[IP] Is 1Gbps Wi-Fi on the Horizon?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 9, 2004 8:51:11 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Is 1Gbps Wi-Fi on the Horizon?
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Is 1Gbps Wi-Fi on the Horizon?
November 9, 2004
<http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3433151>
Could the lowly 802.11b become a 99Mbps speed-demon? How about 802.11a
breaking the 1Gbps barrier? Difficult to imagine? Israel-based Extricom
says its possible—if Wi-Fi would just stop interfering.
Extricom believes it has the answer to speeding up Wi-Fi, along with
readying enterprise WLANs for demanding wireless applications, such as
Voice-over-Wi-Fi. The company's "Interference Free Architecture"
triples both the available channels and bandwidth of 802.11a, b and g.
"The next big wave in WLAN will be performance and deployment in the
enterprise," said Gideon Rottem, Extricom's CEO. "Current technologies
all fall short, creating a gap that Extricom is poised to fill."
Extricom believes solving the problem of co-channel interference
allows the continued growth of the Wi-Fi market.
"Without a solution that eliminates co-channel interference, there
would be a very solid limit to how fast, and how far, this market could
expand," according to the company.
Rottem said the announced $5.6 million in funding from Vertex Venture
Capital and Magnum Communications Fund "will be used primarily to
propel penetration of the company's first round WLAN products in North
America and in the Asia Pacific markets."
Described as a switch and AP combining hardware and specialized
software algorithms, the products from Extricom—now in Beta
testing—will be available in the first quarter of 2005 to "box vendors
for the enterprise market," says Atara Lev, spokesperson for the
Herzlia, Israel company.
Extricom's penetration of the WLAN switch market will be a two-prong
process. Rottem says a finished product will be first available in the
first part of 2005 and then Extricom will provide custom chips to
original equipment manufacturers. That finished product will be a
"central access unit," similar to that produced by switch vendors
Aruba, Trapeze and Airespace, according to Rottem.
This "break-away WLAN architecture...eliminates the coverage and
capacity limitations of traditional WLAN architectures, and the need
for cell-planning and site surveys—the most expensive aspect of owning
a WLAN," according to Extricom.
Extricom's system uses per-packet adaptive techniques along with
channel reuse to create a "high performance voice and data network
where each user's link is optimized anywhere and at any time in the
network," according to a prepared statement.
"The outcome is a network that operates at full modem speeds
ubiquitously," says the company. "Extricom sharply increases capacity
and scalability in the face of a hostile, in-building RF environment."
The new technology is backed by 10 patents "related to the ability to
deploy a network that operates unaffected by co-channel interference".
Extricom's products come down on the side of intelligent wireless
switches and "ultra-thin" APs. The APs have no radio or processor.
While device agnostic, in order to achieve the high data rates and
throughput, all Extricom hardware is needed, according to Rottem.
A white-paper from Extricom provides examples of the impact of its
technology. 802.11g, rated at 54Mbps on one channel could reach 486Mbps
operating on all three available channels. The increasingly popular
802.11a standard could attain 1.296 Gbps, claims Extricom.
A combination of chips and software will enable Extricom's customers
to forget about co-channel interference and transmit on all available
channels. Unlike the current method of not placing APs using the same
channel side-by-side, access point using Extricom's "break-away WLAN
architecture" will use the same channel. Rather than dividing APs among
the three channels available to 802.11b, Extricom-powered APs would use
all three channels at once. Tripling the available channels would also
triple the available bandwidth, claims the company.
Gottem believes his company is looking at the "next generation of
wireless" and will intersect the public's need for more bandwidth.
"The current approaches by competitors in this market are fatally
flawed," believes Gottem. "They will never provide unfettered
performance, and the performance will only get worse as demand
increases."
Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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