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5G Advocates Renew Attempts to Poach Wi-Fi’s 6GHz Spectrum
- acd 6y agoLet the public vote about it.
- stefan_ 6y agoThis should be an easy choice. Award huge amounts of indoor spectrum to a consortium that requires a SIM card to use any of it? What are they thinking?
- mabbo 6y agoThey were thinking "I would like to make even more money". Wifi networks are competition. By stealing their spectrum, they make the mobile network more appealing, so less people will bother using wifi at all.
- DavidVoid 6y agoThere are indoor 5G radio units for use in malls and large buildings (see Ericsson's Radio Dot products for example [1]). That's probably what they were thinking. [1] https://www.ericsson.com/en/portfolio/networks/ericsson-radio-system/radio/indoor/radio-dot-system https://www.ericsson.com/en/portfolio/networks/ericsson-radi...
- SahAssar 6y agoIs that like a repeater or is there more to it?
- mabbo 6y agoThere is more to it. As I understand it (and please, correct me where I'm wrong, internet) as the frequency goes up, the range and ability to penetrate walls goes down. Each generation uses more spectrums, more ranges. So 5G is neat because it's got low frequencies with long-range towers in rural areas, but also high frequency short-range 'towers' in urban areas. This means instead of way too many people trying to share a limited spectrum over a huge area (IE: low frequency in the city), you can have short-range high frequency 'towers' every few hundred meters in a city. But now they're coming for our wifi routers, demanding that spectrum too. And that's kind of bullshit.
- fy20 6y agoWell to be fair, how many malls have you been in that actually have decent WiFi? The infrastructure already exists in the enterprise to provide it, but usually they cheap out at some point so it ends up being useless, and after going through the hoops to register and realise you are getting 500kbps, you switch to mobile data. If this ends up with large indoor areas (malls, airports, etc) having decent connectivity I'm all for it.
- supertrope 6y agoAn Ethernet cable plugs into the unseen side. Very similar to Wi-Fi but costs much more, is faster, does not require any user effort to connect, and is limited to just one telco's customers.
- drewg123 6y agoI'm confused; I thought that Wifi 6E equipment using the 6GHz band was already available? I actually just ordered a wifi card based on the Intel AX210: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/wireless/wi-fi-6e-ax201-module-brief.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/wirele... I'm eagerly awaiting an AP that supports 6GHz and am hoping for a few years of relatively interference free wifi in an urban setting (like 5Ghz was for the first year or two).
- metaxis78 6y agoAlthough not ideal, 5GHz has significant wall reflection/reduced penetration. If you're in a dense, urban, noisy environment, you should still be able to achieve decent MCS on 5GHz in your home. 6GHz will add more spectrum with these characteristics, which will helpfully alleviate future performance concerns pretty thoroughly.
- drewg123 6y agoThe problem I'm facing is that my friend is a streamer, and she can only reliably stream with a wired connection. When trying to use Wifi, she has frequent breakups of her stream. Using https://packetlosstest.com/ https://packetlosstest.com/, we see that frequently many packets are delayed several hundred MS. The only thing which has seemed to help is reducing the 5Ghz channel width and forcing the AP to use one of the lesser occupied 5Ghz channels. This is what has made me think that interference is the problem. A channel scan shows well over 100 APs.. EDIT: Are there AP features or tuning which will influence how well, and/or how quick it can react to interference? I've been hoping that the 6GHz band will improve things for her when 6Ghz APs become available. I was going to build her an AP using an Intel AX210, however I realized that the AX210 does not support AP mode so that plan won't work.
- metaxis78 6y agoThere are client priority features in wifi, but your device may not support them. If her antenna has line of sight to the BS then it's not likely to be interference but something else, like traffic congestion. I'm not sure what hardware/chipset you're using, but if it's consumer grade, that might be a big part of the problem. Competently executed prosumer/soho like the amplifi/unifi line or google wifi may make a huge difference. However, ethernet may just be the best option, especially for streaming.
- jjoonathan 6y agoProponents of spectrum auctions should be ashamed of themselves. If you pop up a spectrum analyzer anywhere there are people, you'll see loads of traffic jammed into the "free-for-all" ISM bands, you'll see AM & FM radio, and you'll see precious little else. If you have a really good spectrum analyzer, you'll be able to spot the occasional cellular traffic, but by and large the spectrum that has been auctioned off to corporate owners goes almost entirely to waste. 50 years ago when fixed-frequency narrowband receivers were all we had, this made sense. It was a necessary compromise. Nobody needed bandwidth but everybody needed a dedicated frequency to accommodate their primitive hardware. Today it's the opposite, and the relative usage of ISM bands vs everything else proves it. The radio-frequency situation makes the real-estate markets with block after block of unoccupied apartments look downright efficient by comparison. We need to fix this.
- gruez 6y ago>If you have a really good spectrum analyzer, you'll be able to spot the occasional cellular traffic, but by and large the spectrum that has been auctioned off to corporate owners goes almost entirely to waste. Just because you don't see any usage in your area (rural/suburbs?) doesn't mean it's unused. They could be heavily used major metropolitan centers, for instance.
- dboreham 6y agoIf he can't see it where he is then by definition it isn't being used in that location. Use on some other part of the planet isn't relevant because these frequencies don't propagate far.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoIt’s true. However there’s a question of what to do about this. You can’t sell a wireless device to someone in Ohio and expect it not to be used in New York City. And certain emergency frequencies might be rarely utilized but very important when used. That said, I’d like to see more allocation of spectrum for consumer use. It’s very frustrating that cellular companies get more and more spectrum but we can’t feasibly deploy public LTE for example. Perhaps if the wireless device has GPS and network connectivity we could give the government permission to enable and disable extra frequencies depending on location. Though of course this scheme invites suppression of dissent.
- swiley 6y agoWhy the hell are we not just using beam forming with WiFi? Why are we restricting the construction of computer networks to some few privileged companies? What the hell is going on here?
- r00fus 6y agoGrift. Rent Seeking. The same old formula. Sadly it still works well today.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gruez 6y ago>Why the hell are we not just using beam forming with WiFi? AFAIK the router I have from years ago is advertised to have "beam forming". Whether/how well it works is another story. >Why are we restricting the construction of computer networks to some few privileged companies? The theory is that building out networks in a planned/organized fashion would produce better results than ad-hoc deployment. See sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25652088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25652088
- CameronNemo 6y agoOrganization does not necessarily mean monopolization. Open standards/protocols with several operators is not only possible, but desirable. An ecosystem without diversity is death.
- supertrope 6y agoThere's more to wireless networks than just radio technology. Contemporary cellular service is made possible with low interference licensed spectrum ($0.XX per MHz per million residents), real estate (towers) $$$$/mo each, fiber backhaul ($$$$/mo each), and an army of workers. Telcos each spend billions of USD per year on CAPEX. Spectrum auctions are better than the previous allocation method of licensing channels for specific uses. If companies have to pay money they will efficiently deploy it, unlike incumbent users that refuse to digitize, simulcast on extra channels, or even leave it idle.
- brokencode 6y agoThis looks like a money-making scheme from big telecom companies to me. They have to compete with faster, cheaper, more reliable hardwired connections, and can only benefit from hobbling WiFi. WiFi 6E is necessary and potentially revolutionary for indoor spaces. If you’ve ever lived in a large apartment building, then you have probably seen the huge number of neighbor WiFi routers with varying signal strengths interfering with your WiFi connection. I’ve found WiFi to be completely unusable for gaming for that exact reason, and have to use a MoCA adapter instead. WiFi 6 helps, but most devices on 5Ghz are still not on WiFi 6, and won’t be for a long time. Any non-WiFi 6 device on the same channel will interfere with the more advanced devices. WiFi 6E not only introduces a new 6Ghz band where every device is using WiFi 6, but it also has significantly more channels, allowing for more routers in a limited area without interference. On top of that, it has higher speed and lower latency than even WiFi 6 on 5Ghz. I’ve seen some claims that it might be used for wireless VR headsets, though that remains to be seen. This is a technology apartment dwellers don’t even know they’ve been dreaming of, and it should not be delayed.
- gruez 6y ago>On top of that, it has higher speed and lower latency than even WiFi 6 on 5Ghz. On a 802.11ac 5GHZ connection I'm getting 1ms pings to my router. Does lowering latency beyond that even make a difference?
- Nextgrid 6y agoIt’s less about latency and more about stability. That 1ms will skyrocket at the smallest interference.
- grogenaut 6y agoreading other comments it's not about latency its about signal propagation and interference.
- snvzz 6y agoAs with scheduling latency (try cyclictest from rt-tests), the average doesn't really matter, as it's low enough. What matters is the maximum value. That's the one you'll feel when it happens. WiFi has packet loss to worry about, on top of that.
- syshum 6y agoMost of the comments here are looking at this the wrong way The big problem here is the spectrum, any spectrum, is being SOLD.. Spectrum use should come at a cost based on % of revenue or Profit paid back the people and used for common programs. Not a one time free where by then the private company owns it for all time
- superkuh 6y agoDon't worry. Even when it's sold it's never really sold. If someone with more money comes along they get your spectrum. Just look at the incumbent satellite uplink operators who had half of C band taken away from them and resold (to 5G telcos). As for spectrum usage, I can only talk about my region, but I have been monitoring all of 70-1000 MHz at ~10 second intervals and storing the data since 2014. For periods of that I monitor 700-2700 MHz as well. The cell operators are not letting their bands sit idle as far as I can tell. It's nothing like what the top level comment thread implies re: ISM vs. Cell bands. If anything it's the reverse. But that doesn't mean they should get this 6-7 GHz of new ISM spectrum the FCC returned the original owners: the people. They really, really shouldn't. And they shouldn't be allowed to operated unlicensed LTE in the ISM bands either.
- ece 6y agoThe FCC also designated this 6Ghz spectrum for indoor use only below a certain transmission limit, unlike the 5GHz channels which you have to stop using if there's other traffic. It's a good case of dual-use of spectrum, though more spectrum should be made public either way.
- PoachedSausage 6y agoYour spectrum monitoring sounds interesting. Do you have any details/write up?
- superkuh 6y agohttp://superkuh.com/radio/ http://superkuh.com/radio/ . In that directory you'll find most of the recorded radio history as well as the bash script and depends to do it yourself (http://superkuh.com/radio/deps/ http://superkuh.com/radio/deps/). The top of the bash script has a readme in the comments. For 70-1000 MHz it's just a homemade discone antenna hooked to an rtlsdr dongle running rtl_power. I have written a little bash script that automates calling heatmap.py to render the 30k pixel wide image, imgcnv to slice it into image tiles, and generate an PanoJS HTML page to display the tiles.
- JadoJodo 6y agoPerhaps I’m just the wrong audience but I had a good laugh at the irony of this clarification: “IMT is the ITU nomenclature for all things cellular” ... OK, but what is ‘ITU’ the nomenclature for?
- slimsag 6y agoI hate acronyms. Seems to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicatio...
- Mjr_Mojo 6y agoInternational Telecommunication Union - the UN agency responsible for managing international spectrum usage policy and standards.
- jvanderbot 6y agoI don't know about you, but I'm on WiFi much more than I am XG.
- Havoc 6y agoSurely that ship has sailed already? e.g. Xi's home 6E wifi router goes on sale in uhm 48 hours.
- koreanguy 6y agoEuropeans @ IEEE 802.1 committee targeting Wifi 7 specs for 2024.
- zw123456 6y agoSpectrum reminds me very much of diamonds. It is an artificial scarcity. Except a government controlled cartel rather than a private cartel. Most of the RF spectrum is reserved for "DoD" they never use.
- tradertef 6y agoSorry but this is not true. DoD has been loosing spectrum but they have their needs ;)
- nomercy400 6y agoI bet a delay of ten years of fully using the 6GHz band would be considered a big win for the 5G advocates. They will have crippled Wifi's performance for 10 years, giving them more breathing space to show that 5G is the future.