Category: Industry News

WiFi

Wi-Fi Alliance ditches 802.11 spec codes for consumer-friendly naming scheme

October 5, 2018 Industry News No Comments

Meet Wi-Fi 6, the protocol previously known as 802.11ax

Wi-Fi, known for about two decades by its wonky Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers designation, IEEE 802.11, has adopted a new consumer-oriented naming scheme.

The latest version of the specification, 802.11ax, has been renamed Wi-Fi 6 by the Wi-Fi Alliance, the Austin, Texas-based trade association responsible for overseeing Wi-Fi technology branding and product certification.

This noob-friendly generational naming convention is being applied retroactively, so no longer will you refer to 802.11ac or 802.11n. Instead, say Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 4 when conversing with members of the general public.

“For nearly two decades, Wi-Fi users have had to sort through technical naming conventions to determine if their devices support the latest Wi-Fi,” lamented Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance, in a statement.

“Wi-Fi Alliance is excited to introduce Wi-Fi 6, and present a new naming scheme to help industry and Wi-Fi users easily understand the Wi-Fi generation supported by their device or connection.”

The Register asked the Wi-Fi Alliance whether anyone actually complained about the baffling alphanumeric jumble that refers to the spec. We’ve not heard back.

The simplified numeric designation, however, should soon show up in the icons appearing on Wi-Fi-enabled devices. Instead of presenting three concentric arcs representing Wi-Fi spectrum radio waves on screen, devices should soon show UI graphic adorned with the appropriate Wi-Fi version number.

Wi-Fi 6 should be able to achieve almost 40 percent higher peak data rates than its predecessor, or so says Intel. Devices previewed earlier this year were topping out around 11 Gbit/s.

With 1024-state quadrature amplitude modulation (1024-QAM), Wi-Fi 6 achieves about 25 per cent better throughput than Wi-Fi 5’s 256-QAM.

But Wi-Fi 6 has been designed more for efficiency and reduced latency in device-rich environments than speed improvement.

Wi-Fi 6 implements a networking technology called orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), which improves on Wi-Fi 5’s orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM).

OFDMA subdivides the frequency band into smaller segments to support more clients. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, a 20MHz channel might be chopped into as many as nine subchannels.

Wi-Fi 6 supports both Uplink OFDMA – allowing data frames to be sent simultaneously by multiple devices – and Downlink OFDMA – allowing multiple data frames to be sent simultaneously to multiple devices, each of which promises improved network throughput.

Wi-Fi 5 implemented Multi-User, Multi-Input, Multiple Output (MU-MIMO), which can deliver data across four streams at once, but only via downlink. Wi-Fi 6, which runs in full-duplex (up and down) MU-MIMO, supports eight streams, allowing each to service multiple devices.

And Wi-Fi 6 includes a variety of other enhancements tuned toward efficient networking: Multi-Traffic Identifier Aggregated MAC Protocol Data Unit (multi-TID AMPDU), individual target wake time (TWT), and operation mode indication (OMI).

Wi-Fi 6 hardware has already begun to appear. Just don’t call it 802.11ax. ®

Original Source: The Register

10Mbps Internet speeds for everyone by 2020

April 1, 2018 Industry News, Ofcom No Comments

The UK Government is introducing a Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband as part of its commitment in the UK Digital Strategy (March 2017) to ensure that the UK has world-class digital connectivity and inclusion.

The new USO is a UK-wide measure, intended to fill the gap left by the UK Government’s existing broadband roll-out programs, to deliver broadband connections to the hardest to reach premises in the UK. The USO is intended to provide a legal right to request a broadband connection of at least 10 Mbps download speed, up to a reasonable cost threshold.

The Digital Economy Act 2017 gives the UK Government the power to implement the USO via secondary legislation. The Act also allows for the Government to review the USO and to increase the minimum speed. There was broad cross-party and consumer support for the introduction of a statutory USO for broadband in general, but there were mixed views from industry stakeholders as to how universal access to broadband should be delivered.

How will it be implemented?

The UK Government was considering two options for the delivery of its aim for universal access to broadband connections with at least 10 Mbps download speeds by 2020:

  • a regulatory approach implemented by secondary legislation; and
  • a proposal by BT to deliver the service voluntarily.

The Government announced in December 2017 that it would adopt the regulatory approach. Under this framework, the USO will be demand-led. This means that consumers will have a right to request a connection. A universal service provider (most likely BT) will be obliged to build all reasonable requests up to cost threshold (£3400 proposed). The USO is expected to be funded by a cost-sharing industry fund.

Up to 25% of new builds still can’t get superfast broadband – study

March 6, 2018 Broadband, Industry News, Ofcom No Comments

Up to 1 / 4 of recent builds still lack get right of entry to to superfast net, in keeping with a study via comparison web site Thinkbroadband.

The studies, based totally on facts from the office for national records, estimates that one in four to 1 in 5 new premises do not have provision for 30Mbps.

It said: “What is obvious from our facts is that a lot of latest premises are slipping thru the economic broadband roll-out nets and government and planning government need to deal with this now, in any other case the periodic memories inside the press about people buying new homes and being caught with gradual broadband will preserve.

“It is impossible to imagine 1 in 4 new homes being built without access to mains water and it should be the same with superfast broadband.”

An european directive adopted into united kingdom law is supposed to mean that every one newly built homes are “equipped with a high-speed-ready in-building physical infrastructure, up to the network termination points”, as noted through ISP review.

The research additionally observed a rise in the share of traits utilizing “complete fibre”. some 35.five in line with cent have coverage, in comparison with simply 3 in keeping with cent nationally.

BT’s Openreach has said 800,000 rural and new-build trends will now get fibre through 2020, with a similarly 1.7 million receiving it via the town building programme, while it’s far already on target to attain 600,000 below current deployment plans.

Andrew Ferguson, editor of Thinkbroadband, said: “A full fibre BT agreement was made in April 2017, I believe, after a weaker policy that was in place previous years and my understanding is that this needs developers to inform Openreach nine months ahead of the first property being moved into. So if a developer had noticed in April as soon as the new policy appeared the benefits would only just be appearing.”

presently 95 per cent of the united states has get admission to to superfast broadband. but, consistent with Ofcom, simply over one million premises in Blighty, or 4%, cannot get speeds of at least 10Mbps

Original Source: The Register

Exascale is to attend RIPE75 in Dubai, UAE

September 14, 2017 Industry News No Comments

A RIPE Meeting is a five-day event where Internet service providers, network operators and other interested parties from around the world gather to:

  • Participate in discussions about the policies and procedures used by the RIPE NCC to allocate Internet number resources
  • Participate in the RIPE Working Group sessions to discuss current technical and policy issues
  • Share experiences, latest developments and best common practices
  • Develop their network of peers in the Internet community
  • Meet at lunches, coffee breaks and informal social events

RIPE Meetings are open to everyone. They bring together people from different backgrounds, cultures, beliefs and genders.

RIPE 75 will take place in the Conrad hotel in Dubai, UAE, 22-26 October, 2017

We’re looking forward to meeting NSPs, ISPs and Content Providers and creating new peering relationships.

 

BT Leased Line Engineer

Ofcom fines BT a record £42m for slow broadband installations

March 28, 2017 Industry News, Leased Lines No Comments

BT failed to compensate rivals for delayed line installations

BT has been hit with a £42 million fine for failing to install high-speed business lines fast enough, in what is being described as a “serious breach” of contract terms.

Following an investigation by Ofcom into BT’s fibre rollout arm Openreach, it was found that BT had abused the terms of its contracts by cutting compensation payments for delayed Ethernet line installations.

These high-speed business lines are the most common type of leased lines used by businesses and public services, offering high-speed and high-capacity data transfer to both BT and other telecoms providers.

Regulator Ofcom found that between January 2013 and December 2014, BT “misused the terms of its contracts to reduce compensation payments owed to other telecoms providers for failing to deliver ‘Ethernet’ services on time”. The fine represents the largest ever made against a telecoms company.

BT breached competition rules and exploited its position as a “significant market power”, Ofcom ruled, as most telecoms companies rely on BT’s infrastructure to host connections to customers for services such as broadband.

Gaucho Rasmussen, investigations director at Ofcom, said in a statement: “These high-speed lines are a vital part of this country’s digital backbone. Millions of people rely on BT’s network for the phone and broadband services they use every day.”

“We found BT broke our rules by failing to pay other telecoms companies proper compensation when these services were not provided on time,” added Rasmussen. “The size of our fine reflects how important these rules are to protect competition and, ultimately, consumers and businesses. Our message is clear – we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour.”

As part of its obligation to Ofcom rules, BT is required to install Ethernet services for other providers, including Vodafone and TalkTalk, in accordance with contracts, and to provide compensation payments for delays past 30 days.

The investigation was opened after Vodafone alleged that BT had abused contractual terms by extending the delivery of Ethernet services without its consent, and had failed to provide any compensation.

BT has admitted its failings, and has agreed to compensate the companies affected. Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach said in a statement: “We appologise wholeheartedly for the mistakes Openreach made in the past when processing orders for a number of high-speed business connections. This shouldn’t have happened and we fully accept Ofcom’s findings.”

BT’s compliance knocked 30% (£18 million) off the total fine, however the company is likely to pay as much as £300 million in compensation payments to other telecoms providers. A further £300,000 will also be paid to Ofcom for a failure to provide adequate information during the investigation.

The fine comes less than two weeks after the BT agreed to officially separate Openreach, complying with demands issued in November by Ofcom, which believed BT’s monopoly over network infrastructure was anti-competitive.

Orginal Source: ITPro