Open Source 802.11n -- Big Breakthroughs are Coming!

802.11n support, with its greater throughput and MIMO capacities has long been a milestone that open source developers have sought. My friend Aaron Kaplan IM-ed me other day (probably from the bowels of some hi-tech nerd bunker in Vienna) to let me know that, Eureka(!), 802.11n support has finally been put into the open source domain.

This morning, I received word from Joseph Bonicioli over at AWMN of some of the first systematic testing (and if you don't yet know about AWMN.net, you should take a look -- think mesh LAN with hundreds of services and applications, all distributed and community operated, and covering the metropolitan area of Athens Greece. I'm always amazed by the ignorant who claim mesh doesn't scale -- AWMN is just one example of how we could be doing broadband service provision better.

Here's what Joseph says:

...just wanted to share the joy. This week we successfully completed the first 802.11n long range link in the network. Its not very far (only 4KM) but it is very promising. 80 to almost 100Mbit TCP Traffic with 20MHz channels and ~150Mbit with 40MHz. Currently we are dealing with the redesign of our feeders and trying to find an optimal soft/hardware set. We are all really excited to see what AWMN V3 will bring to us. The first link has been routing traffic successfully at 80Mbit since the 11th of June 2009.

80Mbit sustained throughput over a 4KM link in an electromagnetically congested metro area is pretty impressive stuff. With announcements now coming about about 4X4 MIMO 802.11n configurations with 600Mbps capacity (i.e., throw 4 radios onto a devices that uses them all in concert), one can see how wireless connectivity speeds within networks are rapidly outpacing broadband connectivity outside of the network.

Good thing us community wireless networking uber-geeks already planned for that eventuality and built infrastructures that could take advantage of all this excess capacity. Ask your provider if they're doing likewise.