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802.11g... It's Official
JoeBuck writes "This article in CommsDesign reports that the IEEE has officially approved the IEEE 802.11g standard, as well as another standard (802.15.3) for shorter-range, very-low-power operation.
Two other standards designed to improve compatibility between different vendors' access points were also approved."
I triple E, 8 Oh 2 point eleven, G.
Yeeaa. Fo shizzle my wi'ahless using nizzles, wi-fi all day players.
Fizzle pizzle
802.11g operates at the same frequency as 802.11b. The good news: existing antennas and other range extension techniques should work fine (Pringles can, anyone?). The bad news: interference is going to be a nightmare. In heavily-populated areas, it's common to have a dozen or more legacy 802.11b signals, which tend to hog the bandwidth that would otherwise be available for .11g. Add in microwave ovens (which interfere massively on the same band), and many people will be lucky to see even 20 Mbits/sec.
The security is also a mixed bag: although the WEP mess is improved, security is still going to be a headache, particularly for people who want to roam safely.
The best thing about standards is... there's so MANY of them!
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Here is the link to IEEE
a l.html
http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/80211gfin
ENJOY
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
An important question that I didn't see adressed in the article is what about products that are out now? Is the standard significantly different than, for example, apple's airport extreme? Being involved in the communications industry I know standards basically come down to which company wins the "no let's do it my way" fight (e.g. the cat 6 cable standard). Who was the winner in this case?
Hansel USA - Chut up and read!
Does anybody know if the new 802.11g chipsets support promiscuous mode? Or do we need to keep an old PrismII card around to go wardriving?
IEEE approves wireless network specs
.11g and .11b operate at ranges of up to 300 feet.
.15.3 spec suitable for its target application: small consumer devices, many of which will be operating in the same environment in close proximity. It features quality of service, connection management, advanced power management modesâ"allowing long and QoS synchronized sleep modes, ad hoc and peer-to-peer topology support, mesh support and enhanced security.
By Patrick Mannion
EE Times
June 12, 2003 (11:59 a.m. EST)
MANHASSET, N.Y. â" The IEEE on Thursday (June 12) gave its stamp of approval to two new wireless local- and personal-area networking standards and two corresponding recommended practices. The move is expected to open the floodgates to product introductions and upgrades while ensuring interoperability between those products.
The most anticipated of the four are the IEEE 802.11g and 802.15.3 standards for WLAN and WPAN connectivity, respectively.
The newly approved 802.11g standard specifies data rates of up to 54 Mbits/s in the 2.45-GHz band. While 802.11g uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), mandatory provisions have been made within the standard to make it inherently compatible with the well-established 802.11b standard at 11 Mbits/s, which uses complementary code keying (CCK) modulation. Both
The 802.15.3 standard for High Rate WPANs also operates in the 2.45-GHz band and at similar rates, from 11 to 55 Mbit/s, but is designed for shorter-range (1 to 50 meters), very-low-power operation. It also uses time division, multiple access (TDMA) protocol.
The use of TDMA makes the
While 802.11g products based on the draft standard are already available, products based on the new 802.15.3 standard are not expected to appear until 2004.
The two recommended practices approved today are for 802.15.2 and 802.11f. The first, 802.15.2, addresses the coexistence issue between WLANs and WPANs operating in the 2.45-GHz bands, such as Bluetooth, 802.15.3 WPANs and 802.11b and g WLANs.
The second, the 802.11f Inter Access Point Protocol, ensures interoperability between access points from multiple vendors, which primarily enables client roaming.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
For those reporters out there who will write stories about this for "joe consumer":
The "g" in 802.11g stands for "gamma", and no, the IEEE did not skip over proposals 802.11c, d, e, & f before settling on "g".
Chip H.
Ok, 802.11g is bad enough to pronouce, but I am not saying "eight-oh-two-dot-fifteen-dot-three" all the time, dammit!
I gather that 802.15.3 is supposed to compete directly with Bluetooth; does anyone have any idea how they compare (in terms of speed/power consumption/security/etc.)? If it's a Bluetooth-killer, we should call it Redtooth.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
It has been a draft. Many vendors have already been shipping products for quite a while, however.
802.15.3 last I heard wasn't really "approved" by the Bluetooth SIG. In fact, the whole 802.15 working group was trying to take over engineering aspects of Bluetooth from the Bluetooth SIG and leave the SIG to handle marketing, compliance, branding..etc.
But that didn't apparently happen because Bluetooth didn't want to wait X years for the next standard. Also, IEEE has a nasty habbit of ignoring backwards compatability when taking over a standard (we didnt design it, so who cares).
So, now we have this new, high rate, low power, WPN, that is supposed to be backwards compatabile with 802.15.1 (which is IEEE code word for Bluetooth. They built the 802.15.1 around the existing Bluetooth spec, but _changed_ it a bit).
Yet, no where, have i seen, an engineer say " 802.15.3 IS COMPATIBLE WITH Bluetooth". Maybe i missed that somewhere. Anyone know if this WPN will work with the present day number 1 WPN on the market?
Either way, this is really cool technology. High bandwidth, cheap, low power WPN means wireless KVM switchs among lots of other cool gadgets.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
that there are now officially no drivers for ANY 802.11g devices out there for linux. Now we can officially be ignored and spat upon by all the device manufacturers inspite of our growing numbers, homeuser and corporate user alike.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
This story kind of explains the speed thing. The actual throughput speed has not changed at all since 802.11g first came out.
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
More information here:l
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/15/pub/TG2.htm
When lots of people are using the same access point, the bottleneck isn't the wireless rate, it's the connection from the base station to the network.
How is it that I can go down to Fry's and buy a wireless router which supports a standard which hadn't even been approved? Or a DVD writer that may or may not be supported tomorrow, and which may or may not work with my DVD player? Or a graphics card which I may be able to be heard over if I scream loud enough, or which may play my games without crashing me to the desktop every two seconds.
Sure, competing standards a A Good Thing, but only if the companies that espouse them are willing to stand by them until the consumer has gotten their money's worth out of them. I constantly worry that my growing DVD collection will only be useful as a set of dinner plates in the near future, because of some new and exciting standard which the industry wants to force on me.
Growth, prosperity, innovation, yakkety yak. All I want is to pay some money and have something useful for a number of years. How many people are getting rich suckering us into the latest and greatest technology every year?
http://www.hometoys.com/htinews/feb02/articles/nav in/navin.htm
Dammit! Last post got hosed somehow. Here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/22/221624 7&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=193
The only remaining question regarding 802.11g: what are the marketroids going to call it? Super-Wi-Fi? Ultra Wi-Fi? Wi-Fi II? X-Fi?
The old Prism II chipset does not and cannot support 802.11g. There's a new Prism GT that supports 802.11g, but of course it has no docs or Linux drivers.
IEEE has a nasty habbit
I read as:
IEEE has a nasty hobbit
<Gollum>Nasty Hobbitses!</gollum>
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
OK, it seems that there are a *lot* of people who either don't read the articles closely, or in the case of the last one posted on Slashdot, don't differentiate between "radio data rate" and "data throughput".
:) Although I do hear rumblings about drivers possibly surfacing soon - fingers crossed.
On ordinary 802.11b gear, the maximum "radio data rate" is 11Mbps. Once you account for the inherent loss in throughput because of the uncertainty of the medium (air), and the fact that the protocol was designed to accomodate this uncertainty, your actual maximum "data thoughput" is about half of that - around 5Mbps. 11Mbps 802.11b != 11Mbps throughput, it never has, it never will.
The same goes for 802.11g - the maximum radio data rate was, and _still is_ 54Mbps. However, the throughput is again slightly less than half of that, in the 20Mbps range.
The reported "change" to 802.11g to "20Mbps" media frenzy stemmed almost entirely from simply clarifying that the actual "data throughput" was about 20Mpbs, *not* that the radio data rate had changed, been knocked down, whatever.
You get roughly 20Mbps "data throughput" in a pure 802.11g network - and again, similar to 802.11b, 54Mbps 802.11g != 54Mpbs throughput.
A 4x increase in throughput using 802.11g over 802.11b is nothing to complain about. Now, if we could get Atheros 802.11g drivers for Linux, I'd be a much happier camper
Brad
However, people (like myself) who want to take a gamble on buying technology that could shortly be obsolete should be able to. It's called capitalism, and such first adopters are the primary reason technological innovation is profitable.
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Eight Oh Too Eleven Gee What does the future have instore for thee? Is it good? Is it bad? Will it make Bill Gates mad? Does it route and will it ping? Will it help find porn for my ding-a-ling? Eight Oh Too Eleven Gee What does the future see? - Ra Hahn - Where Ends the Sidewalk
While looking into the differences of 802.11 a|b|g I found this article over at tom's hardware. It appears that the second generation 802.11a protocol devices now have much better range than the previous first generation 802.11a devices. This can also be seen by a recent whitepaper by Atheros (The company whose chipset is used in most widely available wireless devices from such companies as Netgear, Linksys, and D-link). With better bandwidth performance than most 802.11 b|g devices on the market and equivalent range to b|g devices, all while operating in the 5 ghz range, perhaps 802.11a will make some what of a comeback. The potential really comes from the fact that right now you can buy wireless APs now from Linksys (WAP55AG) and D-Link(DWL-7000AP) and wireless cards from linksys,netgear,and d-link that do all 3 protocols. I know that right now I will be looking at running my AP in 802.11a mode and not worrying about interference coming from the 2.4ghz range.
Go Illini!!!
Wonderful - now the WEP vulnerabilities will be even faster!
Hey, AIEEEEEEE.... How's about getting 802.11i finalized sometime this century, so we can be fast and resonably secure?
802.11g has a much better range than 802.11b. Read this (pdf). What you want is probably the charts on page 12 and 13. 802.11g offers significant improvements over 802.11b.
Didn't we recently read that 802.11g was to cut it's speed from 54Mbps to 10-20Mbps? What happened to this?
Tis I: Me.
The great thing (to my thinking) about 802.11g is not the 54mpbs (which realistically is a throughput of only about 20-25mbps at best) but rather the power requirements.
Portable users are and always will be the mainstay of the Wireless Networking market and as performance machines come out the fight to keep battery life up is also going strong.
The Pentium-M and it's chipsets help this a great deal (but don't get me started on Centrino, that's just a marketing scam). However, one of the big winfalls for portable users will be the prevalence of 802.11g networks. They require half of the power of an 802.11b network and transmit data about 4 times faster.
This is the real prize you earn for switching to 802.11g.
no, not really, but i do know a few couples that are particularly open-minded...does that count?
OK, once again.
802.11a: 5.4GHz operating frequency, 54MBPS data rate. Uses OFDM modulation, similar to DSL and HDTV VSB.
Good things about a:
-more channels than at 2.4HGz=more users simulataneously
-less interference from bluetooth and microwaves
-more advanced modulation standard=more data in less BW.
Bad things about a:
-a lot harder to manufacture: you can't even use the common FR4 substrate. Testing is more of a pain
-the modulation standard requires higher quality (more linear) transmitters
-5.4GHz experiences more attenuation, so less range
802.11b: The old reliable: 2.4GHz operating frequency (the same as a P4!), with 11MBPS data rate. Uses CCK, which is a massaged QPSK modulation method
Good things about B:
-most commonly avaliable type
-WiFi certification for interoperatiblity
-can use lower cost ic and materials. Testing is easier.
-longer range than A with less power (better for laptops)
Bad things about B:
-lower data rate
-more 'congested' spectrum
-CCK is less effecient in spectrum usage
-less channels available
802.11b+: Almost nobody has it: TI's PBCC modulation that gives 22MBPS on normal B. PBCC is an optional capability for G.
Good things about B+:
-it is/was available earlier
-Was cheaper
-Pretty much B, only a $10 more expensive.
Bad things about B+:
-I bought it because I couldn't wait for G
-Nobody except TI made chips that support PBCC
-Really, think of it as G-, not B+
802.11g: Same frequency as b, same modulation as A
Good things about G:
-backwards compatable
-easier/cheaper to get more linear transmitters for 2.4GHz than 5.4GHz.
Bad Things about G:
-no WiFi interoperability certification yet
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
I just ordered a Netgear WRG614 802.11G wireless router and a WG511 pcmia access card from Amazon... Does anyone know whether this and all the other older models are software upgradeable to the final standards? Or a year later when I want to use 802.11G somewhere else I'll need to buy a pcmia card supporting the final specs instead of the only the draft? Aside: When are all the cool gadgets like 802.11G wireless cameras coming out? I want a camra which I can put anywhere then log into it from a wifi pocketpc or laptop.. things like these have some serious potential (for good and bad I must admit). A wifi enabled tv/projector would be really cool also. I just flip open my laptop, it finds the projector and asks me whether i want use it... shoot all sorts of things.. like transmitting my music selection out to my car, etc. Wifi makes it all possible.
For those that don't know- 802.3 ethernet made a minor change from DIX- they just changed the MAC header format, nothing big! [sarcasm]
DIX had a header layout of: [destination mac address][source mac address][frame type].... [crc]
where 802.3 has [dest mac addr][src mac addr][frame length]....[crc] ( combine with 802.2 and you don't need a type field, you have SAPs!)
Now both formats are compatible by mutually exclusive Length/type field values: Since the ethernet frames are limited to 1500 bytes, all Types have to be values greater than that.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.