WiMAX: The Invisible Internet

Your cordless phone works to let you communicate within the walls of your home, but if you take it into the street, its signal quickly fades. Mobile phones are there to fill our need for keeping connected on the go, but at a greater expense than your home phone line. Just like your cordless phone, wireless computer networks using WiFi or more specifically, 802.11b or 802.11g work well within the walls of your home or campus but quickly fade once you leave the typical 100-foot range of the network access point.

A new technology, called WiMAX or 802.16e by the cognoscetti, promises to let your laptop connect to the Internet faster from access points up to 30 miles away. These are distances even greater than your cellular phone connects to today. If you are so inclined to know, WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access. Surprised? I didn't guess it would stand for that either.

How Does WiMAX Work?

Although the standard for this technology is not completely defined, it is being tested in some cities as a back-haul between the current standard WiFi. This initial setup requires two wireless radios situated at each access point. The first radio operates on WiMAX to receive a connection to the Internet or even ricocheted through a second access point, which in turn is connected to the Internet in what is known as a mesh network.

The other radio at the access point communicates over WiFi frequencies that are compatible with wireless cards inside laptops. An important call to action test of this gear was when Intel sent WiMAX hardware to the Gulf Coast after hurricane Katrina. The equipment was used to quickly rebuild communication infrastructure since the storm destroyed fiber switches and traditional telephone pole wired circuits.

This new technology builds upon the current WiFi standards used today with monumental improvements. The speed of the connection will double from 54 megabits per second to speeds near 100 megabits, typical of wired networks. Access points, which are the host base station that you connect to, will be able to pass network traffic between each other natively, like the above "mesh" scenario envisions, as well as to laptops and even Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephones.

This hardware will undertake two paths, the first being fixed location wireless. Antennas will be mounted near your window or on your rooftop to receive a signal from a central WiMAX tower. From this signal a WiFi or cabled connection will feed into your computer.

As the technology enters its second phase and is reduced in size, it will become mobile and be built into laptops and ultimately mobile phones, negating the need for WiFi altogether. This technology has the potential to give you citywide connectivity and even Internet access while you are driving due to its ability to hand-off communications between towers, like a cellular phone does with your calls today.

Can't Wait for WiMAX?

If you cannot wait for WiMAX and want to cover a large area with wireless Internet service, there are several products that you can buy today to improve your range. External antennas, repeaters and boosters sometimes work but are mostly a band-aid for an old technology. Elements of the WiMAX technology, most notably improved range and speed, are found in some new products labeled as MIMO, "Pre-N," or 802.11n. These products have Multiple In and Multiple Out (MIMO) technology with two radios flooding an area with wireless signals to overcome "multipath," a wireless nuance that slows the signal down as waves reflect off of things such as refrigerators, duct work and even microwave ovens as they operate. It is a fact that your food is warmed at the same frequency of your wireless Internet connection; however, you can have no fear of your laptop cooking you, while you surf the Web. Good thing.

I have tested a Linksys MIMO capable SRX router, which uses a pre-802.11n chipset, along side a typical Linksys G router and saw amazing results. Even with high-gain antennas installed on the older G router, the SRX hardware has about twice the signal strength to distant computers over the older technology. This increased signal strength means that computers connecting to the access point will not have to step down in speed in order to make their connection reliability, as what happens today. You will see greater distance with faster connections.

Since all of this equipment is being released before the standards group, the IEEE has ratified this new technology, purchasing it is a bit of a gamble. If you are an early adopter and must have the latest and greatest gear, then go for it. If you are lucky, a simple software patch will enable the radios to be 100% compatible with the hardware that will be released in 2006 for 802.11n and 2007 for 802.16e. If the standards change in a way that is not support via an internal software upgrade, then you may own technology that is not compatible with computers that you buy in the future. Come to think of it, I have a whole closet full of gear like that.

Dave Mathews has been an avid user of wireless Internet since Apple made its Airport-popular product in 1999. More stories and video clips can be found at DaveMathews.com.

© 2008, Young Money Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

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