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5G Just Got Weird

spectrum.ieee.org

91–100 of 300 posts

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#91
post #75
post #73

>5G for cars to communicate with each other That's pretty good news. Even a simple "sharp braking" type coms between cars has decent potential to save lives beyond what can be achieved with radar & the like.

How do you avoid bad actors in these scenarios? Sounds ripe for general havoc, targeting specific people etc

The “sharp breaking” message needs to be signed with a key that is tied to the license plate of the car. I.e. the authority that issues license plates also signs the public key whose private key is needed to sign these types of messages.

The more difficult question is how to know whether the car that sends out the message is on the same road as you, and not e.g. on the opposite direction of a highway.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#92

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

5g is mostly about spectrum and positioning the user plane such that traffic can avoid backhaul and concentration for internet-destined traffic.

The marketing around it is incredible, though. Every undefined or hypothetical market is being tied to 5g. There's pretty much a new version of Betteridge's Law of Headlines - any future product that will "drive 5g" or "needs 5g" doesn't.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I could see someone have button to transmit hard braking on demand for tailgaters.

Regulate security measures eg signed messaging where only manufacturers can get certificates? Maybe combine it with license plate so it's traceable to a person?

So the attack will then be to hook into the car's on-board computer and tell it to send the falsified message with a fake plate number, and let the existing cryptographic code handle the signing. Alternatively, dump a legit cert once (e.g. by detailed examination of one on-board computer), then put that into the malicious hardware that sends falsified messages.

This is "the DRM problem", but in reverse. There is no way to give an end user a device that can send cryptographically-protected messages while also guaranteeing that they can't generate messages other than the ones the manufacturer wants them to send. One can make it very, very hard to do so, like with TPM/trusted enclave hardware, but when the potential consequences are people dying in car crashes, and the motivation to send false messages is so high[1], it's just an awful idea, because it will absolutely be misused, and people will die as a result.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication makes this even worse. At least with a tower intermediary, there would be some sort of forensic evidence stored outside of the vehicles involved.

[1] The ability to manipulate traffic in order to get to one's destination faster would be a huge selling point for a lot of people.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#94
post #48
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott Adams seems to be pretty divorced from reality, so I would take his ideas with a pinch of salt. (To clarify: He's also claimed that if Biden wins the election, Republicans will literally be hunted in the streets, and I think regardless of your political views that is pretty clearly not actually going to happen, so his ability to predict future events with any accuracy isn't something I'd trust. Source: https://…

Does every thread really have to turn into some us-vs-them USA election fight?

Well, if you know what kind of a bat-shit crazy Trump zealot Adams is, merely mentioning him in any context screams "rock-bottom politics" in the worst possible way.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#95

> Private Networks > [...]At those scales, 5G could function essentially like Wi-Fi networks. Now that's going to get interesting, I hope. Will we finally see a reliable alternative to 802.11?

Private APNs existed in 3g and LTE as well; 5g slicing is an evolution of that.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google says there's two million satellite internet users. At $50/mo, if SpaceX can grab all of them, which seems well possible, that's 1.2 billion income a year, even assuming that the improved service doesn't result in anybody else switching from bad rural internet to Starlink. A fifth of the US population lives outside of big cities. That's not a big fraction, but it's a small fraction of a very big number. Being a…

> A fifth of the US population lives outside of big cities. That's not a big fraction, but it's a small fraction of a very big number. Being able to capture that market even for a decade would basically bankroll SpaceX's Mars goal by itself. That's about 25 million households, or about $150 billion gross revenue (not profit) over a decade at the price assumptions you give. If SpaceX’s public estimate of total Mars pr…

Eh, don't underestimate the savings from reuse that's actually practical and not cost-plus. I think SpaceX have demonstrated the economic case for their approach with the F9. And once SpaceX demonstrate they can put cargo on Mars, NASA'll have to get in. Plus people may actually pay to migrate. If you think those numbers are unrealistic, look at SpaceX's posted total costs for their rocket development programs. I think the message is more "every space agency has ridiculously overpaid for decades."

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#97

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

Be careful with expectations of "possible" vs. "practical". 5G for IoT devices is a big deal in remote field and some industrial settings where wi-fi is not an option. Two examples for you:

I worked on a pilot project with a state government group that wanted remote monitoring of water levels in wetlands and ponds spread across a few hundred square miles of mostly-rural area. wi-fi obviously wasn't an option and getting a WAN mesh setup was a huge pain in the ass and had its own limitations. We ended up testing with 3G, switching on twice a day to report, but the power consumption and data costs were too prohibitive to be practical long-term. 5G power use per bit is supposedly going to be far lower than 3G/4G. Jury is still out on data cost.

I now work in the automotive industry where vehicle logistics can be an interesting challenge. Parking lots for completed vehicles awaiting transport outside factories can be spread across a square mile of land (more if remote overflow lots are used), with multiple locations. There are multiple use cases for inspecting, tagging, remote driving, etc. these vehicles using aerial or ground-based drones and teleoperation to significantly cut down on costs. However, those use cases depend on high bandwidth, low-latency connections and extending effective wi-fi to lots would be massively expensive. 5G is a pretty interesting option here.

As others have mentioned, vehicle-centric use cases abound, but there are some additional ones for industries like oil & gas as well.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#98

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

Be careful with expectations of "possible" vs. "practical". 5G for IoT devices is a big deal in remote field and some industrial settings where wi-fi is not an option. Two examples for you: I worked on a pilot project with a state government group that wanted remote monitoring of water levels in wetlands and ponds spread across a few hundred square miles of mostly-rural area. wi-fi obviously wasn't an option and gett…

[deleted]

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#99
post #58
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink is going to dominate this. Cellular can't economically scale out to meet the vast rural coverage. There are still plenty of towns that don't have basic coverage even now, and to think that suddenly they're going to get 5G equipment... seems unlikely. Meanwhile, the Starlink satellites are up and base stations are in testing. Once they approve and start building out their ground stations, it's SpaceX's busine…

IIRC Starlink can handle about 2gbs per 50 sq miles due to frequency bandwidth limitations. That's a few hundred subscribers. It's not going to make an impact in any but the most rural areas.

If there are clusters of subscribers and vast empty areas, does that help via beamforming?

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#100
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott Adams seems to be pretty divorced from reality, so I would take his ideas with a pinch of salt. (To clarify: He's also claimed that if Biden wins the election, Republicans will literally be hunted in the streets, and I think regardless of your political views that is pretty clearly not actually going to happen, so his ability to predict future events with any accuracy isn't something I'd trust. Source: https://…

To clarify: when not raising interesting technical points, he does engage in overt trolling to test cancel culture limits, yes. He has stated this in his Periscopes.

Adams is the worst kind racist bigot. Hiding his true face behind "testing the limits", "trolling", and other seemingly clever "unconventional ways of challenging the social norms".

That's just the manipulative narrative to make the highly toxic and divisive racist drivel he is peddling more palatable to the more moderate of his fans, who typically fail to see who he really is because their perception of him is framed by Dilbert comics.

I am not American, I have no stake in American elections whatsoever, but people like Adams make me question humanity. The guy makes me sick.

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