802.11b at 22mbps

Radi-0-head writes "According to this article at PCWorld.com, "U.S. Robotics (USR) has boosted the speed of its latest range of wireless LAN products for small businesses to 22 megabits per second, while retaining compatibility with existing 2.4-GHz systems built to the IEEE 802.11b standard..." Sounds to me like a great alternative to 802.11a."

Comments

A couple reasons to choose 802.11a over 802.11g

[Freeptop]

First, the 2.4 GHz has a ton of other devices sharing the same spectrum, from Bluetooth to wireless headphones, to your microwave. 802.11a runs in the 5GHz band instead.

Second, according to the last proposals I'd heard of, 802.11g is going to achieve higher bandwidth by taking up more of the spectrum. In other words, it is going to use more channels to simultaneously broadcast data, rather than just being able to shove more data down the same channel. This means your own access points will begin to interfere with each other much sooner than your 802.11a or .11b APs will.

In general, it is going to depend on your situation as to which you wish to choose. 802.11g will be great for backwards compatibility, but the news coming out of IEEE seems to indicate that 54Mbps is more like something to shoot for than something they expect to achieve. 802.11a won't have compatibility, and it will also have a shorter range, but it will have higher speeds with less interference.

Re:I'll Still Trade Security for Bandwidth

[u01000101]

Seriously, I really want secure security!

Run ipsec or some other form of end-to-end encryption or vpn. Put the wireless network on a separate interface (a la DMZ) on one of your routers. That's it - it's probably safer than your cat5 now.