NetworkManager Drops WiMAX Support

[kigurai]

LTE******

* Nice speeds only for short bursts when there are no other users on the mast
** Capped to hell, enjoy that 500MB monthly cap
*** That means one youtube video at hd btw
**** Such latencies and battery drain

Wireless is simply unacceptable for any last mile connection.

Depends on where you are, and what plan you are using.
Lots of people use LTE as their only broadband connection, and those plans are usually between 10-100 GB/month.
Granted, everyone who are forced to use a wireless connections would probably want a fiber connection instead, but those are not easily installable (or cheap...).
And LTE beats the other common alternative, ADSL, which is slower and more expensive (although you don't have data caps).

[curaga]

ADSL slower? Sure, in theorethical bandwidth, but it has no "shared line" problem where other users drop your speed, and it has several times better latency.

[kigurai]

ADSL slower? Sure, in theorethical bandwidth, but it has no "shared line" problem where other users drop your speed, and it has several times better latency.

Slower obviously depends on your location. Looked quickly for the largest operator in my area. ADSL goes to 60Mbps, while LTE is up to 100Mbps. These are obviously best case numbers which are limited by the signal strength on your property (terrain, bad wires, distance to tower or tele station).
Prices are harder to judge since for ADSL you pay more depending on speed, and for LTE you pay more depending on what data caps you can live with.
E.g. a 30Mbps ADSL is a lot more expensive than a LTE connection with a 10GB data cap.

As for latency, the mean latency for LTE connections in my country is apparently 80 ms. Granted, this is worse than cable connections, but still good enough even for gaming.

To summarize my point: Yes, cable connections are obviously better in almost any aspect, but I wouldn't be so quick to rule out LTE as a viable option for lots of people.

[GreatEmerald]

Woah! That sounds really, really strange. First off, this is a list of WiMAX deployments worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WiMAX_networks In no sense is it just one or two countries!

In fact, it's even deployed here in Lithuania, in the form of the quite popular "Mezon" internet. Just half a year ago, one of our professors used it to connect to the internet during lectures (though it was on Windows 7). The ISP that offers Mezon also offers WiMAX equipment for it. Some, like bridgman said, are routers; obviously they run embedded Linux with preloaded WiMAX drivers. But... There is also this: http://www.mezon.lt/upload/Iranga/US...jo_vadovas.pdf (In Lithuanian, but should be enough to get the point across). It's a WiMAX USB modem, with Linux support! It's internally a Sequans chip: http://www.mezon.lt/upload/Iranga/USB/QSG_Linux.pdf Likely this one: http://www.sequans.com/products-solu...wimax/sqn1280/ However, it's likely that it comes with its own special software for connecting, in other words, it's not using NetworkManager, but rather ifupdown (and possibly ships with its own kernel module and such).

[pal666]

If WiMAX is commonly used in Tiawan and distros are not supporting it, that means

and if pigs can fly, what that means ?

[bridgman]

I thought that was what LTE is for? Or at least some companies want it to be that way so they don't have to dig any more cables to remote villages. Also in what country do you live? Or are you just so far out that there is nothing but the trees you mentioned around you?

I live in Canada, but so far out there is nothing but trees. My nearest neighbors are deer, coyotes and wild turkeys, next closest neighbors are cows.

Nearest "remote village" is about 8km away (and, more importantly, a couple of big hills away). I had assumed that at least DSL would be available, but apparently there's something like 27km of wire between me and the central office (so my best 56K modem connected at about 21K and the rest wouldn't connect at all).

[bridgman]

BTW that's only ~90km from the center of the biggest city in Canada and ~65km from the AMD office.

Our population density drops off dramatically once you get outside the big cities so you go from fiber to satellite & wireless in a surprisingly short distance.

[Tiger_Coder]

There are lot's of WiMAX user at least in Bangladesh https://www.telegeography.com/produc...llphone-usage/ and that did not seems to go away in anytime soon. Yeah one of the peaks of living in a developing country is our tech systems are really old and hard to change.

But I guess this drop will have any real life effect either because for once old WiMax devices never really worked out of the box in Linux. For one popular modem, from a old blob linux driver, someone reverse engineered a kernel module and created a ppa for that(I think that might be some law breaking or something but who cares) but they also needed scripts to start, not Network Manager. Because of demand of Linux and Mac drivers(yes a huge demand for Linux, actually more than Mac I would say) newer modems actually comes as hostless, connected as usb lan.

[TheBlackCat]

My nearest neighbors are deer, coyotes and wild turkeys, next closest neighbors are cows.

Sounds like some scary wildlife. Wild turkeys are mean.

[bridgman]

Sounds like some scary wildlife. Wild turkeys are mean.

Yep. There used to be one around here that would attack anyone walking in or out of my neighbor's house.