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Upgrading Wi-Fi — What, When, and Why
lessthan0 writes "Wi-Fi (802.11x) networks have been around long enough that many businesses and home users run their own. The first widely deployed standard was 802.11b, while most new hardware uses 802.11g. The latest 802.11n hardware is just around the corner. If you run an existing wireless network, is it time to upgrade?"
If 802.11b/g works for me, why would I upgrade? Don't be a consumer whore just because some shiny new wireless protocol comes out... stick with what you have unless it sucks.
Reading articles about 802.11n, there seems to be no compeling reason to upgrade to this draft specification for most folks right now... Poor interoperability with other "n" devices, poor backward compatibility with both "b" and "g" devices, more expensive hardware, and buggy firmware. The bottomline is, upgrading to 802.11n today means you are willing to be a beta tester for the hardware manufacturers.
1. If you buy 802.11n products, your AP needs to have easy firmware updates, because there is no standard, and you WILL want to update the firmware when the standard is ratified plus three months, meaning the summer of 2008.
2. 802.11n is faster than 802.11a,b, and g. But you need to buy everything from the same vendor, because that'll ensure it works together as compatibility is iffy. You can't do as nifty antenna tricks with 802.11n as you can with b and g. The 802.11a rules in the US currently prohibit antenna tricks. So, flexibility with standards means 802.11g.
3. If you use any 802.11 product, use WPA, or upgrade to it, and keep checking for firmware upgrades every few months, then do it.
4. Currently, the fastest *standardized* method is 802.11g. There are various turbo modes that may or may not allow you faster downloads, but most APs are inhibited by upstream throttle-back anyway. And for this reason, you might like it for home use but don't use it on mobile machines as hotspots sometimes have trouble with cards that are in 'auto-turbo' mode.
5. Unless you have backhaul that's faster than the WiFi transport, it's useless to buy anything faster because it will make no difference in speed. If you have a crappy DSL connection, the speed will still be crappy DSL speed. It's nice to have your WiFi router speed as the fastest common denominator because DSL and cable and other transports keep getting faster and faster. If you have asymetrical backhaul, that won't change no matter what you do (example: 3MB/s down, 750KB/s up).
WPA secures at minimum. Using AES with TLS is thought to be the most solid method. Having a temporal key is important as key life had a bearing on breaking the key. Currently, no one will sit around and wait for long keys to be broken unless THEY REALLY WANT YOU. If they do, they'll do something smarter. All WEP can be broken in under 22minutes, period.
For better paranoia, read WiFoo-- currently the most interesting hacker cookbook I've found.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
> Why upgrade at all? Unless you can really use the extra speed of 802.11g because you have an
> insane internet speed it's just a waste.
Many places there are quite simply too many nearby using 802.11b/g along with wireless
phones on the same frequency. It is too crowded.
"Upgrading" to 802.11a (different frequencies used than 802.11b/g) will help as there generally
are far fewer 802.11a users. The range may not be the same, though.
It should read "move on, nothing to see here ..." since you can't upgrade to something that isn't available yet.
Besides, why would you want to upgrade when nobody can use it? Wait until its been out a few years.
After all, gigbit ethernet has been out for a couple of years now, and look at how many people get along just fine with 100mb.
if I didn't have VPN over wifi thanx to m0n0wall and my RADIUS server...... as such I guess I will wait for N assume my trusty BEFW11S4 (b router) dosn't crap out.
if anyone is thinking of going G the WRT54GL with the dd-wrt firmware is pretty sweet.
whatever you do DO NOT buy a WRT54GS or later model WRT54G models..as they suck pretty much http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
"I saw a 5-port gigabit switch at a retailer yesterday for under $12/port. Cards are equally cheap. The problem is that for most users, they won't notice the difference,"
I think the problem is that it's unlikely that switch supports JUMBO frames. 1500 bytes don't cut it at gigE speeds. Even on a Barton XP 2500+, you get 100% CPU saturation around 250MBps with 1500 byte ethernet packets. My very high quality Intel gigE NICs support jumbo frames of 9000 mtu (and up), but this cheap Airlink switch (the only one I could find in town) is broken past 1500 MTU, meaning it's garbage (don't buy Airlink gear).
I'm sure the Airlink would be fine if you had garbage gigE nics, though, which is probably their target market.
" or they'd have to change the cabling fro cat5 to cat6, or they have one or more boxes that are still runing 100mb, so there is zero point in upgrading."
All of these are bunk. Most cat5 that's properly wired has 4 conductors in it (which is what you need for gigE) and are shielded well enough. You mentioned a switch; you should know that a switch allows for mixed speed devices with no general speed drop (unlike the old hubs that used to exist).
If you have a fileserver in your house serving up to 3-4 client machines like I do, gigE is well worth it, since the network is no longer the bottleneck.
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