The fixed line versus Wi-Fi debate continues to be a popular one. And with technologies like Wi-Gig and Wi-Fi 6 in the pipeline, the debate will only intensify. Current Wi-Fi technologies work inside the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands; they also have user-friendly version numbers now. Wi-Fi 4 came out in 2009 under the name 802.11n, Wi-Fi 5 arrived in 2014 as 802.11ac and Wi-Fi 6 is due in 2019 as 802.11.ax. In the near future, you'll see these numbers start to appear on your devices, but not every manufacturer will bother to use the new designations. Wi-Fi numbers 1-3 represent even older, now mostly unused versions.
- Thanks to better data encoding and more powerful chips, Wi-Fi 6 will be faster, more efficient and require less power. New systems will control how often your device needs to listen at full power, which is where the power saving will kick in. The mix of technologies will also help in congested areas, with a figure of four times the current average speed being touted. Some of these technologies were covered in some detail in an earlier article. The final standard for Wi-Fi 6 isn't finished yet, so if you see a modem labelled as Wi-Fi 6 now, make sure it is upgradeable. Of course, all of your devices will need to be Wi-Fi 6 compatible.
- In comparison Wi-Gig works in the 60GHz band. The idea of Wi-Gig has been around since 2009. If you understand transmission technology, this means shorter distances and an unobstructed line of sight, due to the poor penetration capability of these frequencies. Wi-Fi currently provides about 2Gbps; Wi-Gig should be 5-10Gbps with a 10-100m range. That means a lot more antennas, with a focus at the building level and the numbers 802.11.ad and 802.11.ay. Wi-Gig is not a replacement for Wi-Fi 6 but a supplement. The idea is to pass signals between buildings and within rooms where nothing is blocking the signal path. Think wireless headsets or VR and streaming from a device to your TV. It is the future optional add-on for Wi-Fi, also appearing in 2019.
- There has been an interesting change in how people get their news. This is due to two main developments. One is the internet, which spans almost the entire planet, ignoring most country boundaries. The other is the change in how the major news networks present the news.
- The BBC and others represent the centralised model. In times past these, in addition to newspapers, were typically the sole source of news. In the original model there was a single announcer presenting the facts, uncoloured by opinion. In the modern version, influenced by groupthink, an increasingly narrow band of information is presented, heavily appended by opinions.
- This trend has left a gap in news coverage. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the gap has been filled by decentralised news. These are internet-based news services presented by individuals on platforms like YouTube. Some have greater followings than the mainstream sources. If CNN and others were doing their duty, the gap would not exist and there would be no need for the alternative media sources. Unless things change, expect to get more and more of your uncoloured news from the internet.
- I finally broke down and bought a smartwatch. Since I have a Samsung Galaxy phone, I went for the new 46mm Galaxy Watch. The deciding factor was the extended battery life and the variety of styles available for the watch face. The strangest part of the set-up process was not finding the wearable in the App Store, instead I had to use Galaxy Apps. This was not intuitive at all. Since this is day one as I write this, there will be more on the watch in the next article.
- There was another tractor beam story, this time out of Australia and France. Like the last time I wrote about it, this only involves particles, in this case rubidium atoms, so still no sci-fi like beams. This one sucks the particles into a fibre and holds them there. No real-world application yet and don't expect the technology to get much better in the near future, so keep that tow rope handy.
- According to McAfee, cloud technologies are even less secure than you might think, mostly due to poor configuration of the access rules. According to the report, Amazon's AWS S3 was one of the worst. To give you even more confidence, McAfee found that 92% of companies have one or more credentials for sale on cybercrime markets. There has been an increase of over 25% in the past year, in events involving a threat or compromised account or insider threat. Keep those passwords complex and safe.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at [email protected].
