First Draft 11ax Gateways Move Into Japanese Homes This Month

[thiggins]

Updated - Qualcomm and Japanese telecom service provider KDDI and broadband equipment provider NEC Platforms announced delivery of the "world’s first commercially available draft 802.11ax carrier gateway" to Japanese subscribers this month.

The BL1000HW will be used to provision KDDI's au Hikari ("light") home 10 Giga and 5 Giga services. The draft 802.11ax gateway is built on Qualcomm's IPQ8072 chipset and supports 4 streams in 5 GHz and 4 in 2.4 GHz. 1024 QAM modulation is supported on both bands, which yields maximum link rates of 1000 Mbps in 2.4 GHz and 2165 Mbps in 5 GHz.

The IPQ8074 announced in February 2017, has an 8 stream 5 GHz and 4 stream 2.4 GHz radios. Both SoCs share the same compute core, which has four A53 64 bit cores clocked at 2.2 GHz. Both IPQs also have many microcoded accelerations that helps keep up with a 10 Gbps WAN connection.

The LAN side has one 10 Gbps /5 Gbps /2.5 Gbps / 1 Gbps / 100 Mbps port and three standard gigabit Ethernet ports. There is a version of the BL1000HW described here that has a 10/5/2.5/1/0.1 G port in addition to the version that has a fiber port.

Other features include support for the latest WPA3 wireless security standard and 8x8 MU-MIMO sounding. 8 stream sounding is an 802.11ax option that is intended to simultaneously support up to four 2x2 MU-MIMO devices in 8 stream designs vs. only two 2x2 devices using 4 stream sounding.

Although the KDDI router supports only four streams, it can understand MU-MIMO sounding from devices supporting 8x8 sounding and choose the best four of the eight.

Even though the current installed base of MU-MIMO devices will work with this new router, they won't support 8 stream sounding. However, Qualcomm says it is adding this capability to all its new 802.11ac devices shipping this year.

Of course, taking advantage of draft 802.11ax' full feature set requires draft 802.11ax devices. Qualcomm has a chip for that in the form of its WCN3998, announced at this year's Mobile World Congress in February. The chip is a 2x2 draft 11ax device supporting 8 stream receive sounding and WPA3 security. It is supposed to start sampling next quarter, with first devices starting to appear early in 2019.

Aside from draft 11ax bragging rights, the practical value in using Qualcomm's IPQ407x platform comes from its compute power that can cost-effectively support 10Gbps service and its implementation of WPA3.

Full press release.

 

[Internet Man]

Other features include support for the latest WPA3 wireless security standard and 8x8 MU-MIMO sounding. 8 stream sounding is supposed to simultaneously support up to four 2x2 MU-MIMO devices vs. only two 2x2 devices using 4 stream sounding. Other BL1000HW specs can be found here.

Qualcomm's announcement touted "6.5 Gbps peak physical (PHY) layer rates on Wi-Fi", but didn't break that down into 2.4 and 5 GHz components. There is no spec available for the IPQ8072. But the IPQ8074 announced in February 2017, specs a "peak speed" of only 4.8 Gbps.

Is the 8x8 MU-MIMO claim from a PR blast? The Public Qualcomm Press Release doesn't mention a number of spatial streams. The translated page that you linked suggests that both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios are 4x4. Perhaps they are considering the two separate 4x4 802.11ax (2.4GHz and 5GHz) together as 8x8.

However they are arriving at 6.5 Gbps PHY rate, it likely combines both 2.4GHz and 5GHz link rates. Other 4x4 802.11ax devices have been claiming 6 Gbps (4800 Mbps 5GHz + 1150 Mbps 2.4GHz) but maybe they're throwing in some other magic to boost the speed.

The chip is a 2x2 draft 11ax device supporting 8x8 MU-MIMO sounding and WPA3 security. It is supposed to start sampling next quarter.

I don't think that a 2x2 client can support 8x8 MU-MIMO.

 

[thiggins]

I had a chat with Qualcomm and made significant updates to the post.

You are correct that the IPQ8072 is 4x4 (1024 QAM) on both bands. So you'd expect link rates to be the same as Broadcom-based AC5300/5400 4x4 routers using 1024 QAM. I think the extra goose to Qualcomm's 6.5 Gbps wireless PHY rate claim comes from OFDMA. I have not seen a specific calculation yet, so I'll ask for one.

The 8x8 MU-MIMO claim is confusing and a bit of misdirection. What is claimed is the ability of lower stream devices to understand, i.e. receive and decode, up to 8 streams of MU soundings, which they then choose the "best" ones from up to the number of transmit streams they support.

So if the KDDI router was bridging to an 8 stream Qualcomm router supporting 8x8 sounding, it could choose the best of 4 MU sounding reports. Devices using Qualcomm's WCN3998 phone device would be able to choose the best two out of eight.

 

[RMerlin]

So, 802.11ax router in 2018, but nothing to connect to it until 2019, beside what would work just as fast with a 802.11ac router. That makes sense...

and its implementation of WPA3.

This is the interesting bit IMHO. Tim, have you heard anything about WPA3 in general: manufacturers' plans for it, whether it will require new silicon or just new software, etc...?

With WPA2 I remember it required a WinXP service pack to support it, in addition to the hardware + software.

 

[Magebarf]

This ticks of sooooo many check boxes on my current requirements list for next piece of equipment I've been looking for!
Wonder if it'll be available outside of the KDDI offering.
Currently hoping that this is the equipment my ISP is awaiting delivery of as well, after they announced their 10Gbit/s service!

 

[sfx2000]

It's really the 10G-EPON thing that's interesting with the KDDI gateway.

Having spent a few years in Japan - they have always realized the benefit of a strong broadband network.

Routing at 10Gbe - there's a few folks working on that these days, and some of them are here on this forum

 

[sfx2000]

This is the interesting bit IMHO. Tim, have you heard anything about WPA3 in general: manufacturers' plans for it, whether it will require new silicon or just new software, etc...?

With WPA2 I remember it required a WinXP service pack to support it, in addition to the hardware + software.

yes and no... with WinXP, WPA1 was handled one way, and WPA2 was a total new world... recall that WPA1/WPA2 was also in the middle of the WEP transition, and many client chipsets couldn't make the jump to WPA2 - which is why we have the legacy pox of TKIP and WPA1 in the first place.

WPA3 is basically adding protected management frames... which many current client chipsets support.

No changes needed for wpa-supplicant at the moment is my best guess... it's backwards compatible, as it uses the same items for WPA2-PSK and enterprise.

WPA3 is forward looking, so that's always a good thing with auth and encryption items...

 

[sfx2000]

Other features include support for the latest WPA3 wireless security standard and 8x8 MU-MIMO sounding. 8 stream sounding is an 802.11ax option that is intended to simultaneously support up to four 2x2 MU-MIMO devices in 8 stream designs vs. only two 2x2 devices using 4 stream sounding.

Although the KDDI router supports only four streams, it can understand MU-MIMO sounding from devices supporting 8x8 sounding and choose the best four of the eight.

11ax Fun stuff - MU is very different with 11ax vs. 11ac.

This time it might work - similar approaches with LTE have...

 

[thiggins]

This is the interesting bit IMHO. Tim, have you heard anything about WPA3 in general: manufacturers' plans for it, whether it will require new silicon or just new software, etc...?

I asked Qualcomm about this. They said it's unlikely WPA3 firmware upgrades will be issued for current gear because the move to 192 bit encryption. Although this is a optional feature, not implementing it would likely lock those devices out of government applications.

If a manufacturer does issue a WPA3 firmware upgrade, the device will likely suffer significant throughput reduction. This brings back memories of the 40% or so throughput reduction in many draft 11n products when encryption was enabled. This went away once encryption processing was moved into the radio chip.

 

[pege63]

A little in the shadow of 5G and next generation mobile networks, we'll see more of next-generation wifi on MWC 2018, including the first Qualcomm reference router.

The next major standard in local wireless networks is called 802.11ax, and now the focus is primarily on expanding the network's total capacity rather than the single user maximum speed. We are greeted by Qualcomm, who displays its first complete reference router with support for 802.11ax and partly for 10Gbit Ethernet.

The router we can view is supported by eight channels at 5 GHz and four channels at 2.4 GHz, via eight antennas with MU-MIMO. Several of these channels can be used at the same time, so a computer with 802.11ax support and eight own antennas can theoretically utilize the maximum bandwidth of closer to 5 gigabit per second (Gb / s). A single device with an antenna can in turn reach approximately 350 Mb / s via the 5 GHz band.

Qualcomm's reference router will not be sold directly under its own brand, but will be sold to partners such as Netgear, TP-Link and other manufacturers who can then package it in their own shell and with their own software. The first deliveries to the manufacturers are expected to happen in the second quarter, and then find out in store only in the fall.

World's first 5G chipset: Huawei Balong 5G01

The Huawei Balong 5G01 chip is a 64bit ARM based chipset, the first in the world, the first to support the latest 3GPP standard for 5G networks, it can transfer data at 2.3Gbps speeds the use case here is for home or enterprise broadband where the 2.3Gbit/s bandwidth comes from the 5G network and broadcasts that as a Wi-Fi signal in the home or office. Later this year or soon, Huawei and others will be reducing the size of the 5G chipset to fit inside of phones and more.

 

[Razor512]

10 gigabit internet would be really useful to have, especially at the residential level.
It would make it car easier and provide a better user experience of syncing the files on 2 separate NAS systems in 2 different locations in the country in order to have some non-cloud reliant offsite storage that can synchronize the files just moments after being saved to the local NAS.

It will also improve the efficiency at which users can gather new episodes of their favorite anime shows. Assuming good endpoint throughput on both sides, imagine being able to grab the latest episode of Overlord in under 3 seconds seconds

As for the WiFi, I can't wait to see some in-depth benchmarks of 802.11ax and to see how well it can maintain 1024QAM in a real world setting (802.11ac struggles to maintain 256QAM if you are not in the same room as the AP).