Comments on: Next-gen WiFi will let you connect 60 miles away and dump cellular data

By: darksnarkasm

darksnarkasm — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:45:26 +0000

last time I checked this wasn’t a military blog you great pillock!

By: dtkreutz

dtkreutz — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:50:10 +0000

I wonder if the cell companies would mind. Most users would keep their data plans because of the uncertainty of a connection, so the cell providers keep the income but loose a majority of the traffic.
If a cell company can keep all it’s smartphone users basic $15mo data revenue without having to strain it’s infrastructure, they’d love it.
You know they won’t be lowering their data package rates!

By: S. Balmy

S. Balmy — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:17:40 +0000

Reminds me of fifth grade, back in 19*2 (a long time ago). Someone from Bell Telephone came into my class and talked about how everyone would have video phones. It took many, many years (and Apple) to actually pull THAT one off.

By: Jubei

Jubei — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 19:06:57 +0000

Really? I need to look that one up.

By: John

John — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:04:59 +0000

The way things are specified I can see that this might reach 60 miles under perfect, ideal conditions and be degraded by things like bad weather, dust, interference from other electronic gadgets, rough terrain, buildings, etc. That is not a knock on the original spec, that is how things work.

By: The Other Steve

The Other Steve — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 05:55:24 +0000

Okay, I can see how the new WiFi (Magic Airport) can send you data up to 60 miles, but I don’t see how your little hand held device can transmit a signal back to a base station 60 miles away.

By: Hey darksnarkasm!

Hey darksnarkasm! — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 03:02:49 +0000

And the US Military Forces use “Klicks”!
Does that make them euro-dorks too?
You idiot.

By: -hh

-hh — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 01:32:53 +0000

Actually, you need ~3000ft elevation for a horizon LOS to 60 miles … but since we’re talking about waves (not particles), there’s going to be diffraction beyond LOS.

And in any case, all of the 1/r^2 power for 60miles really isn’t going to be used to push through atmosphere – it is going to be used to push through walls for service indoors.

As such, we can probably expect this to drop down to 50ft towers for 10 mile LOS range, which is a greater spacing interval (translation: fewer towers = cheaper) than the current average cellphone tower separation distance in use in suburbia/urban, and only a 300ft (~100m) tower is needed for wide open/flat regions, which gives you the same 22 mile range that is the Maximum possible for cellular GSM due to technology limitations.

-hh

By: chris powers

chris powers — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:29:00 +0000

hundreds of ssid’s??? Try thousands of thousands. Imagine Chicago for example, or New York, there’s at far more than a couple of million people within sixty miles of the city epicenter. Even small towns like St. Louis, where I live, have 3 million within sixty miles of each other…

There will be no doubt a way to manage it, there’ll have to be. I already have two to three dozen SSIDs in my list at any given moment and I’m only broadcasting beyond a few houses away from my own…

Chris Powers

By: Alfalfa

Alfalfa — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:13:49 +0000

I like pancakes. Buckwheat, not those other kind.

By: SeaMan

SeaMan — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:09:33 +0000

9 GB? Well, that accounts for todays downloads, but what about the rest of your smut library?

By: catseye

catseye — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:01:35 +0000

A hundred km would be useful but with what? A 2km atennae?

By: Shadowself

Shadowself — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:28:20 +0000

You mean like Calling Communications — later known as Teledesic — was supposed to be way back in 1993 or earlier? 1.544 Mbps to any place on the planet.

By: Brau

Brau — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:58:46 +0000

60 miles.

Riiight!

And people already think low power line of sight cells and towers cause cancer!

By: Jafo

Jafo — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:58:04 +0000

we are just a few days away from satellite wifi.

By: Sola fide

Sola fide — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:42:19 +0000

maybe this will be the avenue for Apple to enter the bandwidth services field – it would be great to see them transform that industry to better serve their clients

By: Ballmer's left nut

Ballmer's left nut — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:22:10 +0000

When you design two way communications, downlink and uplink, you need to consider several factors, one of which is reliability. This is measured as a proportion of dropped connections per thousand minutes of over the air transmission. In a radio link you want to be able to achieve significantly better than 99% reliability otherwise you will experience fade outs due to terrain and environmental factors such as rain, snow and hail which can cause distortion to the signal as it passes through the medium causing what is known as refraction or bending the signal out of its true path. When this happens you get snow or signal dropouts.

Another factor tied to reliability is that TCP/IP transmissions which is what WiFi encapsulation uses in the form of data packets need very robust FEC – forward error correction – or else you will suffer repeated retransmissions due to CRC – cyclic redundancy check – errors so your actual bitrate will be very low.

Television signals do not suffer from this as much because the raster scan on your TV set only needs the delta to the frame rate of change so is more resistant to signal degradation over distance. Full TCP/IP encapsulation and packet routing not to mention NAT – network address translation – is not required to decode a TV signal.

By: Jubei

Jubei — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:04:35 +0000

Why can’t we mount freaking lasers on sharks? That’s what I want.

Really we need a satellite based system so that we can get WeeFee anywhere on the continent.

By: darksnarkasm

darksnarkasm — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:04:07 +0000

and youll be able to use this technology inside your car that runs on water
when your heading to your chemotherapy treatment.

and spare me the kilometer info next time euro-dork.

By: Al

Al — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:03:25 +0000

Tall TV towers could transmit to an antenna on a 2 story house about 40 miles back in the 60s.

The trick is to live on the prarries where the land is flatter than a pancake.

By: MEES

MEES — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:01:26 +0000

Really, so way back in the day when UHF&VHF were available for TV, people needed “sophisticated” equipment and 500′ towers to get broadcast signals inside their homes?

By: TowerTone

TowerTone — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:58:18 +0000

Right, cause the always charge the least….

By: Wingsy

Wingsy — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:48:45 +0000

Not much will change. The cable companies would just put severe bandwidth caps on it. You’ll still be paying through the nose, at least until Apple becomes a carrier.

By: Vertti

Vertti — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:40:16 +0000

Nikola Tesla was a genius

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:25:40 +0000

The Tesla World System?

http://www.mentallandscape.com/Tesla3.htm

By: Spark

Spark — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:13:05 +0000

Curvature of the Earth? I just want a good signal in my back yard.

By: 4DFool

4DFool — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:03:19 +0000

Just the start of using the old television broadcast. It won’t happen like this, and if it does it won’t last. Right now, it’s uncharted and unregulated. The market for the old tv channels will hit a funnel point between big business shoving shoulders and regulations will commence. Any news about it should be something on all of our radars.

By: TowerTone

TowerTone — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:03:14 +0000

*cough*bullish!t*cough*

By: rws

rws — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:54:45 +0000

Now that’s some mighty fine click bait, but it’s still just click bait.

By: Spade

Spade — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:44:20 +0000

I’d think cable and land-line companies would put up one heck of a fight for it. Cell phone companies aren’t the only big fish in the pond.

By: abcd

abcd — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:43:32 +0000

Yes but google still post my WiFi address.

By: Richie

Richie — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:38:09 +0000

Not mine. I plan on a wifi tower that is 1500 feet tall.

By: Ballmer's left nut

Ballmer's left nut — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:29:47 +0000

No matter how you cut and dice it a 60 mile wireless connection using anything but the most sophisticated point to point equipment mounted on towers in excess of 500 ft is impossible.

The most problematic hurdle you would face is the curvature of the earth. Radio waves travel in straight lines so your antenna would be directing the signal into the ionosphere if no line of sight is available.

The other small matter is the return signal. Unless you turn your laptop lid into a 10′ dish, the outgoing signal would be too weak to be received by the base station 60 miles away.

By: JC

JC — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:24:10 +0000

This is the modern equivalent of “… in 20 years we’ll be driving flying cars…” statements from the 50′s.. This isn’t viable for god only knows how many reasons not to mention those who’ll bitch about radiation – which let’s be honest hasn’t been studied for long enough or well enough so might or might not be an issue..

It just seems far fetched crap that consumers will never be able to implement.. Although you can see this as a 4G replacement/ alternative technology that telcos may employ…

By: Cubert

Cubert — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:19:14 +0000

I will always be within range of my 9 GB of porn!

Sweeeeet!!!

By: becks87

becks87 — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:16:02 +0000

I beleive it won’t be released to the public… the phone companies would lose to much money…
its gonna be one of those things you have to pay to those companies to get on it!!!

By: trondude

trondude — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:13:44 +0000

Don’t forget to use the bundled radiation suit that comes with it!

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:09:12 +0000

this is really cool. I should start earning to buy this new router with the technology or however they plan to distribute it to the public.

By: jtcdesigns

jtcdesigns — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:07:41 +0000

cable companies will love this

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:06:50 +0000

This sounds powerful, but will the cell phone companies stand for it, if they’re going to lose revenue from those data plans?

By: iMaki

iMaki — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:06:42 +0000

I still want the merger!

By: Graeme43

Graeme43 — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:06:36 +0000

Imagine the headache of having all the peoples SSID in your wi-fi list! Trying to find yours out of 100s!