Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

WiFi Woes With .11g

Posted by Hemos on from the where-is-the-problem dept.

Herby Werby writes "The Register has an article on the incompatibility between .11g and .11b across differing unnamed vendors due to premature roll-outs. The part which really hurts is the suggestion that if there's a .11b participant to your .11g network then either it gets ignored or the network reverts to .11b status. Anyone tried this yet with their new Powermacs?" As the article points out, this is most likely due to the fact that .11g hasn't really even been set as a *standard* yet, so incompatibility is to be expected. I just hope vendors get really good with flash updates.

4 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Will US Robotics step up again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They became famous for their "v.Everything" modems, which allowed you to basically connect to any other type of modem, even with bad line conditions. Could they produce an 802.11Evertyhing? It could talk to all these incompatible "standards" and sell well to higher end consumers who need guaranteed connectivity.

  2. Arbitrary naming by elliotj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Naming conventions for networking standards are all over the map: airport, airport extreme, wifi etc.

    You'd think it would just be simpler to use the 802.xyz definition because at least that's a version number.

    Oh yeah, except 802 isn't even a version number. The first meeting of the IEEE Computer Society "Local Network Standards Committee", Project 802, was held in February of 1980. It was called 802 for the second month of 1980.

    So all these things are pretty arbitrary. Personally, I think networking standards should be named Uhura.

  3. Re:this article is complete bullshit by binaryDigit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not saying anything about the correctness of the Reg article or of your assesment of it. HOWEVER, you use an example of them claiming the IEEE being "forced" to make a decision, you state that statement is incorrect, and then offer up a couple of examples of how the IEEE was on schedule. What does one have to do with the other? How does the IEEE being on schedule relate to them being "forced" into a choice? Do you have more info to clarify your point?

  4. This is what happens by bitty · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This is what happens when you let your marketing department make technical decisions. And don't feed me the "if you don't jump on it early, you'll lose market share" bit. That may be true at first, but if someone buys a product that turns out to be totally incompatible with everything down the road, do you really think they're going to buy or recommend another product from that manufacturer?

    This is going to do nothing but piss a lot of people off and make even more think that .11g sucks ass due to bad word-of-mouth.