Wireless Networking at 72Mbps

Unknown Relic writes "One of the biggest drawbacks to current wireless networking technologies is the limited connection speed. Well now LinkSys has released a new wireless access point which operates on the 5 GHz band, supports up to 72 Mbps connections and is fully interoperable with existing 802.11a wireless equipment."

Comments

One of the biggest drawbacks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to the post, I would argue that connection speed isn't one of the biggest drawbacks. Rather, it is the lack of standards and interoperability.

Testing reveals that most of these "802.11a" access points are not compatible with each other. Only identical products work together. So when your vendor EOLs (End of Life's) your AP, further expansion of your network becomes a problem.

802.11a at 108Mbps

[calc]

Several companies have announced 802.11a cards that use two channels and get up to 108Mbps. But as The Register article mentions there is considerable overhead with wireless ethernet. 802.11b (11Mbps) typically gets 5Mbps real bandwidth, 802.11a (54Mbps) gets 23Mbps real bandwith, and 2 channel 802.11a (108Mbps) gets 34Mbps real bandwidth.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/227 31 . tml
http://presslink.dlink.com/releases/pr01-07-0 2.htm
http://www.proxim.com/products/all/harmony/ 8450/

You can all thank me now

[superid]

Technology advances seem to only happen when I adopt the old standard. Eleven seconds ago I successfully installed plain old 11.b onto this box.

Re:You can all thank me now

[TrumpetPower!]

Technology advances seem to only happen when I adopt the old standard. Eleven seconds ago I successfully installed plain old 11.b onto this box.

In that case, would you mind buying a nuclear power plant and a Space Shuttle?

b&

Re:You can all thank me now

[smagoun]

And while you're at it, pick up a congressman or two

Re:Here is what I had to say to Linksys sales

[flatulus]

Here are a few tidbits of FACT that you can also process in your haste to flame LinkSys...

a) Until quite recently, the only chipset available from which to build an 802.11a radio, either user or access point, was from Atheros. Now, Resonext has released a chipset and someday (soon?) Intersil will release their Indigo chipset for 802.11a. At present, you can almost be certain that any 802.11a product you can buy uses the Atheros chipset.

b) Atheros is being VERY tight with tech specs. You most assuredly would have to sign an NDA, and probably sign a purchase agreement, committing to buy 5 to 10 thousand chips before they will THINK about letting you peek at the technical info you need to write a driver.

c) An Atheros employee told me in March that a Linux driver was under development, and would be out in "a couple of months" (so it's due, like, now).

d) Proxim sells an 802.11a Mini-PCI card as an OEM product. See: http://www.proxim.com/products/all/oem/9350/index. html and you will find that under "Drivers Available" they state: "Source code may be licensed to facilitate design-in for non-PC platforms." But don't get too excited. I'm sure you will have to sign an NDA and convince them you're gonna buy a truckload or two of cards. And I'm also sure you will find that Atheros has bound their hands also, with respect to low-level technical info needed to write a Linux driver.

c) The 72 Mbit/sec "Turbo" mode is a feature of the Atheros chipset -- Linksys just inherited it by virtue of using their chip.

And finally...

The 54 Mbit/sec (or 72 Mbit/sec "turbo") is extremely range limited. At 100 ft, 802.11a drops back to a speed which is very close to 802.11b. But there are many reasons (other than raw throughput) that 802.11a is a Good Thing (tm), so let's look on the bright side that we have it.

And by the way, let's tip our hats to Apple Computer for supporting the efforts in its advanced technology team to petition the FCC for unlicensed spectrum. I was there. I can tell you that Apple deserves praise for paying the salaries of people who did nothing but work toward getting unlicensed spectrum (e.g. U-NII, where 802.11a operates) available for us geeks :)