real retail product someone in the US can buy? With 802.11y, someone who's a mile or two away from the nearest fiber (or other high speed internet) could offer to pay for a friend's broadband in exchange for letting him plug in his own 802.11y access point. It would only be 54mbps (max), but it still beats IDSL and satellite (a/k/a "Broadband for the Damned and Desperate").
(802.11y-2008 is basically 802.11a, using 3.7GHz instead of 5GHz, with additional safegua
Dyn's platform .. deliver faster access .. (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be faster and more reliable for Netflix, Twitter, Pfizer and CNBC to run their own local DNS caching servers.That way when the upstream server becomes unavailable, they'll still have something to fall back on.
Dyn's platform .. deliver faster access .. (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be faster and more reliable for Netflix, Twitter, Pfizer and CNBC to run their own local DNS caching servers.That way when the upstream server becomes unavailable, they'll still have something to fall back on.
Uhh...what? (Score:2)
Why would faster wifi be beneficial to rural communities? This seems flat-out idiotic. If your internet connection doesn't have the bandwidth to utilise it, how is a faster wifi connection even going to be noticeable? All those farmers playing LAN games at their homes? I don't think so...