Jun

12

Open Source 802.11n -- Big Breakthroughs are Coming!

sascha's picture

802.11n support, with its greater throughput and MIMO capacities has long been a milestone that open source developers have sought. My friend Aaron Kaplan IM-ed me other day (probably from the bowels of some hi-tech nerd bunker in Vienna) to let me know that, Eureka(!), 802.11n support has finally been put into the open source domain.

This morning, I received word from Joseph Bonicioli over at AWMN of some of the first systematic testing (and if you don't yet know about AWMN.net, you should take a look -- think mesh LAN with hundreds of services and applications, all distributed and community operated, and covering the metropolitan area of Athens Greece. I'm always amazed by the ignorant who claim mesh doesn't scale -- AWMN is just one example of how we could be doing broadband service provision better.

Here's what Joseph says:

    ...just wanted to share the joy. This week we successfully completed the first 802.11n long range link in the network. Its not very far (only 4KM) but it is very promising. 80 to almost 100Mbit TCP Traffic with 20MHz channels and ~150Mbit with 40MHz. Currently we are dealing with the redesign of our feeders and trying to find an optimal soft/hardware set. We are all really excited to see what AWMN V3 will bring to us. The first link has been routing traffic successfully at 80Mbit since the 11th of June 2009.

80Mbit sustained throughput over a 4KM link in an electromagnetically congested metro area is pretty impressive stuff. With announcements now coming about about 4X4 MIMO 802.11n configurations with 600Mbps capacity (i.e., throw 4 radios onto a devices that uses them all in concert), one can see how wireless connectivity speeds within networks are rapidly outpacing broadband connectivity outside of the network.

Good thing us community wireless networking uber-geeks already planned for that eventuality and built infrastructures that could take advantage of all this excess capacity. Ask your provider if they're doing likewise.

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  1. Shivkumar (not verified) on Tue, 2009-06-16 07:53

    Hi Sascha,

    Fantastic bit of news!!

    Would it be possible for you to put me in touch with Joseph Bonicioli of AWMN? Their site doesnt seem to have an english language option.

    Thanks in Advance

     

    Shiv

  2. sascha on Sat, 2009-06-20 21:56

    Hi Shiv,

    Just drop me an e-mail and I'll put you in contact.

    --Sascha


  3. Eric Warnke (not verified) on Thu, 2009-06-18 01:46

    Awesome!

    We're preparing a proposal for our own city's mesh wireless network and I'm looking into using 802.11n as the backhaul. Keeps it robust and current. We'll probably branch from the Robin Mesh project in order to incorporate the multi-radio capabilities of some more powerful hardware.

     

    Cheers,

    Eric Warnke

  4. Brett Glass (not verified) on Fri, 2009-06-19 06:27

    That's right: let's kill all existing wireless ISPs, and knock all of their customers off the air, by deploying 802.11n -- a spectrum hog which is known to wipe out everything else on the band. And what would replace them? Economically unsustainable, overloaded, unreliable municipal networks. Great way to get Internet to the people. Not!

  5. Joseph Bonicioli (not verified) on Mon, 2009-06-22 06:21

    First of all thank you for giving me the opportunity to answer to your throughts and worries.

    I will just point out that our network at least is not advocating for relentless use of spectrum and we are very very strict on Tx power limits. I would say we are more effective when it comes to ISM bands since communities are groups where people know each other, talk to each other, comment on bad behavior, and disapprove of bad spectrum use more directly and effectively than any other regulatory body around the world. We consider ISM bands as a natural resource bound to our communities and we guard it the same way a Mobile service provider guards its own space.

    Now from a technical point of view I should point out that 802.11n has 2 modes of operation. Using 20MHz channels and 40MHz channels. In other word it is the equivalent to simple channels in a/g and Turbo channels. So as far as the spectrum  issues it is just the same as 802.11a, 802.11g. More over you are better of using 802.11n than anything else. It is NOT using more channels and it is NOT worse for spectrum usage. Its much more effective due to MIMO technologies, Special Multiplexing and Forward Error Correction.

    I recommend you read this article. It is informative as to how we are going to reach the theoretical wireless 600Mbit links. http://www.wirevolution.com/2007/09/07/how-does-80211n-get-to-600mbps/

    Taking the above into account I believe that Community wireless networks are a great way to spread not only access, but education as well. We extend wire to where it needs to go, we do it cheap, very reliably and we have proven it many times over.

    If anybody is in doubt have a look here http://wind.awmn.net It works, fast, cheap, reliably and with consideration to spectrum usage.

     

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