Intel's 802.11A Wireless: 5x Faster

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."

Comments

5x faster

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

to hack : doesn't 802.11a use RC4 like 802.11b ?

Have they fixed the problem with WEP?

[tuxlove]

Unless 802.11a fixes the totally broken WEP security used with "better" 802.11b products, I don't view this as an improvement. I'm pissed that I spent so many $$ on wireless products with "128 bit encryption", only for that encryption standard to be found practically useless due to fundamental implementation flaws. I sincerely hope a new generation of wireless users aren't faced with the same bogus problems. The link to the Intel site provides no useful info on this subject, nor do any of the articles on the web that I dug up.

Even if 802.11a fixes those problems, I'll still be pissed if they don't come out with a new standard for 802.11b (and a firmware upgrade for my Lucent wireless cards that implements the fix). I don't feel like throwing my expensive wireless hardware in the trash just yet.

Range of 802.11a vs. 802.11b

[fatty545]

1 megabyte pdf on the range of 802.11a This pdf talks about the range of 802.11a and how they tested it, and it also includes some cool charts comparing it to 802.11b. It turns out the farther your computer is away from the base station the slower the connection is.

Mercedes-Benz rolls out drive-by Ethernet

[A Commentor]

From infoworld: Mercedes-Benz has 802.11a in a car... Interesting article even though it was 'rejected' by /.

Mercedes-Benz showcases a car of the near future with a built-in wireless Ethernet 802.11a connection that will capture high-speed bursts of data from roadside transceivers as the car hurtles down the highway.

Re:802.11a throughput rate is not very high

[kaladorn]

Your comments are bang on. But this problem seems to extend to most wireless tech. When I worked with RDLAP-19.2, MDC-4800 or 9600, and CDPD (19.2) wireless networks, the same phenomena was visible (moreso in RDLAP...). We'd often only get usable bandwidth on the order of 40-60% of advertised bandwidth. Heck, I recall days on the 9600 bps nominal network where practical bit rates hit about 2400...

The longer you are transmitting for (the larger the packet), the more likely you'll get a fade or some interference and your packet will be corrupted. And with phones and other devices operating through the same spectra, and with crappy antennas bouncing out signal harmonics that can tromp your signal, this isn't really surprising. Just sort of an occupational hazard in the wireless environment.

When I ported one of our products to CDPD, I recall that it had a spec limit of 2020 for packet size 9or something like that)... but the local wireless provider advised me they'd never got anything over about a 1300 byte packet to transit the network without a problem. I got 1400 byte packets working... but that's where I capped it.

Even having said all this, and realizing 802.11b has a different performance characteristic than 802.11a, it will still (most of the time) end up being faster, which really is what end users tend to care about. If it only ends up 2x as fast, so be it. If it is only 2x as expensive, you're doing okay. Now, if its 5x as expensive and in practice averages 2x as fast... well.... then you've bought the Pentium-IV of the wireless world.... (*grin*)

Re:Bandwidth isn't what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is Intel's idea of range improvement!

"Superior speeds hold even as range increases"

"Indoors:
54 Mbps @ 40 feet
6 Mbps @ 300 feet"

"Outdoors:
54 Mbps @ 100 feet
6 Mbps @ 1000 feet"

see http://www.intel.com/network/connectivity/products /5000_cardbus_adapter.htm

Laptop speeds limited

[BarefootClown]

Glad somebody else has noticed this. I have an 802.11b network at home, and another at work; I use them to keep my (and my roommates') laptop(s) on the network without having to drag 100+ feet of Cat5 around the place. Do I feel limited by using "only" 11Mbps? Hell, no! I rarely break 1Mbps--on any network. I used to use a 100Mbps wired network, with a decent NIC in my laptop (3Com hardware NIC, not a WinNIC), a decent 100MBps switch, and still rarely broke 1Mbps, even with my desktop machines running closer to 50 Mbps. Why? In short, laptops suck. Seriously--when you're looking for performance, you don't look at laptops. The hard drives are much slower than anything in a desktop, the bus speeds are slower (my laptop has a 66MHz FSB; my desktop has a 133, with DDR RAM); everything is slower and scaled back. 11Mbps is no limit to a laptop, in my experience. It would be a limit to a desktop terminal connected to the WLAN, but most people/companies don't use wireless for desktops.

Granted, we could probably saturate the WLAN if we had twenty or so people all trying to pull large files, but that condition has its own flaws: 1) how often does the situation occur--even in a meeting, with 30 people attending, how many of them are trying to pull big files at a given time (usually none...), and 2) how many clients can an access point actually handle? Most of the ones with which I'm familiar (consumer equipment, admittedly) get flaky around 20-30 people; any more, and you need another AP--add another AP, and you effectively double the bandwitdh, as you're splitting the load across two different AP's, each on a different channels. Also remember than many networks are still only 10 Mbps, because of the high infrastructure cost of upgrading a major network (particularly if recabling is required); on such a network, the bit behind the AP is already the bottleneck, so it's not that big of a deal if the WLAN is only 11Mbps.

In short, yeah, it's neat, it's cool, but it's not that big of a deal, as long as laptops don't get a major bus upgrade. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

Re:5x more secure?

[SVDave]

So, do you have a better alternative? It's easy to say: oh, that's too complicated, we need something that stupid "Joe User" can use safely out-of-the-box. But designing that "something" seems to be the hard part.

Why?

The concepts behind securing communication via encryption have been well understood for years, yet I can't think of a single piece of consumer electronics that uses strong (>=128-bit) encryption. Cell phones, cordless phones, wireless networking, etc. should all use strong encryption, yet none of them do. Why not? Is it because of RSA/DES patent concerns? Concerns over the ability to export equipment with strong encryption? Nearly all on-line vendors use strong encryption to protect credit card information during transactions. So why isn't strong encryption used elsewhere?

If you want to do something really worthwhile, instead of waiting for MegaCorp XYZ to design the wireless card with technology that will protect dumb old "Joe" without requiring him to do any thinking at all, how about sitting down with him, explain the dangers of unsecure communications, make analogies that he can relate to, show him how using _Free,_Open_Source_ solutions can solve his problems, and teach him how to use the tools necesasary to take care of himself.

Feh. It is possible to have secure communications for even the most ignorant of users. Web browsers prove that. Your argument boils down to "ignorant users don't deserve security". That's nothing more than a load of arrogant techno-snobbery.

Re:better solution: same hardware

[edremy]

Up until very recently, I was using 802.11 cards, not 802.11a or 802.11b. These max out at 2mbs. Unless I was spooling a large print job or attempting to do a large LAN-based file transfer, I hardly noticed I only had 2mb of bandwidth available to me.

For a single person, 2Mbs might be ok. We've got the same solution, but instead of one person spooling a large print job, we've got 30 in a classroom attempting to download high resolution artwork. (No, not porn, unless you consider 13th century art porn.)

2Mbs is way, way too slow for this use, as we've painfully found out. We haven't even bothered with 11b, since we know we'll outgrow it way too fast. Until we can get an 11a solution wireless isn't an option here. I spent a lot of time talking to the Intel folks at EDUCAUSE a few weeks ago about what we need to roll it out...

Eric