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802.11n: High Throughput, Not Just Fast Wireless

Posted by timothy on from the no-wires-good dept.

eggboard writes "Unstrung reveals that the 802.11 working group is spawning 802.11n, a high-throughput task group to work on increasing the actual data:symbol ratio in wireless networks while also boosting speed to 108 Mbps to 320 Mbps. Most people who use 802.11a, b, or g know that actual net throughput, or the real data that's carried, is a fraction of the cited rate: maybe 7 Mbps in the 11 Mbps 802.11b flavor and 25 Mbps in the 54 Mbps a and g flavors. The goal of 802.11n is to increase speed, sure, but also to increase the percentage of symbols that don't bear overhead. The bad news: they predict 2005 or 2006 for completion."

9 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. 2007 or 2008? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Come on - by then UWB coupled with cellular and mesh will offer those speeds. "n" should stand for "n" significant.

  2. I think I speak for everyone... by k-0s · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think I speak for everyone when I say put egos aside, gather the best of each protocol into one protocol and make it the standard and release products for it. I think people (in general) are scared right now because they don't want to buy a product that will not be usuable in a year or two. I want my WiFi already.

    --

    Visit www.seriouslythough.com

    1. Re:I think I speak for everyone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      you're right. But its not like you're plunking down for a mainframe here. If its for home and desktop use, it doesn't matter. Just set it up and run it. It works fine right now. So, I assume you're talking about a card for your laptop that in a couple of years, you might not be able to link up at Starbucks or the University or something. Yeah, that's possible but the cards aren't prohibitively expensive. A couple years use for their price right now is a pretty good proposition. Not to mention you'll probably need a new laptop by then anyways.

  3. uh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    so why hasn't this been done before? Shouldn't a good spec already be lean? We've gone through six incarnations or so of 802.11 and we still have this kludge going around? I'm sure its not as easy as I'm making it out to be, but I would get fired if someone could take my spec and cut out this much overhead from it. The time to spend the four or five years crafting a good symbol set is before the thing goes public, not after.

    1. Re:uh by Stan+Chesnutt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you take a look at the 802.11 spec from 1999, you'll see a lot of stuff there that is spec'd for backwards compatibility. For example, there is the PS-Poll exchange grafted atop the normal powersave-state protocol. A lot of this backwards compatibility is at the cost of performance. A "design-from-scratch" approach could result in a much more efficient data-networking protocol design that incorporates what has been learned in the last ten years or so. However, much of the IEEE process is subject to internecine politics and hidebound practices. I am hopeful but not too optimistic.

  4. good idea by stellar7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm glad someone is focusing on the overhead and efficiency of the standards and not just trying to get something out there with a big unrealistic marketable speed. I guess comparing advertised Mbps on wireless devices could be like comparing MHz for CPUs by different companies.

  5. 802.11?? by Czernobog · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This has to do with information theory, source and channel coding and modulation.

    It'd be nice if these people standardised on a framework that can be combined with various coding and modulation schemes, in a modular sense, instead of creating 802.11xyz groups every now and then...

    Guess marketers and managers (ie The Incompetent at best, The Illiterate as per usual) have taken over from the engineers.

    --
    /. Where the truth
  6. Re:Multiple wireless nics? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As long as you have multiple access points and put them on different channels it should work.

  7. For Joe Average User, 802.11b is PLENTY by HelbaSluice · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For virtually all consumer applications, 60% (or less!) of 802.11b's throughput is an ample plenty.

    Why? Because the VAST majority of data they schlep goes through their broadband provider on the way to or from the Internet, where they don't get anything even APPROACHING 5 Mb/s. The line out of the house is the bottleneck in my home and in many, many other homes.