Gigabit WiFi For Video Streaming

WiFi hotspots, routers and access points have been deployed to such an extent that WiFi really is the default wireless connection. Bluetooth range is way too short. WiMax never deployed far enough, wide enough or fast enough. Cellular 3G and 4G are only valuable when you are away from WiFi access, since bandwidth is limited and overages are painful. Recent reports show that most tablets never use the built-in 3G wireless. WiFi is a replacement for cellular broadband, but it’s also becoming a replacement for wires.

Think about it. How much trouble and how expensive is it to string Ethernet cables through a home or office? Most people don’t have the skill or determination to snake wires through the walls of their two story home and don’t dare to try to wire an apartment. That means you are stuck with being in the same room as your DSL or Cable modem. Inexpensive WiFi routers got rid of that cable limitation. Now many PCs and printers come with WiFi access so that you can place them anywhere you want.

The other big tether is the television coax or HDMI cable. If you want to connect video, you have to string wires. The standard means for that has been RG-6 or RG-59 coax. But HD outputs are now HDMI, so your old coax is limited to SD video. That’s assuming you were able to get coax installed in every room you wanted.

Complicating matters now is that traditional video sources, such as satellite and DVD, are merging with the Internet. Many TVs, Blu-ray players and games now come with Ethernet jacks. You still need an Ethernet cable, but now it’s for video broadband not just web browsing. Or... do you?

Video is a need screaming for a wireless solution. The legacy WiFi 802.11b&g versions clearly are not up to the task. WiFi 802.11n does much better, but has trouble finding a clear path through the crowded 2.4 GHz ISM band. It's also pressed for enough bandwidth to support all things video. The solution? It’s an enhancement to WiFi-N called WiFi 802.11ac.

What’s better about WiFi-AC compared to WiFi-N? Most importantly, it pushes wireless bandwidth above the Gbps level. Total capacity of an 8 antenna system will reach almost 7 Gbps when this technology is fully developed. That should be enough to keep up with the rapid advancement of HD and 3D streaming video devices and become the way to eliminate Ethernet, HDMI and coaxial cabling in the home and office.

How does 802.11ac achieve this performance? First of all, it completely abandons the crowded 2.4 GHz band and uses the lesser populated 5 GHz band exclusively. That cuts out a lot of interference. Next, the transmission channels are widened to achieve more data carrying capacity. Channels are 40 MHz maximum in 802.11n. These are expanded to 80 MHz minimum and 160 MHz optional for the new standard.

WiFi-N introduced MIMO or Multiple Input Multiple Output antenna technology. MIMO is a way for transmitters and receivers to deal with scattering radio waves and interference by intelligently analyzing the received signals to determine which ones are valid. It’s a little like being able to tell which direction a sound originates by using two ears rather than one. Beamforming compensates for phase shift of multiple received signals to increase the total signal level. This allows higher bandwidth over a longer range.

A more complex modulation scheme is being introduced in 802.11ac called 256 QAM. The term QAM refers to Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. It uses both amplitude and phase shift to send data over two combined carriers differing by 90 degrees, called quadrature. Each combination of phase and amplitude represents one digital number. 802.11n used 64 QAM to send 6 bits per symbol. 256 QAM sends 8 bits per symbol, a third more efficient in use of the spectrum.

When will be see 802.11ac equipment on the market? Probably near the end of this year or the beginning of next. Broadcom recently announced the first chipset to support the protocol. They are dubbing it “5G WiFi” to emphasize the considerably higher performance from previous wireless standards, similar to how cellular carriers use 2G, 3G and 4G to describe their generations of technology.

Pricing Slashed For Michigan 100 Mbps Business Internet

Businesses in Michigan, like businesses everywhere, are hurting for bandwidth. Between the increased use of video, business automation, and everything moving to the cloud, those aging T1 lines are starting to grind to a halt under the load. Bonded T1 will only take you so far. After that, it’s time to face an order of magnitude price jump to get into fiber optic services. Well, that’s how it was. Now there’s another option that offers fiber bandwidth at T1 prices. Is this for real?

Comcast Business Class 100 Mbps / 10 Mbps service is definitely for real and the answer to a profit squeezed company’s prayers. All of a sudden, that big constriction at the LAN/WAN interface is gone. Files move fast. Web pages pop before your eyes. Email? You could drown in all the email that can flood in at 100 Mbps.

So, how do you get OC-3 or Fast Ethernet bandwidth levels without the high cost of fiber? What you tap into is HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax. That’s the technical name for the finely tuned network that Comcast has deployed in their vast service area. There are two types of transport technologies that are welded together in HFC. Hence, the hybrid designation. The core of the network is a robust fiber optic backbone that is worthy of any major carrier. The access connections are coaxial copper cable. You know it as TV cable. What you may not realize is just how much bandwidth that coax connection supports.

Cable TV companies started using coaxial cable back when they were little more than enormous master antennas. The same coax that connects from your outdoor TV antenna to the back of your TV set can also bring in a much larger set of channels from your Cable company. Decades ago, it was all analog on Cable and over the air. Now it’s all digital. The RF spectrum on the cable is still channelized, with one digital TV station per slot. There are a lot of TV channels to choose from, but they don’t use all the possible channels that the cable can support. Some of those channels have been set aside for broadband or telephone services.

Besides the analog to digital transition, the other thing that’s changed with Cable operations is deployment of a fiber optic backbone to interconnect the multiple systems that the Cable operator owns and bring all the programming content into the neighborhood. This fiber network has far greater capacity than the old style large diameter coaxial distribution cable.

If fiber is so great, then why not run it directly to homes and businesses? Someday, that’s what will probably happen. Right now, the economics say no. Fiber termination equipment is expensive. Trenching a roll of plastic coated copper coax and connecting it to a wall outlet is cheap. With the ability to deliver television, broadband Internet access and telephone on that inexpensive little line, who wants to pony up for fiber?

You don’t or you’d already have installed SONET OC-3, OC-12, OC-48 or Ethernet over Fiber service for your business. Either the construction cost is a show stopper or the monthly lease fees are more than your budget can handle. Now you have another choice with Comcast’s 100 Mbps business broadband. It’s inexpensive and it can be installed quickly for any business that the Cable infrastructure passes.

What makes this service so affordable? For one thing, the cost of the network is spread over thousands of television and broadband customers. For another, this is not a true telecom service like SONET or Ethernet. Those services are symmetrical in that they have the same upload and download speeds. If you need 100 Mbps in both directions, Comcast’s offering won’t work for you. It’s specified at up to 100 Mbps download and up to 10 Mbps upload. That configuration is exactly what you need for general Internet access, where uploads are few and small but downloads are frequent and massive.

Also note that Cable is shared and not dedicated bandwidth. An OC-3 fiber connection gives you 155 Mbps all to yourself. Whatever you don’t use sits idle until you need it. You are sharing the Cable bandwidth availability with other users so that the network is always in use. This sharing also means that your bandwidth will vary throughout the day depending on what everyone is doing online. Does it matter? It may or may not, depending on how important it is to you to have that 100 Mbps at your disposal at all times.

Finally, there are no service level agreements like you have with T1 lines and the like. This is a “best effort” information service that is offered as-is. Even so, Comcast takes its network seriously and works to keep it as reliable as possible. If you’ve used home Cable broadband and been happy with the way it performed, then you’ll probably be happy with the bigger, faster Business Class service that gives all your employees a similar level of service while accessing the Internet on their desktop computers.

Are you a Michigan business owner or IT manager who’s anxious for high speed Internet access at a very affordable price? Check into prices and availability for 100 Mbps Internet options at your location. Note that Comcast and other fast Internet services are also available for locations other than Michigan.



Note: Photo of Detroit skyline courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.