Airgo Quadruples Wi-Fi Limit

QED writes "Airgo Networks, a privately held maker of wireless networking components, said on Wednesday it has developed chips that will increase the Wi-Fi speed limit by a factor of four. The Palo Alto, California-based company, which designs its chipsets around Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO), a wireless technique that uses different radio channels to improve both speed and transmission quality, said it has achieved data rates up to 240 megabits per second (Mbps)... "

Comments

Real Speeds?

[jolar]

So what are the real speeds? No one gets 54mbps on 802.11g hardware, so I don't expect 240mbps on this MIMO stuff.

I don't understand the way wireless speeds are rated. I got very close to 100mbps on my LAN before I upgraded to gigabit. I can't get anywhere near 54mbps on my wireless if I put my Powerbook right next to the wireless router!

Re:Wireless Speeds

[aktzin]

Obviously it's a good thing that wireless is getting faster. However, most people use wireless for connecting to the Internet. Even 802.11b is much quicker than most Internet connections. It will be a while before this technology is useful to a lot of people.

Good point, but for some of us there would be a big benefit with higher wireless speeds. My cable modem has a typical download speed of 3Mbps so even the 11Mbps (max) speed of 802.11b isn't being used to its full capacity. But I often need to move large files between my laptop and my PC. If I don't want to wait 10 minutes or more for a file transfer I have to carry my laptop into my home office, plug it into my Ethernet switch and transfer the files there. With faster Wi-Fi I could avoid this minor hassle.