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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.

8 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Simultaneous b&g by djrogers · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.


    Yeah, and unfortunately this AP doesn't change that. That's the way the standard was written, and nowhere does Linksys claim to be able to perform such magic...

    --
    Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
  2. 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*

  3. B-Card Holders; (the new smokers) by LibertineR · · Score: 5, Funny
    I can see it now.

    You are in your favorite coffee house, zipping along at G-speed, when some loser B-Card holder opens up that ancient Apple boat-anchor, and slams the whole building down to B-Speed.

    We are looking at the new "smoker" to be admonished, segregated and finally kicked to the curb for daring to fuck with our precious bandwidth, the way that smokers fucked with our oxygen.

    Soon, you will see them outside on the street, shivering in the cold, huddled together over warm repeater, taking digital drags of packets, polluting the internet environment with their dropped bits, and NAT requests.

    Scorn them, outlaw them, as they fuck it up for the rest of us. Let them connect in their poor neighborhoods, where you can still see the bitches walking the streets crying "Hey Daddy, I'll suck your dick for an IP address. Hook a bitch up!"

    Losers.

    1. 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."

    2. Re:B-Card Holders; (the new smokers) by pauljlucas · · Score: 3, Informative
      You are in your favorite coffee house, zipping along at G-speed, when some loser B-Card holder opens up that ancient Apple boat-anchor, and slams the whole building down to B-Speed.
      Considering that the DSL link to the coffee house is only probably at most 1.5Mbps, being forced to throttle down to 11MBps on the LAN is irrelevant.
      --
      If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
  4. 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
  5. Dell's offering... by craenor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dell now offers a mini-pci card in their newest D series laptops that is a wireless a/b/g card...I realize that isn't router, but it's the only a/b/g card I've seen.

    Having that kind of diversity in a card for your portable makes more sense to me then having that kind of diversity in your router.

    Craenor

  6. 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!