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802.11g Slows Down
Moosifer writes "Computerworld reports that in order to step on fewer 802.11b toes, the IEEE has reduced the actual throughput of 802.11g in its latest (and allegedly final) draft. I think I might keep old firmware on my linksys AP and card so that I can at least pretend I have faster gear." It's been moved from 54Mbps all the way down to 10-20Mbps, more than just a slight change.
I wonder if any early-produced products will be somehow unlockable to the faster speed.
Isn't 54mbps cards already on the market?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
This is the part where you begin to post the "802.11g is Dying" troll all across slashdot...
Hey, if it's going to be newer, more expensive, with very little increase in speed, what's the point?
Uhh, besides that, I'd be willing to bet most manufacturers will just say "screw it", and give their cards the full speed anyhow, standard be-dammed.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is huge. I work in wireless at a bug company and we're sending 802.11g gear out the door now. We're billing it at 54, but now we're going to have to tell everybody who already bought it, "Hey, we sold this at 54, but it can really only do 20! Sorry!"
This isn't going over well. People have been putting off 802.11a because they were waiting for 802.11g which was just as fast and had better range. Now they're left in the cold. I wonder what they're gonna do.
Terrible. I've got a Mac and a airport extreme base station. If they try to change it from 54Mbps to something ridiculous like 20Mbps, I'm just not updating my firmware and drivers. Forget that, I paid for the speed, I want the speed!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
A lot of people have probably already invested a lot of money in 802.11g equipment because of the 54mbps rate, and now, if they have a mixed environment, will end up with a slower rate than they had with 802.11b (10mbps vs 11mbps). I guess this is the fault of the industry for making promises and shipping equipment before the standards are finalized, but this greatly shrinks the market for 802.11g upgrades.
[dons tin-foil hat] I wonder if the 802.11a proponents *ahem* persuaded the IEEE to do this because they might have lost a lot of invested time/money if 802.11g took over the world... [/tin-foil hat]
just goes to show you the danjour of making your products before the IEEE spec is released . It screwed up novell , and now it looks like it screwed up the wireless companies . Are we going to have 802.11g "54mbs variety" or draft 2 version etc. Anyw ays like most people say this certainly will push me away from 802.11g gear , I can get cheap 802.11b access points which are only half the speed , with 54mbs it was close enough to "lan speed" for me to consider the extra $100 , but now its 802.11b all the way :-)
90% of these are going to go into homes. And both 802.11b and 802.11g give you more throughput then the average user will get from their ISP. So in the end, I don't think it will matter to most people...
I'm not at all familiar with the real-life speeds 802.11g can currently provide, but maybe the new spec, while theoretically slower, will have other benefits. Maybe it'll be more reliable and more consistent. Maybe in everyday use it really will be faster. Seriously, does anyone really see 54Mbps curently?
That upgrade appears to be for the cards based on the TI-ACX100 based cards. So you should be able to load these drivers on perhaps a DWL-650+ (the Dlink Airplus series cards)
802.11b's raw speed is 11Mb/s, actual thoroughput is only about 5 Mb/s. As far as I can tell, 802.11g's raw speed is still 54Mb/s, and even with the older "faster" firmware still actually had a throughput of ~20Mb/s, the only thing that's changed is the handling of mixed networks at 10Mb/s, which is still faster than 802.11b, just not the 4-5 times faster you'd expect.
The whole point of 802.11g is backwards compatibility. The only way to screw it is to use another frequency, and that's what 802.11a is for.
I don't understand the math going on - this "broadcast message" that says "hey, I'm here!" causes the 802.11b signals to drop from 11Mb/s down to about 6Mb/s, but it causes 802.11g to drop from 54Mb/s to 15-20Mb/s. Now, first order logic tells me that if the two standards broadcast the same message at the same rate, we should see the same deterioration - let's say 5 Mb/s - degrading the 802.11g to about 50mB/s.
Why does this message kill its bandwidth by up to 80%??? Does it require that much error correction when it operates in a hybrid environment? Because that's some serious error correction if so.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
TS. It wasn't a ratified standard. Too bad. I mean seriously, if you implement non-standard systems, this is the price you pay. If you didn't point out to your customers that what you were selling them wasn't a ratified standard, then it's your butt in the sling when they complain.
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The encoding is at 54 Mbps: number of symbols per second, right? The throughput is the actual data rate that contains information exclusive of error correction and framing.
802.11g has produced 10 to 25 Mbps of throughput since they started working with 54 Mbps encodings.
This is a total misunderstanding, unfortunately, of both the article (which states the problem almost correctly) and its consequences.
Read any good article about 802.11g since it started shipping in draft form, and you'll see that a net throughput of 25 Mbps or less (much less in mixed b/g environments) was always what was produced.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
I think the real problem here is the fact that, what your told by the marketing hype of a networks speed, dosen't match up with what you get in real world use. This is true with dial-up modems, cable modems, DSL, and suprise, suprise Wi-Fi.
What would be really nice is if networking hardware and ISPs were required to post realistic averages of performance along with the max speed of there products.
But then again, I guess it's all relative, or is there a pratical way of gaging realistic performance?
For those who want to actually understand the protection mechanisms being used in 802.11g to prevent a hell of a mess which will happen in mixed b/g systems without it, read the following:
u re _article/OEG20030501S0009
http://www.commsdesign.com/csdmag/sections/feat
Don't let the marketeers (disclaimer: like myself) get to you with their advertised data rates!