Apple Clarifies 802.11g Controversy

Wireless Spider writes "A couple of days ago there was a controversy over the 802.11g data rates and supposed changes in IEEE specification. Apple has clarified this controversy, stating that nothing has changed in the spec. It seems the article from Computerworld was somewhat misleading. Quote from an Apple Vice President: "802.11g is still a 54Mbit/sec standard," Bell told MacCentral. "802.11b is 11Mbit/sec, but your actual throughput is somewhere between 4 and 5-1/2Mbit/sec. The number that's quoted is the data rate that's used between the radios (raw data rate, which includes the protocols etc.)" After reading this article featured on Macworld, 802.11g transfer rate controversy meaningless, says Apple, it seems clear that the people at Computerworld didn't do their homework for the article featured on May 22. Also, there seems to be a lot of politics between 802.11g and a supporters, and that every article posted on the Internet about this subject might not be true, or could be politically motivated."

Comments

What the hell does this sentence mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, there seems to be a lot of politics between 802.11g and a supporters, and that every article posted on the Internet about this subject might not be true, or could be politically motivated.

I mean, good fucking lord.

Apple?

[lostchicken]

Why is Apple responsible for defending 802.11g, and why is anyone attacking Apple for the shortcomings (if any) of 'g?

I have a Linksys 802.11g system, and if there is a problem with the design of the spec, that's the IEEE's fault, not Linksys, Apple or anyone else.

Thats odd

[dnoyeb]

Most of the time the quoted speed is the RAW speed. a 100Mbps network card is doing 100Mbps in RAW speed and actual data level speed is much lower. So then, shouldn't they be always quoting the higher 54Mbit/sec as opposed to some 11Mbit/sec!!?!

Anyway, 802.11b is 11Mbps so I can't believe 802.11g would be the same. I am automatically decreeing that 802.11g is faster than 11Mbps...

Does sound like bad reporting. Shouldnt happen from technically saavy folks

uhm

[Sacarino]

...that every article posted on the Internet about this subject might not be true, or could be politically motivated.

I'm not sure the age of the submitter, but if this comes as a surprise to anyone you really should be ashamed. Just because it's in print, on TV, or online does NOT make it true.

bandwidth

[theflea]

I find the discussions about bandwidth (real and potential) less interesting than whether new AP's will have good backward compatability with a and b clients, have better range, and other usability issues.

It would be nice to stream high-quality video over wireless links, but that's what wired segments are for. Other factors are more important for the 802.11x's (most applications; most people). Like for instance, I'd like to see a breakdown of how many web surfers a 'g' access point could handle in a mixed-card environment.

Re:802.11g is still going to suck.

[Wesley Felter]

Contrast this with 802.11a which is in an entirely different Spectrum range, which IT OWNS, specifically for wireless networking.

That's not true; the 5GHz U-NII band is unlicensed as well. There are 5GHz cordless phones already, and I suspect in the future we'll see more non-networking 5GHz equipment.

A Good Thing

[coolmacdude]

It seems to me that what the IEEE decided to do was to label the spec with the actual throughput speed as opposed to the raw one. That makes sense and I don't know why it wasn't done with b. But apparantly some people took this to mean the raw speed had been reduced from 54 to 20 which would have meant a sizeable reduction in actual speed.