Future of WiMax

Thu Jul 1 12:45:44 UTC 2010

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:46 AM, Dennis Burgess <dmburgess at linktechs.net> wrote:

> Just what is going on in the WISP industry for the most part.  802.11n
> so far on point-2-point links, are working quite well, cheap hardware as
> well as ease of use is playing factors in this.  We are seeing 10+ mile
> N links running 60-70 meg TCP and over 200 UDP using only 2x2 MIMO.

While WiMAX is often poopoo'd by the WISP community (for good reason,
IMO), it often finds its niche in the federal and muni space,
particularly when video is involved.

Wi-Fi is indeed cheaper on the unlicensed bands, but as a protocol
that determines who speaks and how much they speak, Wi-Fi is very
loosey goosey (CSMA/CA, or "listen before talk").  This sort of
protocol works great when there are tons of laptops and you don't
really care who gets priority (unless they're video, and their traffic
is tagged WMM QoS or something).

But when networks are really *really* REALLY important, you want much
tighter traffic engineering options (and are willing to pay a premium
to do it).  For these sorts of networks, quality of link is more
important than quantity of throughput (which is highly variable in
unlicensed Wi-Fi networks).

Others thoughts on this?