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Intel's 802.11A Wireless: 5x Faster

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the guess-i-spoke-too-soon-dad dept.

Jaben writes: "Intel today released the first 802.11A wireless LAN devices which offer more than a fivefold increase in speed over the current 802.11B. as soon as more devices get onto the market this new technology will really make wireless a possible alternative instead of a neat item to play with."

4 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. 802.11b isn't a toy by tonyc.com · · Score: 5, Informative

    "[T]his new technology will really make wireless a possible alternative instead of a neat item to play with."

    Excuse me, but an 11 megabit wireless connection isn't quite worthless just yet. How many home users, even with DSL or cable modems, are pushing this limit? And how many offices are still using 10baseT LANs, or 10baseT hubs on even faster LANs? To all these users, 802.11b is still 10% overkill. Will 400% overkill make us any happier or more productive?

    Plus, 802.11a is much more power-hungry, making it a decidedly unattractive choice for wireless PDAs. What say ye?

  2. Not the first by mosch · · Score: 5, Informative
    Despite what this article says, Intel is not the first company to release 802.11a devices. Proxim has the Harmony line of 802.11a devices, and has for some time.

    Slashdot needs a fact checker.

  3. Re:5x more secure? by cymen · · Score: 5, Informative

    IPSec. Why waste your time with anything else? I really want a guide for getting Linux with FreeSwan to talk to FreeBSDs IPSec (using racoon?). There are a number of guides to getting IPSec working on Windows 2000, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc... Here are a few links:


    How to setup IPsec interoperable for Linux, OpenBSD and PGPNet
    Replacing WEP With IPsec

    Why does IPSec with Linux seem like such a hack? FreeSwan is pretty annoying - why don't they just get IPSec into the kernel and go from there? Instead there appears to be a megapatch. It just makes me nervous. It's probably ok but man... Also, while I'm bitching, IPSec is a bit of a pain - or at least the implementations are. It doesn't need to be this complicated.

  4. Re:5x more secure? by cduffy · · Score: 5, Informative

    It doesn't have to be secure (think IPsec), but I'm sure that everyone can see major benfits of making a technology that openly broadcasts data more secure.

    I don't.

    Picture this:

    I have an incoming connection, a router, and a wireless network. I have several hosts on the wireless network. The router uses IPsec to communicate with the internal hosts, accepts only hosts with known keys, and ignores all other connections.

    What is the advantage of having the wireless protocol itself have the overhead of a separate, redundant security layer? Why would you want the separate software complexity of configuring and tracking allowed-host lists for two protocol layers instead of one?

    Down that path lies having every last protocol layer being complicated by trying to do a job which is handled satisfactorily by every other one. Far better to have a single layer which does security and Does It Right than to complicate 802.11 (or any other low-level protocol) by adding complex functionality which can be handled somewhere else.

    Further, consider: If 802.11 has security built into it, then whenever that security is broken, 802.11 (and the hardware that uses it) needs to be changed; same for every other low-level layer. Much better to have only one higher-level layer to keep current/secure (and have to swap out the router and install new endpoint drivers in my theoretical example, but not have to replace the wireless hardware).