[151731] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: airFiber (text of the 8 minute video)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Lassoff)
Thu Mar 29 15:54:15 2012
In-Reply-To: <CAD_uLpO4NFWXUGmCxBs-JE+bK1aaBns3qr=jVTC_r1o0_6zXew@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:53:17 -0700
From: Jonathan Lassoff <jof@thejof.com>
To: Oliver Garraux <oliver@g.garraux.net>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Oliver Garraux <oliver@g.garraux.net> wro=
te:
> I was at Ubiquiti's conference. =A0I don't disagree with what you're
> saying. =A0Ubiquiti's take on it seemed to be that 24 Ghz would likely
> never be used to the extent that 2.4 / 5.8 is. =A0They are seeing 24 Ghz
> as only for backhaul - no connections to end users.
I suspect this is just due to cost and practicality. ISPs, nor users
will want to pay 3k USD, nor widely utilize a service that requires
near-direct LOS.
I could see this working well in rural or sparse areas that might not
mind the transceiver.
> I guess
> point-to-multipoint connections aren't permitted by the FCC for 24
> Ghz.
The whole point of these unlicensed bands is that their usage is not
tightly controlled. I imagine hardware for use still should comply
with FCC's part 15 rules though.
> AirFiber appears to be fairly highly directional. It needs to
> be though, as each link uses 100 Mhz, and there's only 250 Mhz
> available @ 24 Ghz.
Being so directional, I'm not sure that cross-talk will as much of an
issue, except for dense hub-like sites. It sounds like there's some
novel application of using GPS timing to make the radios spectrally
orthogonal -- that's pretty cool. If they can somehow coordinate
timing across point-to-point links, that would be great for sites that
co-locate multiple link terminations.
Overall, this looks like a pretty cool product!
--j
