Broadcom Accuses Atheros Of WiFi Pollution

eggboard writes "We just posted a story at PC World about 802.11g chipmaker Broadcom's claims that the high-speed 108 Mbps mode available in rival Atheros's AR5004G chipset disrupts all nearby Wi-Fi networks. The Turbo mode, part of Atheros Super G, uses two Wi-Fi channels (5 and 6) to double bandwidth, but Broadcom says this can lead to 'an enormous degradation in the speed of nearby 802.11b and 802.11g networks.'. D-Link and NetGear are shipping Super G-based devices. If Broadcom is right, Atheros gear would pollute neighbors' networks. If wrong, they're putting out a pretty heavy marketing smokescreen just before Comdex - where Broadcom says they'll be demonstrating the Atheros problem."

Comments

Super-G FaceOff!

[Tumbleweed]

Okay, so what happens when two Super-G networks are within interference distance of each other? Do they both drop down to 54Mbps speed, or what?

Social trap.

[SharpFang]

I live on a suburb with several (20+) radiomodem access points - no cables, no ground lines, just several "clusters of houses" hooked to their antennas. Connections to several ISPs.

The network connection sucks.

At first it worked fine. I'd say it worked great. People heard it works great so they began installing the equipment themselves. The lines began disturbing each other, but it still worked okay. More people installed this, and the network quality began to suck really. So some of them, to overcome the noise, installed signal amplifiers for their antennas. Result? Everyone without amplifiers simply lost their connections completely. So people began installing amplifiers en masse, which resulted in that connection sucks for everyone again. My packet loss ranges from 10 to 60%. TV signal gets disturbed. Radio mice and keyboars don't work. Great, just great. And the ISPs just can't come to agreement on putting one, good, shared ground line.

Ether is a limited resource and wireless in larger amounts will suck, no matter what.

Re:Social trap.

[barc0001]

Easy fix: Get an old microwave, and build an EMF gun with it, then drive around and "stress test" some of your neighbors' antennas until your signal improves.
Rinse, repeat as needed.

Or, for something that won't get people upset, start a neighborhood committee and try to work out an effective way to turn this ad-hoc madness into something with structure yourselves. If it turns out you can get everyone going through 2 or 3 antennas instead and everyone is subconnected with wifi or even cable runs, and everyone's sharing the costs of the connections, everyone's connectivity will improve, and access costs will drop.

But the big trick is getting everyone on board. Though nothing is a motivator like "Hey! Want your Intar-web to work better and cost less at the same time?"

How about D-Link?

[danielsfca2]

I don't know about Atheros, but ever since my 2-floors-down-neighbor put up a D-link "b" access point, I can't connect to my bedroom (g) access point from my own living room, even though I've separated the channels (2 and 11). I am forced to connect to his.

Does anybody test for interference with these damn things?

Re:Atheros Linux driver

[The Vulture]

Also, almost everything is GPL'ed. So: Atheros == good && Broadcom == bad;

Normally I'm inclined to agree, but not in this case. Having worked for companies that have dealt with Broadcom, and talking to some of their engineers myself, I know a bit about the company itself.

Their engineers are very smart people (most of them hold degrees above the typical Bachelor of Science), and I've seen their source code (for cable modems), and it's well written. Their spec sheets (again, for their cable modem products) are generally top-notch, although I'm a bit miffed at them about the whole Broadcom 3415 tuner chip issue (with the patent infringement suit against Microtune), and the whole Linksys/Cisco situation. I'm also not keen on their interview processes either (myself and a couple of my former co-workers have all interviewed there in the past), but that's not related to this issue.

That aside, I'll address the statement from you that I copy/pasted... If the hardware sucks, having GPL'd drivers for it is of no use (at least not to me). If the Atheros chipset is causing interference (and I reserve my judgement until I hear more about the issue), then as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather buy other hardware that actually works.

-- Joe