Clearwire - WiMax - an Initial Review

While I'd like to fancy myself as a full-time spam fighter, my "other day job" required some special attention. Some sort of mid-term solution was needed to get them back online quickly.

The specific ISP used was Clearwire. Clearwire services the larger Seattle area with a variety of connectivity packages at competitive rates.

Pros:

It worked out of the box. All I had to do was purchase the physical modem device at a local Clearwire kiosk, and then plug the device in at my company's network. Since an existing router was involved, I had to do a little tweaking - but that's to be expected.

I was able to get good reception at both locations in the office I tried. It does not necessarily need to be located next to a window.

I won't review all the rate plans - but it's definitely a bit less expensive than DSL.

The package I purchased was advertised with a 1.5mbps downlink speed. My subjective tests indicated this to be accurate.

Cons:

Clearwire may not be a great solution for some businesses.

Even their high-end packages only support 256kbps uplink speed. For general web-surfing this doesn't pose a problem. When sending emails with large attachments or otherwise uploading large amounts of data - things may get slow. Using a VPN between two offices is another situation which may present bandwidth bottlenecks using Clearwire.

They explicitly do not support web hosting (I found this out after the fact). In fact, port 80 (HTTP) is actually blocked. Considering the low uplink speed, this makes sense. However, many companies like to host their own website, or present preview websites to clients. Even though you can purchase a static IP address, Clearwire does not support this.

I don't believe they explicitly block email server hosting, but it's safe to assume it wouldn't be practical due to the limited outgoing bandwidth. Many small organizations like to host their own email servers as it as it gives them more options to prevent spam messages from landing in their inboxes.

So, Clearwire looks like a great solution for end-users and even some small businesses. Larger, or internet-centric businesses should proceed with caution.

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