Comments on: Real world measurements show muni Wi-Fi networks outperform WiMAX and cellular http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/ Municipal wireless, citywide WiFi, WiMAX, broadband news Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:52:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: Rory Conaway http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37793 Rory Conaway Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:27:06 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37793 The problem with WiFi is that everyone considers it a laptop technology. If it was deployed in both PTMP and municipal designs simultaneously, then it's far more efficient and reliable. On the municipal side, our company has designs ranging from $3K to $9K per square mile. On the PTMP side, we have devloped techniques reducing the client side install to less than $200 per truckroll with equipment. There are better ideas yet to be deployed with WiFi. The problem with WiFi is that everyone considers it a laptop technology. If it was deployed in both PTMP and municipal designs simultaneously, then it’s far more efficient and reliable. On the municipal side, our company has designs ranging from $3K to $9K per square mile. On the PTMP side, we have devloped techniques reducing the client side install to less than $200 per truckroll with equipment. There are better ideas yet to be deployed with WiFi.

]]> By: Dennis Holmes http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37759 Dennis Holmes Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:58:37 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37759 Way to go Phil anf Ken on publishing a study that proves what most wireless experts and myself have been saying for years. WiFi and WiMax are complimentary services. Not competing ones!! Each has its own place in the market. WiFi is cheaper to deploy and has capacity of user advantages over its more rural based cousin. A lot of critics argue this is not the case but look at very large and populated cities and you will soon see that if wireless broadband grew quickly in popularity that the number of users per square mile could rapidly tax and oversubscribe the WiMax base station. More stations could be added but cost becomes a serious concern. Topography in the city is your design enemy due to buildings and other transient occlusions. WiMax handles these better but cannot completely overcome Line of Site issues and with the increased cell size leaves serious coverage holes and areas of less than peak performance. WiFi with its low cost access points, smaller cell size, and density of users per access point becomes the economical and technical performer in this environment. The coverage when well designed actually is better from an RF perspective. The smaller cells can be tailored to provide good coverage and throughputs to a larger percentage of the city. Now, let’s go rural, and the roles are reversed. In rural areas the cost of deploying 25-30 WiFi access points per square mile quickly becomes cost prohibitive when dealing with the much smaller density of users per square mile. In steps WiMax to save the day with extended range and sectorization. This drastically reduces the cost per square mile to deploy in areas with fewer users and thus no need for huge capacities of users per cell. When speed is the concern it comes down to the vendor and the design of the network. Well designed WiFi networks definitely outperform WiMax. Why analysts ask? It's simple. WiFi is a much more mature technology. Huge players like Cisco, Aruba, Tropos, and Meraki have been competing with each other for years to build better, faster, and more resilient networks in the outdoor space. The results are better routing protocols, better radios, and better Radio Resource Management software suites. The long and short of the problem of broadband deployment in the US is simple. Money! Under the Obama Administration there should be available dollars to push the service out to underserved markets and strong ROI models like those I’ve published in the past need to be put into place in the larger metropolitan areas to offset the cost of deployments. I have heard from several sources in the popular media that municipal wireless broadband is dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is simply technology evolution at its best. Way to go Phil anf Ken on publishing a study that proves what most wireless experts and myself have been saying for years. WiFi and WiMax are complimentary services. Not competing ones!! Each has its own place in the market.
WiFi is cheaper to deploy and has capacity of user advantages over its more rural based cousin. A lot of critics argue this is not the case but look at very large and populated cities and you will soon see that if wireless broadband grew quickly in popularity that the number of users per square mile could rapidly tax and oversubscribe the WiMax base station. More stations could be added but cost becomes a serious concern. Topography in the city is your design enemy due to buildings and other transient occlusions. WiMax handles these better but cannot completely overcome Line of Site issues and with the increased cell size leaves serious coverage holes and areas of less than peak performance. WiFi with its low cost access points, smaller cell size, and density of users per access point becomes the economical and technical performer in this environment. The coverage when well designed actually is better from an RF perspective. The smaller cells can be tailored to provide good coverage and throughputs to a larger percentage of the city.
Now, let’s go rural, and the roles are reversed. In rural areas the cost of deploying 25-30 WiFi access points per square mile quickly becomes cost prohibitive when dealing with the much smaller density of users per square mile. In steps WiMax to save the day with extended range and sectorization. This drastically reduces the cost per square mile to deploy in areas with fewer users and thus no need for huge capacities of users per cell.
When speed is the concern it comes down to the vendor and the design of the network. Well designed WiFi networks definitely outperform WiMax. Why analysts ask? It’s simple. WiFi is a much more mature technology. Huge players like Cisco, Aruba, Tropos, and Meraki have been competing with each other for years to build better, faster, and more resilient networks in the outdoor space. The results are better routing protocols, better radios, and better Radio Resource Management software suites.
The long and short of the problem of broadband deployment in the US is simple. Money! Under the Obama Administration there should be available dollars to push the service out to underserved markets and strong ROI models like those I’ve published in the past need to be put into place in the larger metropolitan areas to offset the cost of deployments. I have heard from several sources in the popular media that municipal wireless broadband is dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is simply technology evolution at its best.

]]> By: Ken Biba http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37681 Ken Biba Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:39:12 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37681 And not only uplink and downlink speeds .. the DELAY and delay variance are critical factors in whether some services - like VoIP and IPTV will work well. The surprise was actually not just on the uplink, but also on the downlink - where we still saw substantial performance advantages for Wi-Fi. <strong>This is in addition to the cost advantages. A large scale mobile WiMax deployment is probably going to require over $500k/square mile in infrastructure equipment - likely more. The best WiFi networks we measured were more on the order of $250k - and delivered substantially more performance.</strong> I suspect that new generation metro WiFi equipment based on 802.11n will substantially increase both the performance of WiFi and decrease the cost. The importance of the uplink has always been minimized by carriers. My home DSL and cable are capped at under 400 kbps as will Clear's mobile WiMax speed. This uplink capacity limits means looooooong times for the uploading of photos or videos ... and makes it effectively impossible to back up my home storage of family photos and videos on "cloud" storage. True "cloud" computing is very difficult until there is a more effective balance between uplink and downlink performance. And not only uplink and downlink speeds .. the DELAY and delay variance are critical factors in whether some services – like VoIP and IPTV will work well.

The surprise was actually not just on the uplink, but also on the downlink – where we still saw substantial performance advantages for Wi-Fi.

This is in addition to the cost advantages. A large scale mobile WiMax deployment is probably going to require over $500k/square mile in infrastructure equipment – likely more. The best WiFi networks we measured were more on the order of $250k – and delivered substantially more performance.

I suspect that new generation metro WiFi equipment based on 802.11n will substantially increase both the performance of WiFi and decrease the cost.

The importance of the uplink has always been minimized by carriers. My home DSL and cable are capped at under 400 kbps as will Clear’s mobile WiMax speed.

This uplink capacity limits means looooooong times for the uploading of photos or videos … and makes it effectively impossible to back up my home storage of family photos and videos on “cloud” storage.

True “cloud” computing is very difficult until there is a more effective balance between uplink and downlink performance.

]]> By: Mediciones a pie de calle: El WiFi supera a las redes celulares y WIMAX | La vida wifi http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37678 Mediciones a pie de calle: El WiFi supera a las redes celulares y WIMAX | La vida wifi Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:32:09 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37678 [...] a pie de calle: El WiFi supera a las redes celulares y WIMAX Filed under: Uncategorized; En muniwireless.com, encontramos un interesante artículo comparativo sobre la implementación de redes WiFi [...] [...] a pie de calle: El WiFi supera a las redes celulares y WIMAX Filed under: Uncategorized; En muniwireless.com, encontramos un interesante artículo comparativo sobre la implementación de redes WiFi [...]

]]> By: Esme Vos http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37676 Esme Vos Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:09:31 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37676 That's correct. Even cable and DSL providers focus on downlink speed. Are these people living in another century? Haven't they used digital cameras and video cameras? People upload a lot of video files (see YouTube and similar sites). People do podcasts and upload their audio files. People post photos on sites like Flickr. I do. So talking only about downlink speeds is deliberately misleading. They don't want to tell people about their paltry upload speeds because they don't want people to know that they are living in the past and their service is SUB-PAR for the new world we live in. That is why in my articles, I do try to post UPLOAD speeds as well as download speeds. That’s correct. Even cable and DSL providers focus on downlink speed. Are these people living in another century? Haven’t they used digital cameras and video cameras? People upload a lot of video files (see YouTube and similar sites). People do podcasts and upload their audio files. People post photos on sites like Flickr. I do.

So talking only about downlink speeds is deliberately misleading. They don’t want to tell people about their paltry upload speeds because they don’t want people to know that they are living in the past and their service is SUB-PAR for the new world we live in.

That is why in my articles, I do try to post UPLOAD speeds as well as download speeds.

]]> By: Arnon Kohavi http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37675 Arnon Kohavi Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:27:43 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37675 Not a surprise. The cellular & WiMax industry has always focused in their marketing efforts on the downlink speed, which in some cases can come close to WiFi. As users increasingly send photos and videos from their mobile devices, the importance of uplink speed increases, which is where WiMax/4G will always be at a disadvantage. One can increase the power at the base station, but it is difficult to transmit a high speed return link from a small mobile device to a distant tower: Much easier to do so to a small box on the wall a few yards away. So WiFi, and in the future, Femtocell, is the way to go. Not a surprise. The cellular & WiMax industry has always focused in their marketing efforts on the downlink speed, which in some cases can come close to WiFi. As users increasingly send photos and videos from their mobile devices, the importance of uplink speed increases, which is where WiMax/4G will always be at a disadvantage. One can increase the power at the base station, but it is difficult to transmit a high speed return link from a small mobile device to a distant tower: Much easier to do so to a small box on the wall a few yards away. So WiFi, and in the future, Femtocell, is the way to go.

]]> By: Ken Biba http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37666 Ken Biba Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:09:03 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37666 I do ... and it varies dramatically based on WHICH satellite service. But a typical residential satellite broadband will average about 700 msec delay, 120 kbps uplink and about 700 kbps downlink. I do … and it varies dramatically based on WHICH satellite service.

But a typical residential satellite broadband will average about 700 msec delay, 120 kbps uplink and about 700 kbps downlink.

]]> By: Peter http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/02/03/muni-wifi-outperforms-cellular-and-wimax/comment-page-1/#comment-37663 Peter Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:25:24 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=9946#comment-37663 Do you have similar figures for satellite service? Do you have similar figures for satellite service?

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