I just what to clearify some issues regarding the current wireless standards.Yes Wimax is indeed an advanced wireless technology,and its far more better than other competitor.But wimax is expensive,wimax needs millions of $$$ just for frequnecy license 2.3,2.5,3.3-3.6(we still didn’t buy the equipment ) and if they had unlicense products as many vendors are planing at the end of this year,its gonna be at 5.8ghz (poor indoor coverage,very expensive BS).We conclude that Wimax is for operators.On the other hand, 802.11n wifi is cheap and will get cheaper by time,amazing preformance with a real throughput of 170mbits(40mhz channel size),excellent indoor pentration,and after all its an atheros chipset with xspan technology ! so thats what we want to see on RouterOS the driver is there,I know it wont be compatible with other vendors coz its using the 1st draft and its not yet a standrized but who cares! so I hope if there any plans from Mk ,best regards..
WiMAX is designed and optimised for licensed bands, with an “operator model” i.e. those prepared to buy licenses and roll networks nationwide. The MAC can’t cope with interference, as there isn’t expected to be any. WiMAX has “fixed” (=d) and “mobile” (=e) variants. Most people expect the latter to be the winner eventually.
802.11n is “next-gen WiFi”. It is intended for indoor use, i.e. short distances within the building. The increased throughput is partly by using more spectrum (40MHz channel) and using MIMO which relies on multipath effects within the building to allow spatial multiplexing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11#802.11n
Many people believe that spatial multiplexing won’t work outdoors as there are not enough reflections arriving at the receiver from buildings etc to make use of this - ironic, that for once, multipath actually helps.
Beam-steering is an important concept that even some WiFi products today have - reduces interference and increases reach.
Also a question of “which band”: the vast majority of WiFi operates in 2.4GHz band. 5.xGHz “never really took off” as far as mass market is concerned. Question: will there ever be 5.xGHz 802.11n chipsets?
In summary, WiMAX and 802.11n are “different beasts”: designed to do different things. The question remains “what to use for unlicensed outdoor broadband wireless” and still it looks like “enhanced 802.11” such as MT’s Nstreme look like the answer.
I’d hope that MT builds in 802.11n support for indoor use, for hotspots etc. But IMHO to use it outdoors loses most of the advantages.
Well Stephen 802.16e mobile version will be on intel motherboards running windows ,linux,etc,plus wimax will be on the 5.8ghz next month so they can offcourse compete.
MT are waiting for a Standard, Wimax and 11n are both rather fluid right now and working on supporting a standard that could change along with the drivers used
Alvarion has some un licensed Wimax equipment. so i would not count wimax out of un licensed frequences just yet. I would just like some kind of solution that i can mount atop a building and provide some kind of coverage to a repeater or a 2 radio repearter unit indoor, preferably in some ones attic for example.
Wimax has always been a 2 stage deployment, the first was in licensed spectrum allowing network operators time to get a foothold in the market before every man and his dog gets it in unlicensed spectrum.
Dont expect any large deployments of 5ghz Wimax this year. Remember chances are we are going to have 802.16d-2007 in Jan aswell
including “the 802.16 MAC is poorly suited as written for unlicensed bands since it assumes no competition for the air and has no mechanism for battling interference”
Sure there are 5.8GHz WiMAX products in existence, the question is how well they work in the face of interference. I don’t know anyone who has used them though.
) and if they had unlicense products as many vendors are planing at the end of this year,its gonna be at 5.8ghz (poor indoor coverage,very expensive BS).We conclude that Wimax is for operators.On the other hand, 802.11n wifi is cheap and will get cheaper by time,amazing preformance with a real throughput of 170mbits(40mhz channel size),excellent indoor pentration,and after all its an atheros chipset with xspan technology ! so thats what we want to see on RouterOS the driver is there,I know it wont be compatible with other vendors coz its using the 1st draft and its not yet a standrized but who cares! so I hope if there any plans from Mk ,best regards..