802.11ah Wi-Fi Standard Approved

[cjensen]

Summary:

802.11ah: Better range, lower bandwidth

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

802.11ax: Successor to 11ac expected in 2019

[ksec]

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.

[donatj]

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.

[rgawdzik]

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

[pdabbadabba]

http://www.fiercewireless.com/

[adeptus]

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

[Zenst]

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]

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-...

[johnhenry]

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?

[godzillabrennus]

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.

[keeperofdakeys]

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]

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.

[colejohnson66]

GNU Radio?

[jethro_tell]

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.

[Havoc]

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.

[stirno]

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

[revelation]

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...

[0x0]

"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? :)

[ycmbntrthrwaway]

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...

[JoshTriplett]

> 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.

[revelation]

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

[carlisle_]

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

[structAnkit]

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.

[drmpeg]

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

[tegansnyder]

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

[leaveyou]

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]

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.

[bcook]

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.

[dingo_bat]

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

[ChuckMcM]

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

[jmgrosen]

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

[andreapaiola]

Isn't often better powerline than WiFi through walls?

[dghughes]

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

[ridgeguy]

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

[geofft]

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.

[revelation]

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]

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

[sengork]

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]

That's already the case with directional antennas.