54 Mbps/100 Mbps Wireless LAN

carbon60 writes: "Proxim seems to have very quietly released 802.11a based products. 54 Mbps in standard mode and 100 Mbps in "2X" mode. The main website lists the products." They're a little more expensive, and I dunno about Linux drivers, but still, that's some fast wireless action.

Comments

Better names ( slightly off topic ) and Wi-Fi

[sien]

Is anyone else out there sick of talking about 802.11b ( and 802.11a ) ?
It talks way too long to say. It needs a better name. In an interesting section on the wireless internet at The Economist they suggest the name Wi-Fi, which stands for Wireless fidelity or some such silliness. How do people feel about this? Personally as silly as the definition seems to be it seems better than talking of 802.11b. Also, is anyone using this name ?

channel bonding?

[uslinux.net]

Does anyone know what the channel seperation is on the 5 GHz band? On the 2.4 GHz band, you can combine channels 1, 6, and 11 (since they require 5 channels of seperation) with three wavelan adapters and a combiner/decombiner on each end of a point-to-point link. At 2.4 GHz, you can max out at 33 Mbps/sec by doing this - at 5 GHz, combining two channels would get you 108 Mbps - or more if there are more channels to work with.

Re:802.11b

[morcheeba]

It doesn't look like it does. The two sandards are on different bands (2.4G vs. 5 G), and the spec sheet says the radio only works in the 5.15 GHz to 5.35 GHz range. It'll be a while before the infrastructure is built up and will also be especially slow until dual-band base stations become available/cheap.

Products

[skrowl]

Right now they're only offering the wireless access point and a cardbus card. If you don't have a PCMCIA slot or your laptop doesn't support cardbus, you're boned.

I assume they'll bring out PCI cards any day now, but it's interesting to do a product launch w/o supporting desktop computers at all!

This should be enough bandwidth to stream videos without jerks... imagine putting a computer with TV out in your living room and watching all of your ::ahem:: non-pirated / non-porn movies from your computer on your couch!

Intel Wireless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel also is releasing an 802.11a product. Details at www.intel.com

Radiation levels?

[djelovic]

What are the radiation levels of 802.11a and 802.11b compared to common household appliances?

I use my laptop 10 hours per day and I'm not sure I want my brain bombarded with energy all that time.

Dejan
www.jelovic.com

Can these things step down to 802.11b?

[trcooper]

The thing I'm interested in is whether these can step down and work with existing 802.11b hardware, similar to what 100bt cards do on a 10bt network.

I'd guess no, and that will hurt things somewhat. 802.11b has a reasonable home following, and I don't see a lot of users upgrading their home networks to 'a', because they don't need the additional bandwidth in most cases. (If I want video, it's probably going to be on a stationary device I can run a cable to). A lot of corps may implement 'b' because of the extra range and bandwidth, so your laptop would need two cards in it... which would suck.

Cisco's recommendations about microwaves

[Black Acid]

According to an article at onlamp:

802.11b transmits at 2.4 GHz, the same spectrum as microwave ovens. The cards use less power than a mobile phone. Cisco warns that their PCMCIA card should be more than 2 inches from your body, and the access point's antenna should be at least 6 inches away from anyone. I hold my laptop on my lap. (That is where the name came from, after all.) If I get cancer on top of my right thigh, I know who to blame.