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There's a new Wi-Fi standard on the way


Phil O'Keefe

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Called HaLow, it is supposed to have better range and improved ability to go through obstacles like walls, along with lower power requirements... HaLow will initially be certified for 18Mbps using a 4MHz-wide channel. Apparently the next big thing is the Internet of Things, and they're getting the pipes ramped up to handle it all.

 

 

http://www.corporatetechdecisions.com/article/new_low_power_long_range_wifi_standard_approved

 

 

 

 

 

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Very interesting! Operates below 1GHz. So for now that are talking about the 900MHz ISM band (which isn't very big) and that certification will start in 2018. Just a guess, but by then I expect the FCC will have reallocated much of the 600MHz band so I expect it won't take much to move this down there. That band will be licensed so I expect we will probably see proprietary Wi-Fi by subscription in that band. It would be even better at penetrating walls.

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So this will speed up what part of the chain?

 

If it's from the router to the device, then, just considering my personal situation, the bottleneck is never there, but it's in what comes over the phone line. I'm ten minutes from downtown Austin which you might think would be a well-wired place to be. Not so. 2.8 download on a good day. .5 upload. AT&T U-verse.

 

The Internet of Things...there certainly is info trapped in gizmos that would be great to know before the gizmo totally breaks down. Diagnostics, various stats, reminders, warnings, etc - all great stuff. The media coverage seems bent on presenting us with images of a happyland of smart devices that serve our every need with instant convenience. We'll have to see about that.

 

I just don't want to have to argue with my a/c about the settings I want. Or have my water faucet tattle on me to the utility company. "He's wasting hot water again!"

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

 

 

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So this will speed up what part of the chain?

 

If it's from the router to the device, then, just considering my personal situation, the bottleneck is never there, but it's in what comes over the phone line. I'm ten minutes from downtown Austin which you might think would be a well-wired place to be. Not so. 2.8 download on a good day. .5 upload. AT&T U-verse.

 

Yes, you'll need a fast pipe. I have FiOS, and I regularly test at over what I'm paying for, and very rarely get less - and I have a 75mbps up / down pipe. Speed from my ISP isn't the issue for me, but since I live on a one acre lot, improved range would be useful - especially for devices at the far end of my yard, or when I'm outside in the far back.

 

The Internet of Things...there certainly is info trapped in gizmos that would be great to know before the gizmo totally breaks down. Diagnostics, various stats, reminders, warnings, etc - all great stuff. The media coverage seems bent on presenting us with images of a happyland of smart devices that serve our every need with instant convenience. We'll have to see about that.

 

Agreed.

 

I just don't want to have to argue with my a/c about the settings I want. Or have my water faucet tattle on me to the utility company. "He's wasting hot water again!"

 

nat whilk ii

 

What I hope they'll be able to do is to sense your presence and not over-ride what you want to do when you're there... but detect when you're not, and shut things down, such as turning off lights when you leave a room and no motion is detected for X amount of time (user-adjustable, of course) or noticing your work week pattern and when you leave and come home, and turn the AC or heat on as needed 30 minutes before you get home so the house is comfortable when you get there, but you're not wasting electricity all day long running them when you're not home.

 

I do suspect that utilities will continue to want that data, and will continue to offer incentives for customers to sign up for power at reduced rates in exchange for things like the ability to throttle your use (turning off washers and dryers, etc.) during high-use periods.

 

MY hope is that cheap, clean and renewable power becomes so readily available that it becomes a non-issue and people can use all they want of it without even thinking about it, including powering desalinization plants. Kind of like phones are today. I'm old enough to remember when a phone call to NYC from the LA area could cost you a couple of bucks for the first minute, and when long-distance calls were usually reserved for absolute essential things and special occasions, and always kept short lest the bill skyrocket. Today practically everyone gets nationwide long distance as part of their basic phone service.

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I hope people eventually realize that there cannot really be an energy shortage. Just a shortage of conversion facilities, plus economic situations that make energy hard to afford. Water...can't get it from off-planet, but it's 100% renewable. So again it's processing and delivery and economics, not a shortage of the actual stuff for the foreseeable.

 

Utilities are strange organizations. They do and they don't have profit motives. They do and they don't have the public good in mind. They do and they don't want more customers. They do and they don't want to grow. What they seem to want more than anything is to change as little as possible, and never preferably. They are the conservatives of the economic system - always forced into changes kicking and screaming, making it as difficult a process as possible for everyone involved.

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

 

 

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Water...can't get it from off-planet, but it's 100% renewable.

 

Actually, we probably will be able to get it from off-planet eventually, Most scientists think the bulk of the water we do have probably came here from asteroids, and eventually I think we'll start mining those for all sorts of things. Just one example: it would be more sensible to get large quantities of water (which is not only useful for drinking but can also be converted to oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for fuel) for long-range space missions and to supply Moon or Martian bases locally or from a nearby asteroid than to have to launch it from Earth.

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Actually, we probably will be able to get it from off-planet eventually, Most scientists think the bulk of the water we do have probably came here from asteroids, and eventually I think we'll start mining those for all sorts of things. Just one example: it would be more sensible to get large quantities of water (which is not only useful for drinking but can also be converted to oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for fuel) for long-range space missions and to supply Moon or Martian bases locally or from a nearby asteroid than to have to launch it from Earth.

 

I'm not sure this is such a great idea. By adding mass to the Earth, you will (eventually) slow the rotation and make the days longer. Take the process far enough and we could end up with 6 month-long days.

 

Sure, it would take several quintillion tons of imported stuff to do that, but of course once industry spools up a process it will not want to stop it as long as they're still making money.

 

What's worse, you would also destabilize the orbit of any celestial body you are mining.

 

Anyway, back to the topic:

 

I'm inclined to believe, based on the context and the rated speed, that this is a standard intended for IoT gadgets, which typically don't have a lot of data to move, and don't do it very frequently. After all, how much talking does a washing machine need to do?

 

For WiFi, 18 Mbps is way below what the current 2.8GHz/5.2Ghz dual band wifi routers currently do. For example, I regularly get 55 to 200 Mbps on my home WiFi.

 

Usually Wifi is not the bottleneck, it is the speed of the ISP service. Until I recently went to a satellite ISP, the best I ever got was 2.5 Mbps download speed from the net. (Now, with satellite, I get from 20M to 150Mbps)

 

The USA nationwide average is about 11 Mbps, lagging behind the rest of the world (even the 3rd world) countries by a fair margin...

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I'm not sure this is such a great idea. By adding mass to the Earth, you will (eventually) slow the rotation and make the days longer. Take the process far enough and we could end up with 6 month-long days.

 

Sure, it would take several quintillion tons of imported stuff to do that, but of course once industry spools up a process it will not want to stop it as long as they're still making money.

 

What's worse, you would also destabilize the orbit of any celestial body you are mining.

 

 

It will take a long time but we're going to end up with that eventually anyway as the moon continues to move further and further away from the Earth... but I do see your point. But we really wouldn't be adding mass to Earth if we used those raw materials for Moon and Mars bases, as well as for raw materials for space missions and travel within the solar system. :)

 

As far as the orbital stability of an asteroid's orbit, we'd better figure out how to expertly control and manipulate them or we will eventually wind up like the dinosaurs - it's not a question of if, but when we'll be hit by another "global extinction" sized rock, and if we want to survive as a species, I think it's crucial that we do learn how to control those so we can protect ourselves, and that we get humans off of this rock and living self-sufficiently on other rocks in case something happens (nuclear war, super volcano, gamma ray burst, etc. etc.) that kills us off.

 

 

Anyway, back to the topic:

 

I'm inclined to believe, based on the context and the rated speed, that this is a standard intended for IoT gadgets, which typically don't have a lot of data to move, and don't do it very frequently. After all, how much talking does a washing machine need to do?

 

Probably not much - "I need to be serviced (with a code to indicate what's wrong)" or "all systems functioning normally" once a day or whenever a failure occurs. We'd also like stuff like "order more laundry detergent!" and "we need more fabric softener" to be handled automatically too (even the purchases), but those are also "only occasionally" type messages.

 

For WiFi, 18 Mbps is way below what the current 2.8GHz/5.2Ghz dual band wifi routers currently do. For example, I regularly get 55 to 200 Mbps on my home WiFi.

 

Usually Wifi is not the bottleneck, it is the speed of the ISP service. Until I recently went to a satellite ISP, the best I ever got was 2.5 Mbps download speed from the net. (Now, with satellite, I get from 20M to 150Mbps)

 

I use FiOS, and have 75 Mbps up / down service - it's often even faster when I actually test it.

 

The USA nationwide average is about 11 Mbps, lagging behind the rest of the world (even the 3rd world) countries by a fair margin...

 

I'd love to have even faster service... but what would be even better is if the rest of the country did too. Too many places in the USA still lack decent broadband service.

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