Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Assessing the standards in wireless

Neil Pawley

npawley@gmail.com

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Contents

• Lots and lots of standards

• Alphabet soup

• The 802 family

• Range and mobility

• Issues

• Conclusion

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Lots and lots of standards

Wide family of specifications (a, b, d, h, I, j etc)

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)

Range of frequencies and speeds

Popularly known as WiFi

802.11x

Bluetooth leads the way

Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN)802.15

Broadband Wireless Access (BWA)

WiMAX

Not as simple as it sounds

Still a lot to do

802.16x

Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA)

Potential conflict802.20

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Alphabet soup

IEEE – Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers

OFDM – Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

TDMA – Time division Multiple Access

MAC – Media Access Control layer

WEP – Wired Equivalent Privacy

IPSec – Internet Protocol Security

WPA – WiFi Protected Access

OFDM – Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

WMAN – Wireless Metropolitan Area Network

BWA – Broadband Wireless Access

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

802.11x WiFi

• Up to 54 Mbps

• 5.7 – 5.8 GHz

• Interference free

• Good for office setting

802.11a

• Up to 11 Mbps

• 2.4 GHz

• Backwards compatible

• The one most people think of

802.11b

• Same as 802.11b

• Allows users to modify transmission band

802.11d

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

802.11x WiFi

• Update of 802.11a specification

• Resolve interference with military and medical

802.11h (not formalised)

• Improved encryption for 802.11a, b and g

• Government requirements

• Special chip required

802.11i

• Incorporate Japanese specialist extensions

802.11j (not formalised)

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

802.15 - Bluetooth

• Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN)

• Everything on the desk

• Bluetooth is only one flavour

• 30ft transmission radius

• Proximity connection

• Selective lock out

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

802.16-2004 WiMAX

• Controlled by IEEE and WiMAX Forum

• Wireless (Wi) Microwave Access (MA)

• BWA – Broadband Wireless Access

• Static

• Building to building

• One to many

• Very similar to WiFi

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Two proposed transport methodologies

LOS66 Ghz

LOS66 Ghz

NLOS2-11 Ghz

• Cabled to broadcast antenna

• Point-to-multipoint (P2MP)

• Customer Premises Units (CPEs)

• Limited in scalability

• Final link to 802.11

• Offers cheap expansion of broadband

• Not required in cabled areas

Traditional

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

LOS66 Ghz

NLOS2-11 Ghz

• Node to node

• Customer Premises Units (CPEs)

• Non line of sight

• Traffic routing

• Fault tolerance

• Load balancing

• More users, more effective

• Self-organising neighbourhood

Two proposed transport methodologies

Mesh

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

802.16e Mobile WiMAX

• IEEE have made it official (December 2005)

• No guaranteed compatibility with 802.16-2004

• Maybe dual chip in future

• Semi nomadic

• Similar to early days of mobile phones

• Only good for wandering around

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

802.20

• Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA)

• Another 802.16e?

• Mired in conflict

• Frequencies below 3.5 GHz

• Enable data transfer at speed

• Travelling in a car or train

• Isn’t this what 3G is trying to do?

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Range and mobility

802.15

802.11x

802.16

802.20

100 Mbps30 miles

16 Mbps2 - 4 miles

Don’tmove

30 ft

300 ft

54 Mbps

3G 2 Mbps

2 – 4 miles

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Issues

• Further away, less bandwidth

• More users, less bandwidth

• Real time numbers smaller than manufacturers claims

• Large overhead in wireless negotiation

• Some of this is over 18 months away

• Compromises in metropolitan mesh experiments• San Francisco

• New Orleans

• Dundee

Improving IT service quality within your organisation 19/06/2005

Conclusions

• Massive collection of standards

• Many still being worked on

• Pick what you need

• Don’t believe everything you read

• When to take the plunge

• What benefits can be realised