Seeing your work go public
Last year, you may or may not have known what I did over the summer. The first portion of my job consisted of open source research on the impact on 802.16 WiMAX on communications. My conclusion in a nutshell, it’s gonna change the world. Now, a year later, it’s making a big spash in the news. There’s been talk about it all week as Intel began rolling out chips compatible with the 802.16 standard. For those unfamilar with what 802.16 WiMAX is, it’s a wireless standard much like 802.11 WiFi but with speeds in the ballpark of 150 MBps and a range of 30 miles. WiFi, which you probably have at home or at your campus, has a mere throughput of 54MBps (g) and ranges of 100 feet (give or take, but it doesn’t extend too far outside your house) WiMAX is superior to WiFi in many ways and can even take on Cable/DSL for delivering internet to your house. Why lay cable or create an infrastructure when you can get the same speed without? Why have 50 wireless spots cover your town/city when you can have 3 WiMAX towers serve all the broadband you need to your whole city? WiMAX is finally here and there’s atleast one person who’s excited.