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Our building is looking into getting a dedicated WiMAX connection with a guaranteed SLA of at least 50mbps per unit. This is better than what I'm currently getting via Comcast, and the price is great, but I was wondering if anyone knew if WiMAX suffered from latency issues. From what I understand, there will be an antenna on our roof which will pipe via ethernet to the individual units via CAT 6 cable. It sounds good, and they claim we're set up for 1Gbps down the road, but I don't want to sign a 7 year contract and then be unable to kill ur dudez.
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Nov 7, 2014 23:27
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 16:29 |
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My experience with WIMAX here in Japan is that it's the same as any other 3g era cell network. Expect nothing less than 3 digit pings unless you have a point to point line of sight connection. Throughput is pretty good though.
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Nov 8, 2014 11:33
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LiquidRain posted:My experience with WIMAX here in Japan is that it's the same as any other 3g era cell network. Expect nothing less than 3 digit pings unless you have a point to point line of sight connection. Throughput is pretty good though. Thanks. Apparently we're a few blocks away from their tower and have LOS to their main antenna. I got an email from them saying they have day traders getting 1-11 millisecond pings to Dallas from Chicago and I suppose that could be possible. Not sure if they're making this up or this is legit. On a side note, it is frustratingly hard to find info on this technology combination on the Internet.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:08
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Wimax as a protocol has inherit latency. It is around 50ms. I don't know of anything that delivers 1Gb/s that uses the wimax protocol. I think you are probably confused on what they will use to backhaul to your building.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:37
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I had WiMax through Sprint for a few years. Coverage was spotty, but when I happened to be close enough to Cleveland to be able to use it I'd typically get a 40-60 ms ping on the speedtest.net servers. When tethering on WiMax it was comparable to my home cable connection. I had a Mac laptop at the time so I never tried gaming on it, but I'm a VoIP tech as my day job and I used a softphone on it all the time with no problems. LTE and WiMax are both on paper much better as far as latency is concerned than any previous cellular technologies. Both are good for perfectly gameable latency if the provider is doing it right. Bandwidth wise though no way it's approaching 1gbit. I got 8/1 at best on Sprint's service and the technology just doesn't stretch that far. wolrah fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 06:05
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Nitr0 posted:Wimax as a protocol has inherit latency. It is around 50ms. I don't know of anything that delivers 1Gb/s that uses the wimax protocol. I think you are probably confused on what they will use to backhaul to your building. According to the ISP, they "own and operate a mixed fiber/microwave network." So, WiMAX to the antenna on my building, but then fiber to my actual unit. Unless I'm wildly misunderstanding things.
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Nov 9, 2014 06:12
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wolrah posted:I had WiMax through Sprint for a few years. Coverage was spotty, but when I happened to be close enough to Cleveland to be able to use it I'd typically get a 40-60 ms ping on the speedtest.net servers. When tethering on WiMax it was comparable to my home cable connection. They're claiming at least 50mbps per unit today, and the ability to scale to 1Gbps per unit, although for the latter it's unclear if this is per unit or aggregate to the whole building. Either way, the thought of signing a 7 year contract with so many unknowns makes me leery, even if it's something like $30 per month for the life of the contract.
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Nov 9, 2014 06:16
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Point-to-point wimax is pretty dumb for a backhaul. The whole standard is designed for ~20mbps per client WMAN connections so to get gig over it they'd have to do something crazy (and crazy expensive) like 10x10 MIMO or a bunch of load balanced links. If it's involved anywhere it'd be to the consumer. A much more sane setup would be Xgbps microwave (which is cheap and trivial these days) and mixed fiber / wimax last "mile", as it were. Either way, to answer your original question- it entirely depends on the deployment. It's POSSIBLE to get not-lovely latency on wimax but there's a lot of factors it depends on.
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Nov 9, 2014 06:26
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Seven year contract? Hahahah no thanks. Wireless is great stuff but it's pretty unpredictable for how it will work in your specific case. Maybe it will be fast and give low ping times or maybe it will be a total nightmare and ruin your games. Until it's all setup and running, it's hard to tell. As another fun part, it's going to vary over time as interference crops up or transmission conditions change. Increased usage will also change things.
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Nov 9, 2014 18:10
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CuddleChunks posted:Seven year contract? Hahahah no thanks. Microwave is actually lower latency than fiber and I assume they would get a licensed link for a gig connection.
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Nov 9, 2014 18:13
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Mandals posted:They're claiming at least 50mbps per unit today, and the ability to scale to 1Gbps per unit, although for the latter it's unclear if this is per unit or aggregate to the whole building. Either way, the thought of signing a 7 year contract with so many unknowns makes me leery, even if it's something like $30 per month for the life of the contract. They're probably using a licensed spectrum point to point microwave link, with a fat fiber line feeding the head end microwave transmitter. This technology is more or less entirely unlike wimax, in that it's more or less all point to point, with some limited point to multi-point. Those are fast as all hell, with latency figures that are easily between a pure fiber switched network, and a more traditional Hybrid-Coax system. The completely retarded high frequency traders are now using 60-80 Ghz wireless links because the speed of light in open air is 30% higher than in glass fiber, and the radios have an end to and latency of a few microseconds. The reason for the long as hell contract is setting all this crap up involves getting a tech to climb a tower to repoint or adjust a transmitter dish, and installing and positioning a similar receiving dish on the roof of your building. Check the contract details out, and don't be afraid to argue with them for contract adjustments. Setting some lower threshold on availability, throughput, and latency that will allow you to cancel without penalty can generally be included if you argue for it. It'll probably cost a bit more per month for an SLA, but the ability to tell them to go gently caress themselves because the 50mbit/30ms latency they promised is actually 6mbit/300ms is always worth it.
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Nov 10, 2014 00:02
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Is this a condo or co-op building or something? I feel like the building management should be signing the 7-year deal, not the people living in it.
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Nov 10, 2014 15:35
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Inspector_666 posted:Is this a condo or co-op building or something? I feel like the building management should be signing the 7-year deal, not the people living in it. Condo. I'm on the board and tasked with doing due diligence since I "know computers"
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Nov 10, 2014 18:44
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Mandals posted:Condo. I'm on the board and tasked with doing due diligence since I "know computers" I would honestly get SLA numbers and CYA parachute clauses built into any contract.
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Nov 10, 2014 21:37
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I had it for a year, it was awful. Newest/fanciest receivers and antennae available from an ISP, direct LOS, lots of talk and promises of great service but latency seesawed between 20 and 300ms constantly, packet loss hovers around 2% most of the time, ramps up to 20% at least once an hour. Then of course there were the compete outages that would last anywhere from 10 seconds to several days. It was pretty terrible, I seriously considered switching to satellite as I thought that might be a better experience overall if the drat ping would just stay stable maybe my ssh connections wouldn't drop every five minutes. Advertised bitrate of the standard or connection is the least important metric in wireless, reliability is still a huge issue and needs a lot of work. Pryor on Fire fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 22:10
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I've had enterprise fixed wireless service at various locations for years with no problems with it. These range from 30-1000 mbit and from $2200-$6000/month. Low latencies, 100% uptime (even through ice storms) with SLAs to back it up. Some offer DSL or 4G backup services, but I really haven't ever had to fail over. I did have one installation in Las Vegas where the roof would flex enough in the heat to knock the aligment off, but that was a point to point laser rather than radio. The technology is fine, so your chief dangers here are a mom-and-pop shop that's oversubscribing or underdelivering. Your due diligence should include reference calls with other buildings they have as customers. I, too, am a bit confused by the WIMAX term though. Most common WIMAX implementation was the "4G Light" network that Sprint deployed, and I didn't think too many fixed wireless providers used it for backhauls. KS fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 22:48
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Do you have any details on what equipment they plan to use for this project? Knowing about vendors and parts will help. From that, we can (probably) guess at what frequencies they're using, and what problems you're likely to have. (Some bands drop out when it rains, some vendors make lousy gear, et cetera.) You mentioned 50Mbps per unit. How many units? If they're seriously promising a gigabit over the air, well, it's possible, but the gear is probably gonna be pricey for them (likely in the tens of thousands of dollars), and it almost certainly won't be WIMAX they're using to deliver it. Something with a point-to-point license maybe, or maybe laser stuff depending on your local climate. (Can you say where you are, or the company you're working with? I used to work for a wireless ISP, and did some side work for a WISP trade association; there's a slight chance I'll know someone, and can give you a reading on the bullshit-o-meter. Feel free to PM if you like.)
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Nov 10, 2014 22:57
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KS posted:I've had enterprise fixed wireless service at various locations for years with no problems with it. These range from 30-1000 mbit and from $2200-$6000/month. Low latencies, 100% uptime (even through ice storms) with SLAs to back it up. Some offer DSL or 4G backup services, but I really haven't ever had to fail over. So, for sprint (read:clearwire), it's wimax radios on the tower shooting out wimax signals. Your device talks to the wimax radios. Theres fiber running from the radio, down to some fancy equipment in a tin server rack that has fiber for a backhaul. WiMax was really hoping to be LTE, but it's just lovely and problematic in practice. You can find the paper where Moto basically calls wimax garbage for a backhaul. More than likely, you're gonna get wimax radios on the top of your building that your devices will talk to (like a wifi router), that are gonna have microwave shots to a hub that has a fat backhaul.
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Nov 12, 2014 04:58
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 16:29 |
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I've used microwave based internet access and it worked fine and latency was comparable to DSL, though packetloss did increase when it was foggy. I had LOS to the tower. Can they not bring out some demo equipment for you to run your own tests before you commit? I'm sure you could work in some kind of minimum/maximum average latency, bandwidth, and uptime requirements into the contract if you wanted.
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Nov 12, 2014 19:26
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