My Wimax Journey

[phazey]

Well, finally got a chance to play with WiMAX - 802.16d. It's not too bad. I thought it'd be nice to document how it goes here (I'm not in Thailand, i'm "next door" - Westerly). After hearing about Thailand's wireless broadband initiative, I suppose it'll be handy information here.

Speed ain't to bad, it's locked at 1Mbit right now for testing purposes, but tomorrow i'll get it maxed out - rumoured to be somewhere between 18 - 24mbits. Certainly a leap up from my legacy wireless broadband unit, which hovers around 300kbits - peaking to 512kbits when things are quiet....

I downloaded a file hosted on a server in the datacentre - had a rock steady 120KBytes/Second throughout the download - of course at this time i'm the only person on the sector...

Anyways, pictures speak a thousand words, so please, look at my new shiny toys :

These are the "Base stations", one per 60 degree sector - the business ends (antennas) are up on a 60m tower..

Here's the two flavours of customer unit - on the left is the two piece indoor/outdoor combo, on the right is the indoor "desktop" unit. The latter can apparently work up to 2km's from the base station - i'm about 4.5 km's away and it did'nt squeek at all The indoor/outdoor combo however, synced up within seconds.

Here's the antenna mounted; Yes it's on a camera tripod, and yes it's indoors - luckily i've a place on the 12th floor so have a good clear line of sight to the tower.

Anyways, tomorrow i'll post on the speedtests - may be interesting...

Edited July 17, 2007 by phazey

[chinthee]

I have a very strong hunch phazey is a certain sales director in SE Asia for a certain WiMAX vendor who shall remain un-named, right? Either that, or you somehow bought a kit and if you mean westerly it would have to be Bangladesh, which would allow you to play with the kit.

You show a 4 sector large chassis base station (no consumer would ever have this), and both the indoor and outdoor CPE, which no consumer would ever own both. I can only surmise that you are working at an ISP and got some equipment to fool with or are the vendor.

[Khutan]

I think you will find for WiMax in Thailand that only Experimental lisences are available and they are being allocated to the current wireless carriers.

[phazey]

I have a very strong hunch phazey is a certain sales director in SE Asia for a certain WiMAX vendor who shall remain un-named, right? Either that, or you somehow bought a kit and if you mean westerly it would have to be Bangladesh, which would allow you to play with the kit.

You're so wrong, i 'm much closer than Bangaladesh, and have no interest in selling, or promoting this kit. My initial post is purely aimed at information and what a geek sees. I believe George can confirm this, and quite a few more board members.

This is just my personal experiances posted for insight, curiosity (have'nt you ever wondered how stuff works?), and i'm sure there are a few peers of mine within the same industry who are looking at this stuff and have comments.

<deleted>.

PS: yes i do work for an ISP.

Edited July 17, 2007 by phazey

[chinthee]

I have a very strong hunch phazey is a certain sales director in SE Asia for a certain WiMAX vendor who shall remain un-named, right? Either that, or you somehow bought a kit and if you mean westerly it would have to be Bangladesh, which would allow you to play with the kit.

You're so wrong, i 'm much closer than Bangaladesh, and have no interest in selling, or promoting this kit. My initial post is purely aimed at information and what a geek sees. I believe George can confirm this, and quite a few more board members.

This is just my personal experiances posted for insight, curiosity (have'nt you ever wondered how stuff works?), and i'm sure there are a few peers of mine within the same industry who are looking at this stuff and have comments.

<deleted>.

PS: yes i do work for an ISP.

didn't mean to quiz you, but I'm deeply involved in this biz.

[Firefoxx]

Would have more interest in the line of sight thing, as in does rain affect this a lot (remember that Asia has a LOT of rain, and fog). What's the cost difference between the indoor and outdoor receivers? Any kind of "gotchas" would be nice to now of right now.

So, users on each 60 degree sector share the signal, sort of like wifi/cable, I take it?

[Farma]

Is this similar to what I know as airbridge ?

[chinthee]

Would have more interest in the line of sight thing, as in does rain affect this a lot (remember that Asia has a LOT of rain, and fog). What's the cost difference between the indoor and outdoor receivers? Any kind of "gotchas" would be nice to now of right now.

So, users on each 60 degree sector share the signal, sort of like wifi/cable, I take it?

No real weather problems like legacy MMDS wireless and others. WiMax is the cat's meow, or dogs <deleted> if you prefer. It is Point to multi-point, and non line of sight. The FUTURE baby.

Point to Point is so yesterday, or for long backhaul options. You shouldn't worry about how many users on a sector, but generally about 250 are supported on a 60* sector. The interface is RJ45, and can easily take an MDU building and WIFI the whole thing. Everything is wireless in the equation. This will take place at your service provider, and consumers will really not need to be worried with the details. You'll just get killer wireless broadband.

[Farma]

In basic terms how does this WiMAX compare to the systems I’ve been using for the past 5 or so years.

I started with a D-Link system and then progressed to Airbridge 21. Both antennas were about 100 meters from the base stations. Both systems were affected by extreme weather and electronic interference caused by radio masts and passing low flying aircraft.

[chinthee]

In basic terms how does this WiMAX compare to the systems I've been using for the past 5 or so years.

I started with a D-Link system and then progressed to Airbridge 21. Both antennas were about 100 meters from the base stations. Both systems were affected by extreme weather and electronic interference caused by radio masts and passing low flying aircraft.

With WiMAX we're now talking 10 kilometres, not 100 meters. No weather effects, and no interference if in licensed bands.

[Khutan]

For a large area with WiMax, the VOIP options would be very interesting.

I know one of the OEM providors for Cell Phone Base Equipment is still trying to perfect the "Hand-Off" from GSM to wireless VOIP. So if you walk into a VOIP area you are seemlessly handed-off to VOIP, and when you roam out, you are back to GSM, CDMA etc.

[chinthee]

There is a long way to go before perfect interoperability, even within WiMAX, let alone GSM and CDMA. At this point, if you find a solution that works, stay with it until this all shakes out.

[stumonster]

is 802.16 to be utilised as a "last mile" replacement ?

or what is the connection to the local machine - USB , RJ45 ?

what is the freq you are operating in - have you tried to degrade the connection with a microwave oven / cordless phone / garage door opener ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.16

[nikster]

is 802.16 to be utilised as a "last mile" replacement ?

This will be totally awesome for the "last 10 miles".

I am running a 1km WiFi network - no problems with interference, and I can pick up the signal from 5km away with a line of sight. And that with some cheapo DLink access points and some medium-sized antennas attached to them).

Anyway, the point is: If you can tweak plain old WiFi to do this kind of thing, WiMax should be awesome.

When can you get it to northern Thailand (west) and how much? I want it now. Now

PS: As for interference - this network has weathered tropical rainstorms, thick fog, and thick smoke without a hitch. Only the occasional power outage interrupts it

And thanks phazey I am absolutely interested in hearing about this.

Edited July 18, 2007 by nikster

[Tywais]

Anyway, the point is: If you can tweak plain old WiFi to do this kind of thing, WiMax should be awesome.

And thanks phazey I am absolutely interested in hearing about this.

At work we have three adjacent buildings and a UTP line from the 1st to the 3rd and it is at near max distance of 94 meters. Now that the middle building is being torn down and a 3 story replacement being put up, I have no way to run a new cable that won't be anywhere near short enough. The solution, I purchased a pair of outdoor (weather proof) access points that will be configured as a bridge.

So in effect I'm getting a wireless wired connection hooking the two buildings back up. The specifications of the wireless, built in 12dbi antennae - one of the configuration options is specifying the distance. 1km minimum up to a max of 30km! It's also x2 speed of .g standard and will run at 108mbps. Measuring the distance to my house now.

[chinthee]

Yes, WiMAX is for "last mile," and connects easily to any 2.4GHz WiFi mesh or other system. It operates in 3.3-3.8GHz, 2.3,2.5Ghz, or 5GHz ranges, depending on the manufacturer.

[phazey]

Phew. Few quick things.

Worked extremely well on the capped data rate, nice and solid, sync up to the base was a few seconds only.

Interferance: yep, it causes those big C-Band tv antennas to have a hissy fit

Weather: most sites are just below the treeline (with what we have now) and when it rains, wet leaves cause a degredation of service.

Anyways, i'm impressed over all, shall post tonite when i'm uncapped

[george]

Following up on this old topic. Any news about a Wimax launch in Thailand?

[lomatopo]

I think Intel was sponsoring some trials in Thailand. You'd need to some movement on the licensing front which, given that even 3G licenses are still in limbo, might a while. Also not much of a market here.

[Kyosuken]

What is the point of having "Very Fast" connections when bigbrother CAT is limiting the country to a mere 22gb connection ? it will make people more unhappy than happy.

Don't get me wrong, WiMax is sexy, so is a lot of (more or less) "new" technologies, but instead of investing in new ways to get people connected the country should first fix what is broken : the International Bandwidth