Wi-Fi boffins have finally found a solution that will boost connections by 700%. Researchers at North Carolina state university have succeeded in overcoming Wi-Fi speed limitations.
Usually people notice that Wi-Fi is slower than advertised, and so it is not uncommon to see people frustrated with the limits of their internet access. Wi-Fox will be able to increase network speeds, particularly in congested areas, such as airports and hotels.
The new tool provides possibilities for many users to access to the same router simultaneously sending data packets with high speed. Its works through taking control of the channel, sending out a backlogged packet, and clearing the main channel.
When there is a high pressure on a Wi-Fi lane, it sends orders directly to Wi-Fox about the accumulated data, which works to prioritise data according to its size. In some ways it can be seen as a sort of ‘traffic cop’ that organises the moving of data smoothly.
Once things have been sent over, the latency should drop considerably, and data will flow normally. Wi-Fox was tested on Wi-Fi last Thursday in NC university’s lab, which could handle up to 45 users at one time. Surprisingly, Wi-Fox was able to raise speed by up to 400% when the number of users was 25, and it actually reached 700% when there were 45 users.
“One of the nice things about this mechanism is that it can be packaged as a software update that can be incorporated into existing WiFi networks,” said Arpit Gupta, a Ph.D. student in computer science at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. “WiFox can be incorporated without overhauling a system.”
The team of researchers intend to present this project at the ACM CoNEXT 2012 conference running in France during December.
Main image courtesy of Andy Mabbett
