Wi-Fi Router at CES 2025 Has a Connectivity Radius of 9.9 Miles | Hacker News Reader

Wi-Fi Router at CES 2025 Has a Connectivity Radius of 9.9 Miles

yankodesign.com

31 pointsdanboarder29 comments

I'm sure everyone living in a 10 mile radius will be delighted by the increased noise floor.

It's more like an alternative to LoRa and Sigfox: "It’s an open standard wireless network technology operating in the 850-950 MHz range. By operating in the sub-GHz range, this ultra-low-power wireless protocol can connect more IoT devices at much longer distances and much lower power than traditional Wi-Fi. The protocol is ratified by the IEEE 802.11ah task group and dubbed Wi-Fi HaLow® by the Wi-Fi Alliance. "

> With the Wi-Fi HaLow’s 9.9 mile range, you could connect to your home Wi-Fi at work, at the grocery store, and even inside your car throughout your ride.

If your house is far enough up the side of a mountain to provide a LOS path to all those places then yeah, sure.

Such a range would really increase the necessity of improved WiFi security.

If it has any initial success the tragedy of the commons will make it unusable unless you live on a farm. Up to 10 miles range from an omnidirectional antenna is only a feature until you realise home many people and their devices are within that range fighting it out for an average consumer. sigh

Finally, the same tragedy of the commons which brought us excessively bright headlights can now ruin the wireless spectrum.

9.9 miles if both sides of the link are on mountain tops with no buildings in the Fresnel zones.

That's 32.5 megabits/sec, not MB/s. It uses the 802.11ah standard.

https://www.morsemicro.com/products/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah

… which is about 4MB/s

And halve that to get "real world" speeds.

I've already been using HaLow for years to link my in-laws house to our holiday cottage. I get ~14Mbps which is enough for my wife and I to work remotely for a few days.

I purchased a cheap "CCTV wireless bridge" from AliExpress and it works fine. Sure, I could be paranoid about the security, but honestly these devices are dumb and the goats in that village aren't astute at hacking obscure wireless signals.

I'm using it at less than 1km, but that's because we're on a mountain and there's lots of trees that I have to cut through. I've previously tried 5GHz Ubiquiti gear but there's a particularly big tree I can't get through. I swapped out the omni-antenna for some UHF directional antennas to make it more selective.

Looks like this product is just a reference design for their silicon, I can't see anywhere you can actually buy it.

The compromise is bandwidth and data rate. 802.11ah operates in the 900MHz band.

That frequency band might not be very available for this service if NextNav gets their way. They are petitioning to get priority in the currently unlicensed 902-928MHz band.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/09/nextnavs-callous-band-...

> It relies on Sub-GHz frequency waves that travel long distances

Would this device interfere with LoRa devices operating in the same area?

Yes it's the same bands as lora

Its dissapointing there isnt any price information or similar.

I can see this being a huge benefit for the poorest and also quite helpful to bring pressure into mobile plans as they and ISPs compete directly with one another.

I can see this being a huge benefit for the poorest and also quite helpful to bring pressure into mobile plans as they and ISPs compete directly with one another.

Google promised to bring free WiFi to poor people in Chicago by putting access points in light poles.

It had a big press event with the mayor and all the media. Got millions in free publicity.

Then when it came time to actually build, Google bailed.

Might help to insist that kind of investment goes into escrow before the photoshoot.

Soon "war sitting" will replace "war driving."

In short - cool stuff, not there yet, perhaps never due to regulation.

Somehow my WiFi's ideal radius is 9.9 meters

Sounds like you want Bluetooth

300mbps might be enough for 240p video, but that still sounds painfully slow.

On the plus side, it might finally create an incentive for decluttering websites... given enough adoption.

I have 400Mbps at home, I can play online games with 50ms ping and watch 1080p on YouTube, it's enough for most people.

I have 10Mbps at home, 50ms pings, and 1080p streaming.

Use a lossy video codec if you need 300Mb/s for 240p streaming or just double check your math before making a fool of yourself with exaggerated claims.

YouTube supports 8K@60 at 300Mbps. I think most cat videos should stream without buffering.

I can’t tell if this is a bad joke?

300Mbps supports a 4-person household all streaming 4k YouTube content simultaneously. Or two households streaming 4k Netflix content.

A lot of people still have 50Mbps or less speeds on their fixed broadband line and they’re streaming content just fine!

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