802.11ah Wi-Fi Standard Approved

http://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-halow

by sengork • 11 years ago

207 105 11 years ago

revelation5• 11 years ago

Where is it? Can I read it? All I'm seeing is a press release linking to other articles that are mere low-effort copies of the same press release.

Also, previous discussion here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10838973

sengork2• 11 years ago

Cheers, I didn't find that one when I searched.

carlisle_• 11 years ago

At 900Mhz I imagine there will be lots of interference problems, or is there something I'm missing?

structAnkit• 11 years ago

I don't believe we really use cordless phones in the 900MHz anymore and I believe the consortiums determine which spectrums are sufficiently unused before targeting them.

Verizon and T-Mobile have some LTE spectrum in the 700MHz range for building penetration and range so I expect to see great things at the 900MHz range for lower power devices.

revelation5• 11 years ago

They say 900MHz but that's really just a rough ballpark, presumably it will use the 915MHz ISM band in America and 868MHz in Europe.

BinaryIdiot• 11 years ago

It's not just cordless phones though. Our baby monitor says it uses 900MHz. I don't know how many types of devices use 900MHz but it seems crowded to me.

tegansnyder• 11 years ago

Rent a spectrum analyzer. Travel to every city. Plot the data. Then you will know.

drmpeg• 11 years ago

Here in Silicon Valley, it's used by smart meters. All the short duration blips in the waterfall are gas and electricity meters.

http://www.w6rz.net/gqrx915.png

0x0• 11 years ago

"Twice the range".. Is that a doubling of the radius or a doubling of the diameter (edit: oops, I meant area) of a ~ circle surrounding the access point?

Am I being spoiled thinking either of those options aren't super impressive for a whole new standard? Where's the 10x (order of magnitude) improvement? Will it take 3-5 further complete iterations of incompatible standards? :)

JoshTriplett• 11 years ago

Is that a doubling of the radius or a doubling of the diameter

Those are equivalent: d=2r, so 2d=2(2r)

I very much doubt it means a doubling in the area or volume of the coverage region; seems far more likely that it means a doubling of distance.

But while this might only give twice the range with clear line of sight, lower frequencies tend to permeate obstructions better.

ycmbntrthrwaway2• 11 years ago

As usual with Wi-Fi you won't get close to theoretical range and distance in practice. 802.11ah includes support for relay access points [1]. Most probably it is a requirement for "nearly doubled range".

Am I being spoiled thinking either of those options aren't super impressive for a whole new standard? Where's the 10x (order of magnitude) improvement?

802.11ah is not the "mainline" standard. 10x improvement is left for 802.11ax. 802.11ah is for IoT applications: low bandwidth, low power consumption, high distance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah#Relay_Access_Poi...

Havoc7• 11 years ago

Cool. I'd rather see a standard capable of carrying gigabit traffic. Sure there is ac, but after noise & overheads it comes nowhere close.

So you've got people like me that can both get and afford gigabit but opt for 100mbps because the wireless tech isn't keeping up.

revelation5• 11 years ago

That's what 802.11ad is for, which can transmit over 60GHz (which limits it to basically one room, as it's quite readily attenuated by even air).

That said, at 60GHz of course bandwidth is awesome. TP-Link has a router:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/5/10721550/tp-link-talon-ad72...

nuand3• 11 years ago

60GHz also limits you to direct line of sight. 60GHz propagates similar to a spotlight.

FireBeyond• 11 years ago

At that router - LOL. "7gbps wireless throughput". Great. "1gbps ethernet port"... err?

Assuming your device can support 802.11ad, too, of course.

Havoc7• 11 years ago

I must admit this is the first I hear of ad standard so I'm a little concerned that by the time I've got the tech in hand my internet options are already at the next level. (I should add that its all relative - 100mbps is just fine for my needs to be honest & will be for a long time)

Its a touch ironic. In my previous country it was the opposite way round - nobody could imagine a situation where the internet link could saturate the wifi. No I've got the opposite problem...

cperciva• 11 years ago

60GHz (which limits it to basically one room, as it's quite readily attenuated by even air).

Living in a condo tower where I can see -- and have my network interfered with by -- 70 other wifi networks, I consider this to be a feature rather than a disadvantage.

KMag• 11 years ago

That said, at 60GHz of course bandwidth is awesome.

The carrier frequency doesn't tell you much about the information capacity of the channel. The width of the frequency band used is key, which is why bandwidth is often (incorrectly) used as a synonym for data rate.

60GHz is the central frequency, and tells you nothing of the width of the frequency band. The ratio of the width of the frequency band to your data rate (amongst other factors, including antenna gain and processing gain) tells you your signal-to-noise ratio.

stirno• 11 years ago

Using an admittedly expensive Asus RT-AC88U with my MBP connected over 5ghz, I can get ~900mbps on speedtest.net using my gigabit connection.

Example test below [0], admittedly the downstream results aren't the best but I've got some rather large downloads and streaming going on right now. Upstream shows the capability though.

[0] http://beta.speedtest.net/result/4980829561

Havoc7• 11 years ago

That is pretty damn insane for real life speeds. Most reports I've seen say ~400.

I must admit I'd probably not upgrade anyway though. 100mbps is enough to carry a couple 4K video streams in parallel. So not going to outgrow that speed anytime soon.

sengork2• 11 years ago

Also to note is that a potential hacker doesn't need to be within the visible range of the home WiFi network with the increase in coverage.

hueving• 11 years ago

That's already the case with directional antennas.

ridgeguy• 11 years ago

When can I buy wireless headphones based on this standard? I hate the short range of 2.54 and 5 GHz headphones.

revelation5• 11 years ago

Hopefully nowhere and never. These are bands unsuitable for high bandwidth applications and we certainly don't need more of the public spectrum polluted by things like cheap chinese RF headphones.

hughes• 11 years ago

Are there wifi-based headphones for any standard? Seems like a terribly complicated approach.

geofft2• 11 years ago

The 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz audio protocols seem to not be wifi-based. (Which makes sense, you don't want them to be IP-based.) They just transmit uncompressed analog audio over probably something like FM.

900 MHz headphones seem to be readily available, and to have been readily available for years.

SquareWheel• 11 years ago

Really? Does this mean a radio tuned to the right channel would be able to play the audio stream?

dogma11385• 11 years ago

That's utterly incorrect all wireless headsets these days use digital audio streaming of some sort doesn't matter if it's proprietary like PurePath Wireless (one of the most popular ones because it's TI tech which means allot of very cheap and vailable SOC's), AirPlay or more open like BT A2DP.

cjensen• 11 years ago

Summary:

802.11ah: Better range, lower bandwidth

802.11ad: Better bandwidth. Doesn't go through walls.

802.11ax: Successor to 11ac expected in 2019

ksec2• 11 years ago

There is 802.11ay expected in 2019 as well, a step up from 802.11ad using the same 60Ghz. Up to 20Gbps, 3x the rate of 802.11ad.

I really really want 802.11 ay and ax to come faster, it will truely bring us to the world of Wireless with the speed we expect from 1Gbps. Wireless Display to TV no longer be slow of choppy with quality degradation.

melted2• 11 years ago

60GHz basically means "same room only". Won't go through walls for sure. Should be useful for open space offices though.

donatj• 11 years ago

5ghz AC doesn't go through my plaster walls now. I've got two walls between me and my Airport Extreme and about 10 physical feet and have half signal showing on my phone.

zombees• 11 years ago

In this case, what they mean is that the signal will be truly line of light. As you go up in frequency, radio starts to behave more like light so while you may get some convenient reflections here and there, for the vast majority of the time, if the antenna doesn't have a clear path to the transceiver, you won't know there even is an access point.

dogma11385• 11 years ago

If you want a good 5ghz AC setup buy a couple of good repeaters with seamless handoff and put one in each room that's what 5ghz was mainly designed for.

Airport is a very crappy 5ghz ap to begin with so is the Google elcheapo-de-slink.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I wonder if its too late though, perhaps the licensing is easier than Zigbee?

leaveyou3• 11 years ago

I recently bought an 802.11ac wifi adapter promising a nice theoretical 600Mbs in the 5Ghz band and all I was able to get from it was a practical 65-70Mbs (at 2 meters from an 802.11ac router) using the best drivers under Windows. Under Linux the (5Ghz)AC mode didn't work (buggy driver; no vendor support) so I was back in 802.11n mode. Quite underwhelming after spending 200 euros on router and adapter. I will definitely not "early adopt" wifi 802.11ah whenever it appears..

ghshephard• 11 years ago

If you get a reasonably good combination of hardware/drivers, 802.11ac works well. I'm able to get 407.99 Mb/s Down, 462.39 Mb/s Up on a 2012 Macbook Air + RT-AC87U WiFi Hotspot on 5 Ghz to speedtest.net in Singapore.

pmjordan• 11 years ago

I can confirm similar local measurements with MacBook Pros and a D-Link DAP-2950 across a room with a wood partition blocking line of sight. If the AP is advertised as 600Mbit/s, chances are it only supports 1 or 2 streams (MIMO antennas) per band. Most laptops only have 2, but even so the signal quality will be much better wih a 3- or 4- way MIMO setup on the AP end. (The D-Link has 6 antennas, so 3-way MIMO for both 5GHz and 2.4.) In addition to number of antennas, orientation also makes a big difference.

Finally, wireless access points seem to be one of those things where quality varies a lot. I hated wifi for its unreliability until I bought a decent (professional/small-to-medium-business grade) AP 8 months ago. Not a single connection problem since, even with the notoriously affected Mac hardware and OSX software versions.

bcook2• 11 years ago

I get ~180Mbit with my Asus RT-N66U (802.11n) with 2x2 clients and the RT-N66U is capable of 3x3. A friend recorded over 700Mbit with his Nexus 9 and an Asus 802.11ac AP.

You should be getting muuuch faster speeds. snbforums is a good place for wifi help.

leaveyou3• 11 years ago

My router is an asus rt-ac68u and I have tomato installed on it (I wonder if that's the problem..). The wifi adapter is netgear a6100. The testing was performed in an internal network. I will keep troubleshooting.

dingo_bat• 11 years ago

I get ~90Mbps with 802.11n on my HP ultrabook. It seems there is something wrong with your setup.

rgawdzik• 11 years ago

Where do you keep up to date with the latest carrier/wifi/networking news? (besides HN of course)

adeptus• 11 years ago

networkworld.com (click on the 3 bars icon, to the left of the NETWORK WORLD text at the top, to view by category)

vive-la-liberte2• 11 years ago

http://www.networkworld.com/ clickable link because we're lazy like that

pdabbadabba• 11 years ago

http://www.fiercewireless.com/

johnhenry2• 11 years ago

My main issue here is that each new wi-fi standard requires new hardware. I remember reading something within the past few years about revolutionary new wi-fi antennas that will be able to adapt to any frequency such that new hardware wouldn't be an issue. I wonder if anyone has seen anything similar?

jethro_tell• 11 years ago

I think it would have to do far more with the green board and not the antennas. Especially at the home owner router level your not going to put the effort into the back plain of the router. And while most of them aren't really general purpose computers in that, a good part of the functionality is going to be baked into the various chip hardwares on the board. One might be able upgrade the OS but changing the functionality of the radios probably totals the box.

Plus, what would they sell you next year? To be sustainable, the company would have to be mostly a software company that people are willing to pay license or upgrade fees for increased functionality or performance. There may be a niche for that, but most people won't upgrade their router or CPE for free. At scale, I doubt that would pan out, especially with increased, upfront hardware cost.

colejohnson66• 11 years ago

GNU Radio?

godzillabrennus• 11 years ago

What do you expect from advanced radio equipment?

Each new hard drive standard has required a faster motherboard to take advantage of it.

WiFi standards are backwards compatible in the sense that they work with older hardware to send at the maximum speed that those radios were capable of transmitting.

johnhenry2• 11 years ago

That's simply not true. Each standard doesn't require a faster motherboard, only some changes to code and possibly a different communication frequency. Changes to code do not require different hardware while changes to the communication frequency do.

The crux of my initial comment is that it would be awesome if we could some how get around the last issue and not have to replace hardware in order to use a different frequency, which @walshemj points out is a physical impossibility, but I believe I read an article a while ago in which someone had gotten around this?

keeperofdakeys2• 11 years ago

The antenna is part of it, but it is also the radio. A lot of the hard work of modulating the wifi signal is done in this hardware, and low-level firmware on the device.

We do have Software Defined Radios, which practically allow you to tune to a much wider range of frequencies, and speak nearly any wireless protocol though.

walshemj• 11 years ago

That's not going to happen antenna design is restricted by the physical laws governing radio transmission - you wont be able to make a magic antenna that works across all wave lengths.

Zenst• 11 years ago

I see this is 900MHz, how will that fair in countries that utilise GSM900 as that may certainly be a restriction in adoption for some countries due to frequency clash, would it not?

desdiv• 11 years ago

GSM900 is 890-915 MHz; 802.11ah gets around this by using region specific frequencies that sidestep GSM900:

902-928 MHz in the US (26 MHz bandwidth)

863-868 MHz in Europe (5 MHz bandwidth)

916.5-927.5 MHz in Japan (11 MHz bandwidth)

Limited bandwidth, especially in Europe, will to lead to both higher power consumption and lower real-world range.

The PHY layer will allow devices and APs to operate over different sub-1GHz ISM bands, depending on the country regulations: 863-868 MHz in Europe, 902-928 MHz in the US, and 916.5-927.5 MHz in Japan. China, South Korea, and Singapore also have specific channels.

Reference: http://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless-infrastructure/sub-...

ksec2• 11 years ago

I am assuming the new for more bandwidth is only required if you have many information to transferred, which isn't likely the case here for 802.11ah?

jmgrosen• 11 years ago

How does this compare to 802.15.4? It seems like the two have similar purposes.

dghughes• 11 years ago

How will IPv6 affect all these new wireless standards/specs? Going from small to huge frame sizes must have a significant effect on performance.

legulere• 11 years ago

IPv6 Has nothing to do with frame sizes (except that too large packets now get dropped instead of being fragmented into two parts)

geofft2• 11 years ago

IPv4 lets the MTU get as low as 68 (but you're only sending 8 bytes of data per packet); IPv6 prevents it from getting any lower than 1280, but permits "link-specific fragmentation and reassembly" as long as IPv6 itself doesn't see any smaller fragments.

IPv6 also permits (but does not require) jumbograms that make full use of the 32-bit packet size field, but across a wireless link, having to retransmit 4 GB at a time seems like a bad plan... this only seems useful for short-distance wired connections among hosts that know they've got a quality cable between them.

andreapaiola• 11 years ago

Isn't often better powerline than WiFi through walls?

802.11ah Wi-Fi Standard Approved

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