5G Network end-to-end demonstration by Ericsson(ericsson.com)
ericsson.com
5G Network end-to-end demonstration by Ericsson
https://www.ericsson.com/news/2079365
72 comments
> These days with 4G i do find that it is not the technology that is the bottleneck. It is the carierers trying to hold on to their business model.
5G is for more countries than just the US. Plenty of countries are very happy with the local carriers.
5G is for more countries than just the US. Plenty of countries are very happy with the local carriers.
you're funny.
Carriers do max out the capacity of many cell towers. Remember that it's you and dozens of other people (at least) concurrently downloading stuff over the same tower. Scarcity is a fact of life, and the bandwidth has to be allocated somehow.
I do wonder how it would work if we did some sort of high-speed dynamic bidding for bandwidth, rather than a constant fee. It could actually be very helpful; it would incentivize carriers to appropriately allocate bandwidth for an area (maximizing profit would coincide nicely with maximizing customer utility) and it would allow customers to directly "feel the pain" of bloated downloads and websites, leading to more market feedback for wasting bandwidth by making 8MB webpages or whatever.
Here's a really cool idea; no SIM card, no network attachment. Your phone uses some technology like Bitcoin micropayment channels (high-speed off-network secure micro payments, great protocol) to automatically buy bandwidth from whichever regional cell tower is offering you the best deal.
I do wonder how it would work if we did some sort of high-speed dynamic bidding for bandwidth, rather than a constant fee. It could actually be very helpful; it would incentivize carriers to appropriately allocate bandwidth for an area (maximizing profit would coincide nicely with maximizing customer utility) and it would allow customers to directly "feel the pain" of bloated downloads and websites, leading to more market feedback for wasting bandwidth by making 8MB webpages or whatever.
Here's a really cool idea; no SIM card, no network attachment. Your phone uses some technology like Bitcoin micropayment channels (high-speed off-network secure micro payments, great protocol) to automatically buy bandwidth from whichever regional cell tower is offering you the best deal.
> allow customers to directly "feel the pain" of bloated downloads and websites
We already do, because our transfer speeds suck under congestion.
The technology is still a bottleneck, but the business model just isn't tightly fitted to the limitations of the bottle neck.
4G cannot viably stream 1080p netflix into the number of homes in America that use it at any given time (unless you use an unrealistic number of cell sites).
Some sort of rationing has to occur otherwise cells would be overrun.
Carriers should bring back free nights and weekends.
4G cannot viably stream 1080p netflix into the number of homes in America that use it at any given time (unless you use an unrealistic number of cell sites).
Some sort of rationing has to occur otherwise cells would be overrun.
Carriers should bring back free nights and weekends.
Free nights and weekends is exactly anti-net-neutrality.
I have always been an advocate for more, open, spectrum, and simple laws to outlaw intentional interference. We are not operating dumb radios - we can dynamically change or allocate spectrum channels to load balance congestion and avoid making it worse.
To legally cordon off everyone into separate silos is a hatchet solution to a nuanced problem with much better solutions if you could just incentivize good behavior and punish bad in commons.
I do not believe for a second we cannot technologically transfer h265 video via radio to every individual in even the highest population densities if we had full access to building infrastructure around all of the spectrum of light we use for communications.
I have always been an advocate for more, open, spectrum, and simple laws to outlaw intentional interference. We are not operating dumb radios - we can dynamically change or allocate spectrum channels to load balance congestion and avoid making it worse.
To legally cordon off everyone into separate silos is a hatchet solution to a nuanced problem with much better solutions if you could just incentivize good behavior and punish bad in commons.
I do not believe for a second we cannot technologically transfer h265 video via radio to every individual in even the highest population densities if we had full access to building infrastructure around all of the spectrum of light we use for communications.
> To legally cordon off everyone into separate silos is a hatchet solution to a nuanced problem
I have a sneaking suspicion that it's been done this way so that it can be treated like "property" legally protected and commoditised as such.
The bottleneck here is the law, which as everyone knows "is an ass" (by which I mean in all seriousness it has difficulty dealing with such nuance)
I have a sneaking suspicion that it's been done this way so that it can be treated like "property" legally protected and commoditised as such.
The bottleneck here is the law, which as everyone knows "is an ass" (by which I mean in all seriousness it has difficulty dealing with such nuance)
I can't think of a reason why free nights and weekends would be anti-net neutrality.
"Net neutrality" is a problematic term because it seems to mean different things to different people depending on their perspective/motive. For instance, I've seen arguments that T-Mobile not charging for SD video streams is net neutral because any company is allowed to get into the program.
In its strictest (and IMO, most useful) sense, "net neutrality" is the concept that data is data is data. It doesn't matter whether it's carrying video or whether it's carrying text, whether that comes from Google or whether it comes from the server in your basement, or whether it's being transferred at 11am or at 11pm.
IMO that definition is the most useful because it's the clearest - anything else ends up getting into some debate about why this applies and that doesn't. I'd very much like to keep my neutral internet connection - the creeping preferentialism on my cellphone connection is not welcome.
In its strictest (and IMO, most useful) sense, "net neutrality" is the concept that data is data is data. It doesn't matter whether it's carrying video or whether it's carrying text, whether that comes from Google or whether it comes from the server in your basement, or whether it's being transferred at 11am or at 11pm.
IMO that definition is the most useful because it's the clearest - anything else ends up getting into some debate about why this applies and that doesn't. I'd very much like to keep my neutral internet connection - the creeping preferentialism on my cellphone connection is not welcome.
One simple example would be Verizon only allowing free nights and weekends to certain services. For example, Verizon allows free night and weekend data usage for Hulu but not for any other streaming video services. This is a huge loss to Netflix, Amazon Video, YouTube and any other streaming services, including those whom don't yet exist since it would be harder to gain users due to the newer service "using more data" than using Hulu (read: the Verizon subsidized alternative).
At least, I'm assuming that's what OP meant. Not simply that "free nights and weekends" would be anti-net neutrality on its own, but that it could very easily be made more proprietary than it initially sounds. And we've seen it done in the past when free nights and weekends were were restricted to those within your telco, the x-amount of people within your network that are free to call[I believe AT&T made it 10?], the free mobile to mobile that was eventually restricted to free mobile to mobile only within the same telco again, etc., etc.
At least, I'm assuming that's what OP meant. Not simply that "free nights and weekends" would be anti-net neutrality on its own, but that it could very easily be made more proprietary than it initially sounds. And we've seen it done in the past when free nights and weekends were were restricted to those within your telco, the x-amount of people within your network that are free to call[I believe AT&T made it 10?], the free mobile to mobile that was eventually restricted to free mobile to mobile only within the same telco again, etc., etc.
Smaller or up-and-coming carriers can't always afford to give away their service for free, whereas larger carriers can offset the losses more easily.
Edit to clarify, it's more "anti-competitive" than "anti-net neutrality"
Edit to clarify, it's more "anti-competitive" than "anti-net neutrality"
The Shannon-Hartley theorem is a harsh master. You cannot squeeze more then bandwidth times log 1+S/N through a radio link. You cannot have antenna gain beyond the diffraction limit. Power amplifiers have limited bandwidth.
Which is exactly why the law is the limiting factor rather than physics.
We have the ability to programmatically build radios that can adjust bandwidth channels on demand, in fairly broad ranges. But because spectrum is treated as a commodity to be owned by private entities, nobody can utilize the potential of load balancing across all possible radio spectrum (both immediately and in macroscopic economic trends).
If we are stuck with the ~800mhz combined spectrum openly available today, of course we will continue to see incredible bottlenecks in congested wireless environments. But in practice there is about ~10ghz of practically usable spectrum for wireless data transfer, and you can fit a lot more channels in the low end.
We have the ability to programmatically build radios that can adjust bandwidth channels on demand, in fairly broad ranges. But because spectrum is treated as a commodity to be owned by private entities, nobody can utilize the potential of load balancing across all possible radio spectrum (both immediately and in macroscopic economic trends).
If we are stuck with the ~800mhz combined spectrum openly available today, of course we will continue to see incredible bottlenecks in congested wireless environments. But in practice there is about ~10ghz of practically usable spectrum for wireless data transfer, and you can fit a lot more channels in the low end.
4G has been my only connection at home since 2013. I pay 20 euros a month for unlimited 50Mbit/s 4G connection and I can watch two Netflix 1080p streams and do other things at the same time easily. ISP also provides public IPv4 address so I can run servers at home. I live in Finland.
I think Finland is the exception, almost all other countries including Sweden has data caps.
I think the software is also often a bottleneck. Specifically bandwidth-greedy websites.
Spectra efficiency and even faster data rates are nice but I wonder are carriers going going to upgrade backhaul link and IP core network to allow customers to take full advantage of 5G air interface? This a huge capex spending. I wonder if customers willing to pay even more exorbitant prices for 5G plans for their phone?
With those speeds 5G could be an alternative/replacement for cable/DSL for home internet access. I'm not sure the carriers would be on board with that tough as its its easier to oversubscribe mobile devices than home internet.
With those speeds 5G could be an alternative/replacement for cable/DSL for home internet access. I'm not sure the carriers would be on board with that tough as its its easier to oversubscribe mobile devices than home internet.
>With those speeds 5G could be an alternative/replacement for cable/DSL for home internet access.
Though 3/4G already is, it's what many people use instead of wired internet here (Finland) and it's often marketed as such. I rarely get under 25mbps in our clubroom that only has 4G internet access.
Though 3/4G already is, it's what many people use instead of wired internet here (Finland) and it's often marketed as such. I rarely get under 25mbps in our clubroom that only has 4G internet access.
Wow so carriers have really built out their networks in Finland it sounds like. I think this is probably true of all the Nordics no? There are no caps on your 4G? I am curious are you using a mobile router? My experience with these has been that there were data caps attached to them and the plan, as opposed to a 4G unlimited plan on my phone.
> Wow so carriers have really built out their networks in Finland it sounds like. There are no caps on your 4G?
Not Finnish but have lots of Finnish friends. They pay for the speed of the service, not data transfer. [0] So for example you would pay to have a SIM card with 10MBit/s, 20MBit/s, 30MBit/s, etc.
They're always horrified to hear that we have data caps in Germany. At least here if you exceed your cap they just throttle you to 2G speeds. Interestingly, it seems that Finland mobile subscribers use more data than the average German fixed line subscriber. [1]
In Canada if you exceed the cap the carrier starts charging you exorbitant amounts of money per GB (on to of the already insane monthly cost of the plan).
[0] http://dfmonitor.eu/insights/2016_may_finland_mobile_data_us...
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/finnish-like-unlimited-mobile...
Not Finnish but have lots of Finnish friends. They pay for the speed of the service, not data transfer. [0] So for example you would pay to have a SIM card with 10MBit/s, 20MBit/s, 30MBit/s, etc.
They're always horrified to hear that we have data caps in Germany. At least here if you exceed your cap they just throttle you to 2G speeds. Interestingly, it seems that Finland mobile subscribers use more data than the average German fixed line subscriber. [1]
In Canada if you exceed the cap the carrier starts charging you exorbitant amounts of money per GB (on to of the already insane monthly cost of the plan).
[0] http://dfmonitor.eu/insights/2016_may_finland_mobile_data_us...
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/finnish-like-unlimited-mobile...
I can't speak for Finland, but in Sweden I don't think there are any plans with unlimited data anymore, that weren't grandfathered. There used to be when 3G was the norm, but now that 4G is available pretty much everywhere you'll be capped most likely. My plan for instance is capped at 100gb I believe, for which I pay about 500-600 SEK / month. (This includes all domestic voice and texts too.)
In Finland 4G data contracts tend to be limitless. I pay 30 € per month for a package of 2 SIM cards which both have unlimited 4G data (no voice or SMS services packed in). The other one for a pad, the other one is my home's fixed network with appliances and WLAN connected.
I'm not entirely happy with current operator, though; I used to get 15 Mbit/s downlink but now it's often 3 Mbit/s at home, which is not enough. I might switch operator.
(At work I get 25 Mbit/s with the pad so the limit is clearly in poor coverage of operator DNA in my residential area, at work it is OK.)
I'm not entirely happy with current operator, though; I used to get 15 Mbit/s downlink but now it's often 3 Mbit/s at home, which is not enough. I might switch operator.
(At work I get 25 Mbit/s with the pad so the limit is clearly in poor coverage of operator DNA in my residential area, at work it is OK.)
Sigh. And in Norway the highest "off the shelf" cap is 200gb/month at ~800 NOK :/
I'm not clear what the providers think the future will be - even 200gb is a tight fit for streaming 1080p video, never mind 4k or 8k hdr.
Looks like they'll continue to drag their feet with fiber, and continue to spend on dsl while struggling to get people to commit to 4g (because at current price/datacap/coverage it doesn't really make sense).
Or maybe it's the electronics dealers that will take the hit because lossy 720p doesn't look any better on a 4/8k screen...
I'm not clear what the providers think the future will be - even 200gb is a tight fit for streaming 1080p video, never mind 4k or 8k hdr.
Looks like they'll continue to drag their feet with fiber, and continue to spend on dsl while struggling to get people to commit to 4g (because at current price/datacap/coverage it doesn't really make sense).
Or maybe it's the electronics dealers that will take the hit because lossy 720p doesn't look any better on a 4/8k screen...
that's 52-62€ or 56-67 dollars
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I use an LTE hotspot as my main access point in Belize, but I have to pay $5/GB for it. :(
Edit: My hotspot tends to run at around 22Mb/sec, which is faster than the fastest DSL line you can get here, which is 16Mb and costs $400/mo.
Edit: My hotspot tends to run at around 22Mb/sec, which is faster than the fastest DSL line you can get here, which is 16Mb and costs $400/mo.
My AT&T plan in the US is $6.66/GB for the first 30 and $15/GB after that. Just tested, I'm getting around 27Mb/s down.
Geez, I thought Belize was bad! That is shocking since otherwise Belize is notorious for having some of the most expensive broadband internet access in the world (even though it has more backbone connections than Denmark).
This sounds about right sadly. It will be interesting to see how the carriers market these better speeds and latencies if it doesn't also include better affordability.
Latency / jitter is still a problem for some customers ( gaming ect .. )
> took place in Sweden [...] at Ericsson’s laboratory at Krista.
Should probably be Kista:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kista
Should probably be Kista:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kista
Joe Armstrong had a fun talk about the general setup how it works in 2014:
https://youtu.be/rQIE22e0cW8?t=603
Then it was still in the labs as a prototype. He talks about some of the limitation, the history (3G, 4G, 5G) and how it all set up. It is mostly in the context of building reactive systems and this was just the intro bit.
Also fun fact: since Ericsson controls more than half of the market in smartphone <-> internet gateways and most of those run Erlang. If Erlang stops working, no more cat videos for anyone on their phones.
https://youtu.be/rQIE22e0cW8?t=603
Then it was still in the labs as a prototype. He talks about some of the limitation, the history (3G, 4G, 5G) and how it all set up. It is mostly in the context of building reactive systems and this was just the intro bit.
Also fun fact: since Ericsson controls more than half of the market in smartphone <-> internet gateways and most of those run Erlang. If Erlang stops working, no more cat videos for anyone on their phones.
I hope that the network vendors and the IoT vendors sit down and think about how the devices and the network can work to mitigate things like large-scale IoT DDoS etc. Even if this mean new protocoling or whatever. I'm not sure I'm thinking about this exactly correctly, but I feel there is something in there?
IoT vendors don't think, which is why the crap they sell is vulnerable to so much exploitation.
Network operators should know better than to put cell radios into devices you know will be compromised in a year or two.
Hell, the solution sounds pretty simple to me. Network attached devices must be openly disclosed with open source hardware and must have standardized wired update and control mechanisms. That way consumers can make intelligent decisions to buy products that can see long term support by their communities, because companies absolutely won't do it (and because they are international, you cannot really bind them to support terms of contracts - these negotiations have to happen at the import level, and nothing really stops them from dropping products a year down the road from support and bribing the right people / dissolving and reforming the company to circumvent consequences - but you can force them to disclose source and hardware architecture, enabling the consumers to maintain security themselves).
Network operators should know better than to put cell radios into devices you know will be compromised in a year or two.
Hell, the solution sounds pretty simple to me. Network attached devices must be openly disclosed with open source hardware and must have standardized wired update and control mechanisms. That way consumers can make intelligent decisions to buy products that can see long term support by their communities, because companies absolutely won't do it (and because they are international, you cannot really bind them to support terms of contracts - these negotiations have to happen at the import level, and nothing really stops them from dropping products a year down the road from support and bribing the right people / dissolving and reforming the company to circumvent consequences - but you can force them to disclose source and hardware architecture, enabling the consumers to maintain security themselves).
Cellular IoT doesn't really have the problem seen with Mirai & co DDoS attacks. A cellular device is attached to a cellular network first, and for many application are not even on the Internet.
In 3GPP cellular IoT (2G/GPRS, 3G/UMTS to HSPA, 4G/LTE) it is very common for devices to be on what's called a private APN. It's a private IP network, and the cellular operator provides a VPN access to this private network to let the managing company access the devices from their application servers. Only the application servers can access the devices, which are not on the Internet. In practice this removes the risk of remote attacks on the devices (if you either hacked the telco or service operators and can get to the devices, you already could get to more interesting stuff like aggregated data). This has been available since GPRS and will also apply to 5G --- no difference at this level.
Of course the flip side of this model is that the end customer must go through the device associated service provider to get to the device. It may not be acceptable to all, but when it is using a private APN is really a very effective way to kill remote attacks on cellular IoT devices.
Even for devices not using a private APN but having Internet access, the operator is still in between and could do ad-hoc filtering if called for. Another factor is that tier 1 telco operator tend to require support for FOTA (Firmware update Over The Air), so cellular IoT devices can be remotely upgraded.
With all this cellular IoT is in a much better situation for security than LAN-based IoT. It's also more expansive.
In 3GPP cellular IoT (2G/GPRS, 3G/UMTS to HSPA, 4G/LTE) it is very common for devices to be on what's called a private APN. It's a private IP network, and the cellular operator provides a VPN access to this private network to let the managing company access the devices from their application servers. Only the application servers can access the devices, which are not on the Internet. In practice this removes the risk of remote attacks on the devices (if you either hacked the telco or service operators and can get to the devices, you already could get to more interesting stuff like aggregated data). This has been available since GPRS and will also apply to 5G --- no difference at this level.
Of course the flip side of this model is that the end customer must go through the device associated service provider to get to the device. It may not be acceptable to all, but when it is using a private APN is really a very effective way to kill remote attacks on cellular IoT devices.
Even for devices not using a private APN but having Internet access, the operator is still in between and could do ad-hoc filtering if called for. Another factor is that tier 1 telco operator tend to require support for FOTA (Firmware update Over The Air), so cellular IoT devices can be remotely upgraded.
With all this cellular IoT is in a much better situation for security than LAN-based IoT. It's also more expansive.
That was my point, in a massive IoT deployment devices are maybe safer when they stay off LAN.
FWIW, in my country the historical ISP is pushing for a dedicated network for industrial and hobbyists connected devices. The pipes are already wired.
Can you give more information? From your description, it sounds like "Let's limit possible DDOS targets for hacked things to just factories.", which doesn't strike me as a solution.
I recently did a small talk to some fortune CTOs who have sizable physical operations and logistics. Their heads exploded when I asked what the plan was for the 150,000 little computers they just placed on their LAN DDoSing the operational systems.
> who have sizable physical operations and logistics
As an outsider, I find that quite a strange reaction. I mean, when I ship something with DHL, Fedex, or UPS, they're able to give me (I assume) quite accurate tracking information. So clearly they already have a bunch of sensors in their sorting facility and trucks to monitor when a package has arrived/departed.
From what I've heard of Amazon logistics centres, it seems that they would already have thousands of sensors there to scan, transport, label, etc items in the warehouse.
But I do work with electricity utilities, where technologies like FTP and ModbusTCP are still considered cutting edge...
As an outsider, I find that quite a strange reaction. I mean, when I ship something with DHL, Fedex, or UPS, they're able to give me (I assume) quite accurate tracking information. So clearly they already have a bunch of sensors in their sorting facility and trucks to monitor when a package has arrived/departed.
From what I've heard of Amazon logistics centres, it seems that they would already have thousands of sensors there to scan, transport, label, etc items in the warehouse.
But I do work with electricity utilities, where technologies like FTP and ModbusTCP are still considered cutting edge...
Yeah, for sure not at that scale!!! I wish I was talking to their CTOs ;)
Think 10-20MM a year in operating costs (small feet of trucks, few large facilities) - you're on the right track when you mentioned utilities. Even a business like $TWNK will likely have to think about this if they have not already. :)
Think 10-20MM a year in operating costs (small feet of trucks, few large facilities) - you're on the right track when you mentioned utilities. Even a business like $TWNK will likely have to think about this if they have not already. :)
Plus it leads to too much trust. One factory doesn't have good air gap policies and suddenly the whole network is infected because some designers trusted the network too much.
I'm really interested in the potential for p2p networking in 5G. But I've been disappointed that LTE Direct[1] hasn't really become a normal thing since a couple years ago when Qualcomm announced it. A cursory googling of 5G shows that some amount of 5G research has focused around device-to-device, mostly for IoT purposes[2][3]. Link [3] in particular talks about the challenge of incentivizes:
> Besides the technical challenges, there is the very practical problem of incentivizing users to lend their devices to serve as relays for the traffic of others, especially since these connections will consume bandwidth, storage, and battery power on the relay. Again, the appropriate class of solutions depends upon the D2D design.
If this D2D does become a central part of 5G, I'm really curious about whether users will be able to use 5G not (only) with a carrier's towers, but as a part of a mesh network (and as a Bluetooth- or wifi-like tool for local networking). It could be a great way to chip away at the power of carriers and ISPs (which might be one reason LTE Direct is nowhere to be seen, and why D2D 5G capabilities could be gimped in end-user devices).
I'm a complete layman in this area, so I'm curious to hear others' thoughts.
[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/research/projects/lte-dir...
[2] https://www.ericsson.com/research-blog/5g/device-device-comm...
[3] http://www.comsoc.org/ctn/device-device-communication-5g-cel...
> Besides the technical challenges, there is the very practical problem of incentivizing users to lend their devices to serve as relays for the traffic of others, especially since these connections will consume bandwidth, storage, and battery power on the relay. Again, the appropriate class of solutions depends upon the D2D design.
If this D2D does become a central part of 5G, I'm really curious about whether users will be able to use 5G not (only) with a carrier's towers, but as a part of a mesh network (and as a Bluetooth- or wifi-like tool for local networking). It could be a great way to chip away at the power of carriers and ISPs (which might be one reason LTE Direct is nowhere to be seen, and why D2D 5G capabilities could be gimped in end-user devices).
I'm a complete layman in this area, so I'm curious to hear others' thoughts.
[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/research/projects/lte-dir...
[2] https://www.ericsson.com/research-blog/5g/device-device-comm...
[3] http://www.comsoc.org/ctn/device-device-communication-5g-cel...
As an end-user, I'm ok with current 4G/LTE link speeds. What would be great is they could minimize TTFB on mobile devices. It takes a second or two for the first bits of content to appear in the browser/mail, especially after the phone has been in sleep mode.
The only reason the speeds seem fine is because due to data caps people are too afraid to actually use the data. With more capacity in the networks, data caps can rise, and usage will go up. I don't want to have to mess around with connecting to coffee shop WiFi networks all the time. Every computer should have a wireless chipset that simply uses the WWAN when a WLAN is not available, without you worrying about that OS update downloading in the background.
Maybe in the USA, in the UK at least plenty of people have unlimited/large data plans, and the speeds are still fine.
In Denmark data caps are rising a lot. It's not unusual to have 30 or even 50 GBs of data. I don't know the reason why, but it's most likely not capacity since we are probably using the same system.
>> With more capacity in the networks, data caps can rise, and usage will go up.
If I was a CEO at a major wireless carrier, I would be thinking that means we can charge people more per month, and generate more revenue. Anytime you increase usage, the carriers are going to find a way to squeeze some more money out of their users.
If I was a CEO at a major wireless carrier, I would be thinking that means we can charge people more per month, and generate more revenue. Anytime you increase usage, the carriers are going to find a way to squeeze some more money out of their users.
The rising capacity will be offset by rising average page size. What the network giveth, the browser taketh away.
Its just like building highways to alleviate traffic.
Bandwidth caps exist to destroy demand, and they do the job well (no different then London's congestion charge).
This is great. If only we could get true 4G in the US...
When I went to the US two years ago I got LTE in the Baltimire, Washington DC and Los Angeles areas so you guys do have true 4G. The issue is more the amount of LTE coverage avaliable which isn't that great outside of the main cities (or at least it wasn't at the time I visited).
Does anyone else restrict their phones to 3G because 4G (real 4G) eats through your data cap too fast?
If I accidentally load a large video/gif/website, It's easier to back out then let it eat my data.
I'm also noticing that with similar usage, my same apps are eating much more data than they used to a couple years ago. Twitter, Facebook, Maps. I could live on 500MB/mo, now 2GB/mo is not enough.
If I accidentally load a large video/gif/website, It's easier to back out then let it eat my data.
I'm also noticing that with similar usage, my same apps are eating much more data than they used to a couple years ago. Twitter, Facebook, Maps. I could live on 500MB/mo, now 2GB/mo is not enough.
4G saves your battery. you could limit the speed through an app:
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Bandwidth-Ruler-for-Android-l...
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Bandwidth-Ruler-for-Android-l...
> The 5G New Radio (NR) used 800MHz bandwidth, running on 15GHz
Wow, 15Ghz signals are going to really suck for building penetration...
Wow, 15Ghz signals are going to really suck for building penetration...
Yes. The issue is mitigated by massive beam-forming. Thanks to the high frequency antennas are small and it's possible to use many of them to steer a narrow beam toward the device. The antenna gain compensates for the pretty tough link budget at those high frequencies.
For the number of antennas, I've seen anything from 64 to 1024 (amazing...). Even then millimeter waves are only for short distances (< ~300m).
Of course, a very narrow beam makes life very interesting with mobile devices ;) But one of the first application of mmWaves should be last mile access, where this is not an issue. With this, fiber is required close to the home but the most costly last hundred meters can use wireless. This should reduce cost while still supporting very high throughput. TBC.
For the number of antennas, I've seen anything from 64 to 1024 (amazing...). Even then millimeter waves are only for short distances (< ~300m).
Of course, a very narrow beam makes life very interesting with mobile devices ;) But one of the first application of mmWaves should be last mile access, where this is not an issue. With this, fiber is required close to the home but the most costly last hundred meters can use wireless. This should reduce cost while still supporting very high throughput. TBC.
No end-to-end encryption though. Oh well, maybe for 6G?
Even 4G (LTE) is typically end to end encrypted. Unsure what you are trying to say or if you're just trolling.
Isn't it just mobile station to base station encryption, not true E2E encryption of calls (which would never be allowed)?
From what I've heard (I may be mistaken here), 2G/3G had pretty poor radio link security. This resulted, of course, in Stingrays.
4G supposedly has actually secure radio links; I think to the extent Stingrays work on these devices, it's by forcing a downgrade to 2G/3G. So as it becomes feasible to drop 2G/3G support Stingrays will stop working, although of course this will take a long time.
That said, supposedly what encryption 2G/3G did use extended further into the core network, whereas the encryption that 4G uses terminates at the base station. Supposedly all providers which are implementing 4G are in practice encrypting the links from the base station to the rest of the network with IPsec, but this does mean that the traffic is unencrypted at the base station itself, which makes the base station vulnerable to physical compromise. Some people have criticised LTE's security over GSM/UMTS for this reason.
On the whole I think it's a net gain, though. Physically compromising a base station is a higher friction and higher risk activity than deployment of a Stingray. Moreover, I can understand that it would be potentially troublesome to have an encrypted channel from the handset to deep in an operator's core network, since it forces all traffic to travel via that route, which would necessarily increase latency. Although in practice IIRC 4G traffic might still take the same route anyway due to the weird tunnelling architecture GSM/UMTS/LTE uses, so that might be a moot point. But the article seems to imply they're focusing on reducing latency, so it's possible they're changing that for 5G. Anyone know?
4G supposedly has actually secure radio links; I think to the extent Stingrays work on these devices, it's by forcing a downgrade to 2G/3G. So as it becomes feasible to drop 2G/3G support Stingrays will stop working, although of course this will take a long time.
That said, supposedly what encryption 2G/3G did use extended further into the core network, whereas the encryption that 4G uses terminates at the base station. Supposedly all providers which are implementing 4G are in practice encrypting the links from the base station to the rest of the network with IPsec, but this does mean that the traffic is unencrypted at the base station itself, which makes the base station vulnerable to physical compromise. Some people have criticised LTE's security over GSM/UMTS for this reason.
On the whole I think it's a net gain, though. Physically compromising a base station is a higher friction and higher risk activity than deployment of a Stingray. Moreover, I can understand that it would be potentially troublesome to have an encrypted channel from the handset to deep in an operator's core network, since it forces all traffic to travel via that route, which would necessarily increase latency. Although in practice IIRC 4G traffic might still take the same route anyway due to the weird tunnelling architecture GSM/UMTS/LTE uses, so that might be a moot point. But the article seems to imply they're focusing on reducing latency, so it's possible they're changing that for 5G. Anyone know?
Here's a good paper that came out in 2015 about LTE security that's worth a read:
http://csrc.nist.gov/news_events/cif_2015/research/day2_rese....
It was put out by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
http://csrc.nist.gov/news_events/cif_2015/research/day2_rese....
It was put out by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
No the core network uses IPSec. Of course there is support for "lawful interception" though.
Or rather has support for IPSec, not all operators chose to deploy it properly.
As someone that has written code to pick up the encryption keys out of the Diameter protocol, and used those to decrypt the control plane NAS signaling on the S1 interface, correlated this info with the user plane data between a S-GW and P-GW - no - LTE is not end to end encrypted.
There's encryption between your mobile and a few nodes within the core network of your carrier - inside that network, you can easily break that encryption if you get hold of the keys - and those keys are communicated in plain-text between a couple of the network nodes (on the S6a interface). While those interfaces are supposed to be using IPSec, I've yet to see anyone doing that all the way.
The radio interface, between your device and the cell tower is decently protected though. Unless you're in a country that demands the use of the EEA0 and EIA0 encryption algorithms (a.k.a. no encryption at all).
There's encryption between your mobile and a few nodes within the core network of your carrier - inside that network, you can easily break that encryption if you get hold of the keys - and those keys are communicated in plain-text between a couple of the network nodes (on the S6a interface). While those interfaces are supposed to be using IPSec, I've yet to see anyone doing that all the way.
The radio interface, between your device and the cell tower is decently protected though. Unless you're in a country that demands the use of the EEA0 and EIA0 encryption algorithms (a.k.a. no encryption at all).
It's a bit of a silly question. End-to-End is TLS. One end has to be the phone, and your other end is your destination host.
Encryption through some part of the middle is only useful on the radio side -- the rest of the network is wired and has the same ("meh"-) level of security.
Encryption through some part of the middle is only useful on the radio side -- the rest of the network is wired and has the same ("meh"-) level of security.
End-to-end encryption typically refers to "one user to another". Not from "one base station to another" or from "one carrier to another".
It should've been quite obvious in the context of privacy.
It should've been quite obvious in the context of privacy.
I would prefer if we aimed our research on increasing coverage.