How To Make Sure There Are No Dead Wi-Fi Spots In Your House

Gizmodo: D-Link's Wireless Router Twins Ensure There Are No Dead Spots in Your House

Even with countless antennas pointing in all directions, most consumer-level routers can’t create a wifi network that covers every last corner of a large house. So instead of selling you a wireless extender once you realize that, D-Link now has a kit with twin routers that guarantees comprehensive wifi coverage from day one.

The Unified Home Wi-Fi Network Kit is D-Link finally admitting that today’s McMansions are too large for even an expensive home wifi router to provide complete coverage. So for $370, available sometime in the second quarter of 2016, the company has bundled its AC4300 Tri-Band MU-MIMO Wi-Fi Router, and its AC1300 Gigabit Wi-Fi Extender, so that consumers can finally ensure that their wifi network, even in those distant back bedrooms, is rock solid from the moment it’s up and running.

Read more ....

CSN Editor: I definitely need this for my home.

The Difference Engine: Bigger Than Wi-Fi

From The Economist:

HAVE you ever wondered, if you are of an age with your correspondent, about those missing channels on old television sets? Apart from channel two, the rest of the original VHF channels on the dial were usually just the odd numbers from three to 13. That was because, in over-the-air VHF broadcasting, the channel between two analogue stations had to be left unused so that it would not interfere with adjacent ones. When UHF broadcasting came along, empty “guard bands” were added to each channel for the same reason. In some places, this so-called “white space” of unused frequencies separating working channels amounted to as much as 70% of the total bandwidth available for television broadcasting.

Read more ....

Wireless Speed Freaks Set To Leave Wi-Fi Standing

Wi-Fi is so pedestrian. Gi-Fi anyone? (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

WI-FI as we know it is reaching the limits of its usefulness. It just can't keep up with our appetite for services, such as new video formats, that gobble up bandwidth. So what's next in the world of blisteringly fast home-based wireless technologies?

For clues to where Wi-Fi is going, it helps to delve into the soup of standards that will shape the future of wireless communications.

Read more ....

Will Free Wi-Fi Become The Norm?

From CBS News:

McDonalds Is Latest Company to Offer Free Wireless Internet; Airlines and Many Hotels Still Charge.

(CBS) I'm a big fan of free Wi-Fi and appreciate it when coffee shops, hotels and other businesses are nice enough to let visitors use their laptops to surf the Web for free. Last year, for example, Starbucks started offering two hours of free service a day for those who purchase and register a Starbucks card.

And soon you'll be able to get Wi-Fi with your French fries when McDonalds rolls out its free service in January. The company last week announced that it will drop its $2.95 Wi-Fi fee.

Read more ....

Wi-Fi via White Spaces

Photo: White spaces: Accessing the Internet over unused portions of TV spectrum could provide good long-range connectivity in rural areas, and help fill in gaps in city networks. Microsoft researchers tested a new protocol, called White Fi, using the device shown here. Credit: Microsoft Research

From Technology Review:

A network design that uses old TV spectrum could produce better long-range wireless connectivity.

Long-range, low-cost wireless Internet could soon be delivered using radio spectrum once reserved for use by TV stations. The blueprints for a computer network that uses "white spaces," which are empty fragments of the spectrum scattered between used frequencies, will be presented today at ACM SIGCOMM 2009, a communications conference held in Barcelona, Spain.

Read more ....