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Linksys Ships Dual-band, Tri-standard A+G Wireless

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the all-skate-everyone-skate dept.

Anonymous Howard writes "Designtechnica has a news article about LinkSys shipping to market their new line of wireless dual-band, tri-standard A+G products. They support 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g simultaneously with speeds of up to 54mbps. I could actually bring my laptop home and not have to switch my wireless card and settings! It comes at a pretty hefty price though, $299 for router and $279 for access point. I think my fingers could handle the exercise a bit longer until prices come down. Who here is willing to fork out that much for tri-band gear?" This is exactly what I've been looking for since I got an 802.11g wireless card. All of the 802.11g access points I've seen couldn't operate in 802.11g mode so long as older cards were in the area. Finally, I can upgrade my systems over time.

4 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Linux support... by Munra · · Score: 5, Informative
    Before anyone else says it, there are Linux drivers available, although they are in their early stages.

    The wlan-ng project has early stage support for the wusb12 card.
    More details available @ the Linux-USB device site.

    Luckily they don't use the hideous Broadcom chipset, which still does not have Linux support, even though it's sold in Dell, Linksys, Belkin and Apple (new Powerbooks, anyone?) wireless products, to name but a few. *grr*

  2. I hope they handle this better than Netgear by enos · · Score: 4, Informative

    I used to have a Netgear WAB501 card. It got high praise from reviewers, so I figured why not. When I got the thing and started to look for Linux drivers, I noticed nobody gave a fuck about 802.11a chipsets, much less dual bands. There was one project that was in the early stages of a driver for a chipset whose number was close to mine, but it was already abandoned. So off it went back to buy.com.

    Now I got me a Netgear MA401. Less than half the price, works every time, and it has a common chipset. It may be 'only' 11 mbps, but that's better than 0 mbps.

    --
    boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
  3. Re:B-Card Holders; (the new smokers) by 1g$man · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do your own homework: straight from apple.

    In the fine print at the bottom (footnote 3):
    "To achieve maximum speed of 54 Mbps the wireless network may only have AirPort Extreme-enabled computers on it."

  4. Using B and G in the same area by notarus · · Score: 4, Informative

    This access point isn't going to help you use both B and G on it's own..

    Unfortunately, it is part of the standard that a G class access point will drop down to B if it sees any B style encoding.

    You can work arround this by setting the configuration of (most) APs to completely IGNORE B, but that's not very friendly.

    One solution, and the solution I recommend in the case where you REALLY want to have G out there, is to configure a "B" base station on one channel (1), and a G base station on another (6). Configure the G channel with a different SSID and hard-configure it not to drop down.

    You now have a G only system available, and older B users are still capable of associating.

    I would also point out that you must also hard code your adapter to run in only G-- it also will follow the standard and drop down.

    Frankly, in my personal opinion, you're better off buying a combo A/B access point and also a combo A/B card. Both are significantly cheaper, and the A standard is also significantly FASTER in real-world performance (to the tune of 2-5x better REAL throughput compared to G.)

    Good luck!