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Pre-802.11n Offers 4x the Speed
An anonymous reader writes "Belkin said on Monday that they'll be releasing a wireless network card and router that uses pre-802.11n multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology created by Airgo Networks. Belkin said the new pre-n products will provide four times faster speed and coverage area than 802.11b and g products. The new products will also be compatible with older products and in fact will increase performance on those older products."
I just upgraded to g!
Anybody know if the increase number of signals increases the amount of interference?
What I'd prefer to see is a smaller boost in "speed" (I'm guessing that the speed "increase" is in bursts, not sustained) and increased security that doesn't cause a hit in terms of network performance.
Pre-standard? I'll wait thanks. Especially with the history of this company.
CINCINNATI BELL IS TEH SUCK.
OK, so we have 802.11b, 802.11n, and 802.11g. Is there an 802.11o? Because that would be interesting, seeing a wireless router advertise itself as being "802.11b/o/n/g Compatible!"
Oh, and I would have titled this "First Pot", but that would just be low-class.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Will these technologies ever stop coming out?
When is it "safe" to undertake a massive project to wire(less) a huge area?
Reliability rivaling that of wired connections and effortless connectivity at real-world distances is why Belkin's True MIMO products have ushered in a new era in wireless."
When I can wirelessly play my PS2 and download torrents at the same time, I'll be in heaven. As much as I love wireless, I think we are far from the reliability and connectivity of a hard wire.
For me, 802.11G is by fast enough by far for my uses. B is good enough for web traffic. Hopefully this introduction of new A, and now N configerations will lower prices more for the G routers making it even easier to find access points. *crosses fingers for easier wardriving*
Boxing Equipment Reviews
The article contains this statement: ...and then it has this quote from Greg Raleigh:
"True MIMO is one of the underlying technologies being considered for 802.11n, a standard in the works for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology. "
"The immediate performance benefits realized with True MIMO, especially over expanded coverage areas, are why this technology has been chosen to power the upcoming 802.11n high-performance wireless standard. "
Has "True MIMO" already "been chosen" to power 802.11n, or is merely "being considered"?
Belkin said the new pre-n products will provide four times faster speed and coverage area than 802.11b and g products.
Faster!?
More coverage area!?
Then, how much power does it typically take to run an 802.11n card compared to the established alternatives?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This is the same company that lost my trust by screwing their customers. They've done nothing since to earn that trust back. (And no, removing their stupid adware, when it shouldn't have been there in the first place, doesn't count toward earning my trust back.)
Carousel is a lie!
Can anyone comment about the range where there is non line of sigh, maybe 3 townhouses in between?
Sweet! Dude! Sweet! Dude! Does this mean I can now use NetStumbler to detect 4x as many WAP's? WOOHOO!! One day in sanity is worth 2 in the bush. (Dunno, made it up on the fly, sleep deprivation ;-) )
This is slightly offtopic but this article got me thinking again. I recently bought a powerbook (and spent a good bit of money), I'm loving it but I am curious about upgrading things like the airport card or processor in the future. I have no experience upgrading Apple computers. How would I go about upgrading to 802.11n if I decided to do so? Would it require an upgrade of the built in antennas?
4 times faster than b and g? How do they do that, given that g is 5 times faster than b? Hopefully they don't reduce the speeds of them all to 0...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Yup, but the box will say "4X FASTER! Also speeds up 802.11b and g networks!" Consumers will think, "hey, it'll speed up my 802.11b network by 4x! Yeah!"
Corporations need to learn to write clear, concise blurbs for their packaging, so customers don't feel ripped off or mislead (and never buy their products again as a result).
Please help metamoderate.
How many pringles cans does this come with?
fiascos like this: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/07/17 40205&tid=153&tid=95
CINCINNATI BELL IS TEH SUCK.
"die bot, die!"
It doens't matter if you have a wireless connection at home that performs at 200K/sec where the internet connection is 100K/sec, save you money for something else, 802.11g is more than enough and you can find good bargains these days.
what are they going to do when they run out of letters after 802.11z?
Wi-Fi Gets Speed Boost with Pre-802.11n Products
Posted: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 11:38:03 GMT
Author: Matt Cameron
Belkin said on Monday that they'll be releasing a wireless network card and router that uses pre-802.11n multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology created by Airgo Networks. Belkin said the new pre-n products will provide four times faster speed and coverage area than 802.11b and g products. The new products will also be compatible with older products and in fact will increase performance on those older products.
"Our research shows that, with current wireless technology, people are experiencing poor coverage and performance at farther distances in their homes due to interference from other wireless networks, cordless phones, and other appliances," explains Eric Tong, VP Marketing and Product Development. "Our Pre-N products with True MIMO will empower users by providing a wireless network that makes poor coverage issues a thing of the past."
Belkin utilizes True MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) from Airgo Networks in its Pre-N products. True MIMO is the first technology to address the issues of coverage, speed, and interference in larger homes and offices.
True MIMO is a smart-antenna technique that uses multiple antennas to transmit and receive wireless signals. It reaches a step further than other smart-antenna technologies by transmitting multiple signals on each antenna. As a result, Belkin's Pre-N products with True MIMO technology create a robust wireless connection while providing a larger coverage area with the bandwidth and quality of service needed to run advanced applications, such as streaming video or Voice over IP (VoIP).
True MIMO is one of the underlying technologies being considered for 802.11n, a standard in the works for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology.
"True MIMO is a breakthrough technology that fundamentally changes the way radio waves are sent and received. More importantly, True MIMO changes the way consumers are able to use wireless products," says Greg Raleigh, Chief Executive and President of Airgo Networks. "The immediate performance benefits realized with True MIMO, especially over expanded coverage areas, are why this technology has been chosen to power the upcoming 802.11n high-performance wireless standard. Reliability rivaling that of wired connections and effortless connectivity at real-world distances is why Belkin's True MIMO products have ushered in a new era in wireless."
prove it.
Now, it seems, people are going to be rushing to these new "standards". Sure, if you're going to be transfering a lot of large files around your internal network, perhaps while you stream real time video to your "entertainment center", then you might justify the extra cost and being on the bleeding edge; but most users just think in terms of "I want the newer faster stuff" or simply "I want the good stuff" and they will end up paying a lot more now for the technology they never use than they would if they just waited until the standrds were worked out, the products came down in price, and the connection to the rest of the Internet caught up in speed to justify the choice.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There is an 802.11i, so I'd go for 802.11b/i/n/g/o.
It just goes to show that people are going to need to learn more about security. 4 times the coverage area means less distance for war drivers to go before they can crack J. Random User's home network.
Keep the faith, share the code
..."will also be compatible with older products and in fact will increase performance on those older products."
we'll see about that.
Who really needs 100 mbit in their home? I can see some corporation in a union bound town like St. Louis wanting to replace current wired LAN deploy costs with simple wireless gear, but the 802.11b device I've connected through to write this provides 5x the speed I need in a worst case scenario
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Apart from trust, it's not like they make reliable products in the first place. The only things from Belkin that I have use without having to return them because they didn't work are: 1. USB hubs and PCI cards 2. Power strips 3. Cans of compressed air Most likely, they don't even make 2 and 3, and the only time I buy those from Belkin are because they're free after rebate. Even the USB stuff you can get a reliable alternative for cheaper most of the time.
http://spinster.org/album/2000/als/20.html
Hey, maybe sticking to my old 802.11b AP has paid off. I can now skip to the latest technology without spending money on interim products/upgrades. Yay!
Self awareness - try it!
Sir (or madam), your statement is blatently unpatriotic. Don't you realize that the good of this country relies on continued revenue gained from such uselessly wasteful devices that CONSUME all resources for no real gain (to the average user that insists he must have this).
Don't make me sick the Patriotic Act on your a$$.
come on fhqwhgads
That's what I'm really waiting for. Until it fully supports 802.11i, I'm not touching wireless.
Am I the only one who is sick of the hype surrounding WiFi?
I mean for fucks sake, one of my colleagues makes a point of sitting in Starbucks at lunchtime just to been seen browsing with his Powerbook. Conveniently forgets that he's got the best part of a 155Mbps pipe in his office if he could be arsed plugging a patch lead into the wall.
And now we're up to 54mbps and more with this new standard. Is your average Starbucks ponce going to notice all this extra speed?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
802.11b is faster than most broadband, that is fast enough for my uses (and most other wireless uses).
However, extended range is huge. That means that when the DSL at the coffee shop is down I will be able to use my home connection!
-Jackson
Woohoo! Finally, now I don't have to sit in my car in front of my neighbor's house, I can just leech their connexon from my living room!
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Forget 5.8GHz. The CPU MHz race does not translate directly to the wireless world. There are great digital cordless phones for 900MHz that will save you money.
The Fat Man Walks Alone
Can anyone comment on the security aspects in the new standard? I know that there has been ongoing work to improve security features for wireless networks, but is any of that showing up in this new standard? Any relevant info would be helpful...
If the coverage area is getting wider, possibly several hundred feet in radius of the antenna, shouldn't the companies be providing better security too go with it as well? I'm sure there's probably already a few people getting free Net access and not paying for it by using their neighbor's unsecured networks - without the neighbor even knowing.
I would guess it's about 4^3 or 64x. Not that I really have a clue...
What I really can't figure out is how it can be backward compatible with the older cards and still get the same coverage area. I mean, maybe an 11n router can reach an 11b card far away, but how the hell is that 11b card gonna reach back to the router?
Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from all that is known.
why b then a then g then n? So do vowels and consonents get equal preference?
Wasn't 802.11i supposed to bring vastly improved security ?
IEEE Approves 802.11i
Does 802.11n incorporate the ideas from 802.11i ?
The Wikipedia entry on 802.11 tech doesn't appear to offer much insight into this - other than stating which letters are supposed to be for what purpose.
Taking that, would a well-encoded, high-security, high-(multi-)speed 802.11 essentially be 802.11bin? (b, i and n combined)
Task Group N is still in the mix. .11a with 802.11e (QoS). Using MIMO on all stations, with DLP (802.11e) would in fact allow stations to communicate through eachother, instead of the access point. Relaying signals on multiple frequencies through stations would give better coverage, and with DLP essentially cutting all station-2-station traffic in half would free up the medium (their idea of faster?). Either way it is still not going to be around for a while.
TgN's point of focus is to offer better wireless service. It will operate in the frequency range 5.18 Ghz and 5.32 Ghz. The current frequency range that all 802.11a products use. I think the plan is to use the OFDM rates of
It's all good.
With an acronym like MIMO, and no DV-DA jokes?
/.
For shame,
I can't wait! My coverage area has always been too slow in the past!
802.11 n will use 802.11e (Qos) which introduces Direct Link Protocol (DLP). This allows station to station transfer. Currently in infrastucture mode you can only communicate with the access point, when MIMO and DLP are implemented together, you can essentially chain wireless stations by using them as repeaters.
It's all good.
Is any of these wireless technologies... Safe? We have heard of what cell phones and wireless home phones can do
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
The truth is that even the 802.11b connection is faster than high speed brodband to the home, so there is no real gain in using 802.11g.
No real gain?
How about sharing files between computers? How about being able to buy a $200 gadget at your nearest electronics store that hooks up to your TV and lets you stream movies over the wireless?
Home networking is here to stay. I know people who don't have two clues about computers, yet they have home networks and like to transfer files quickly. And the faster the protocol's bandwidth is, the more you will have per shared node if you have multiple wireless devices in the house.
Think outside the internet box.
if g equipment doesn't cost appreciably more than b equipment, why not just buy g? It will be supported longer. Sort of like ethernet; Gigabit ethernet cards now cost $30, so why would anybody buy a 10Mbit or 100Mbit card, even if they are only going to use it to talk to a 100Mbit hub.
Stop trying to leech off of your neighbors wireless access point and get your own damn broadband connection!
Alright, so we have faster .... good for wireless LAN, useless for wirless net. The masses will look at it and say "yay, i'll get faster speeds if I upgrade for a huge chunk of cash"...
Better coverage.... ok, good for people who have large amounts of property/coverage needed ... but when it gets a block down the road, umm ... wardriving becomes a sinch...
Better security? Is it still going do be: Drive, Stop, Connect? Or will there be something better then the original WEP? BUT, inplementing better security means nothing if the people don't enable it. I think it should be enabled by default to be honest.
Does this put us closer to actually making this possible? From www.downhillbattle.org: Filesharing in a Tree: A properly configured laptop with a WiFi router is a wireless repository for music, video, textbooks, whatever. Put it way up in a tree with a solar panel to make it darn hard to take down. Call the tree, "the music tree". I'd totally contribute a laptop and a router to give my neighborhood free anonymous wireless torrent DL's!
An increase in SNR (which would help with both speed and coverage issues) does not necessarily require more power from both communicators. The base station could be made to transmit higher power and receive weaker signals (this could be accomplished using a higher gain antenna, which sounds like the ultimate effect of a MIMO scheme, although I admit that I'm mostly guessing).
There is nothing magical about the frequency that makes 2.4 and 5GHz phones better.
BS. Different frequencies have different interactions with the ground and with different materials for walls. If a 2.4 GHz RF signal propagates through a given wall with less attenuation than an 0.9 GHz signal, then what should one use?
4x the wardriving!
ItWasFree.com - Take the mystery
The DVDA jokes are back in the articles mentioning DVD Audio and SACD.
802.11n is still in its very early phases. There is not even one thing detemined. All companies will sumbit their proposals before the end of this month and then the voting will be done on September. There are many proposals and all of them are different. The only thing known about is the fact that it will be high speed (~200 Mbps with multiple antennas).
So, I think telling that Belkin has a pre-standard card is just wrong and seems like a marketing lie from Belkin. There is not even one line of written draft for 802.11n yet! This is just a card based on their proprietary methods and it will FOR SURE be incompatible with the standard when it will come (which probably will take 2 years from today).
From the Bell Labs Homepage:
BLAST: Bell Labs Layered Space-Time
BLAST High-Level Overview
"4x the speed" of what? 802.11b's 11Mbps? b+ 22Mbps? a/a+ 55/110Mbps? An unladen african swallow?
--
make install -not war
I was absolutely certain when I clicked on the comments link that I would immediately see a joke involving downloading 4x the porn over someone else's wireless connection.
I didn't know what else I'd find in the comments, but knowing Slashdot, that joke should have been an absolute certainty.
How disappointing
what are they going to do when they run out of letters after 802.11z?
802.11 X 10.1
802.11 X 10.2
802.11 X 10.3
Or maybe
802.11 X 10.4 "Tiger Edition"...[stongbadvoice]"For a fierce connection that tears apart your puny downloads"[/strongbadvoice]
The joke, having been made once, was left to quietly fade into memory. Just like all bad jokes here. Right. In Japan.
I'm surprised the geeks haven't jumped all over this one yet.
An increase in MBps/s isn't an increase in speed. It's an increase in Bandwidth. No amount of b, g, or n will increase the speed of light.
It's like saying a train with 100 cars goes twice as fast as a train with 50 cars. OK, bad analogy. Like moving to a new apartment with a moving van versus your VW Beetle.
So you won't be able to download your porn faster, you'll just be able to get twice as much of it. (or get larger porn).
Let the semantics flame war commence!
I called this a while ago actually on Slashdot.. It'll most likely spell B.A.G.(G)I.N.S. :)
Frodo Lives!
double post.
"Pre-802.11n" ... Odd, why not call it 802.11m instead of Pre-802.11n? Isn't 'm' before 'n'?
Wake me when they reach 802.11z. Maybe they will have a secure and bug free system by then.
All this is great, but who makes a 4 port 11g wireless router that supports IPv6 (nativly, not via 6to4 or some such thing.) My ISP (SpeakEasy.net) has been saying (for several months) that they are going to roll out IPv6 RSN, but I don't think my dlink 624 supports it.
"breakthrough technology that fundamentally changes the way radio waves are sent and received. More importantly, True MIMO changes the way consumers are able to use wireless products,"
Changes the way Radio Signals are sent and recived eh? Seems to me they are doing it the same way its allways been done... Nice statement... But not as good as the rest...
It will change the way I use wireless products?! How... Can I use it to fill my car with gas? What exactally are they talking about... Its still a network device.. How will it change how we network.. Not.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
What about 4x the war flying ?
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)