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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?"
Upgrading Wi-Fi: What, When, and Wi?
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
The summary says that 802.11n is just around this corner...what about this article yesterday that says it's been delayed to 2008?????
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
Even 802.11b is still faster than the DSL or cable connections that these places use.
Obviously that depends on what you need the wireless LAN for. If your applications work with 802.11b, why would you upgrade? If you want to do something which needs more bandwidth, then upgrade. Duh.
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.
It will be "time to upgrade" when the card manufacturers start being able to tell me which device to buy reliably for linux installations.
I have *never* been able to find an 802.11g PCI card that I could put on a purchase order by vendor and part number. The few devices I have found (b and g) that worked, have been changed by the vendors into incompatable devices without notice.
The linux wi-fi community routinely points questions on this matter to a compatability chart that doesn't answer the question. I know about NDISWrapper. I know to avoid Broadcom chips. That knowledge helps for my personal computing, but it doesn't help when the professional task involves making a purchase order for a device that can be reliably, consistently obtained, or even identified.
On the end of the spectrum we'd like to be on, several competing vendors would warranty the merchandise as being compatable with linux, and would provide source-code compatable drivers (for kernel independence). We're at the extreme far other end of that spectrum, as far as I can tell.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
for me anyway.
I have 3 problems with WiFi.
1) Too many people near by with WiFi makes the connectivity suck within my apartment(have tried many channels). How about a new system where base units can figure out the best configuration when there are others nearby and even change them when the radio pattern(/coverage) changes.
2) My existing devices are not compatible with "New" security standards, fx. Ipaq and wpa2. For every WiFi enabled unit you buy, you have the problem of not being able to upgrade your security unless all devices support it.
3) My HP notebook drops connection when a cellphone is used in my apartment.
There are so many things that can break my WiFi net that I still prefer to use cables. Thought about getting a Squeezebox with WiFi, but I think I might as well save the money and just use cable.
I don't expect a lot from wireless. It's sort of like plugging a wonky network cable into a hub. You're connected to the network, but everything is delivered at 'best effort' or worse. Most of the time, that's really all that you need.
Can I open a web page? Check.
Send an email? Check.
VNC into a box? With some patience, check.
SSH into a device? Check.
IM? Check.
Can I do 95% of what I do at work over a wireless connection? Check.
The other five percent? I'm hoping for Gig-E because I'm using all of it.
The key is having realistic expectations of wireless. If your users don't understand that then they'll probably be disappointed with whatever you rollout.
If you are on 802.11b and are happy with the speed it provides, then stay with what you have. If you're unhappy with it, upgrade to 802.11g.
If you are are unhappy with 802.11g, well, tough luck: as someone else already mentioned, 802.11n isn't coming out until 2008. Start punching holes in the wall and running some Ethernet cable!
Problem solved.
Does it really matter how much bandwidth one needs in terms of consumers? I would rather see improvments be made on how far the signal goes rather than how much it can handle. It never really mattered to me whether I had a B or G router as I only had a few computers using the internet at once. Granted, once FIOS is more widely used in the States the amount of bandwidth will have more of an effect.
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Other posters have addressed the compatibility and security issues, and I agree with them. No one has addressed the issue of bandwith saturation and new deployment.
;-) We boys just LOVE our toys!
Take a look at your bandwidth utilization. If you are using less than 50% what would be the point of doubling your LAN speed? If you are using over 80% then I would think about upgrading to whatever suits the situation.
Another issue is getting a new machine and placing it on your LAN. Can you still easily and cheaply get ahold of an 802.11b/g? Can you get one from the same manufacturer (if you only have to support one manufacturer then you only have to remember one set of oddities)? While this may seem pointless at the moment for WiFi, I when throught these same questions when upgrading my personal LAN from AUI to 10baseT.
Find real reasons to upgrade or not -- but remember somtimes you just need to get one to "check out"
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.
No it is not time to upgrade.
At the moment the 802.11n standard is at draft 2 stage. The 802.11n gear available now is based on 802.11n draft 1.
The manufacturers of this hardware are betting that any changes in the spec between draft 1 and the final version can be fixed by a firmware upgrade. It is by no means certain that this will be the case.
In addition, it isn't clear whether hardware for the 802.11n draft from different manufacturers will work together.
So the answer (as with most technology) is to wait and see. In this case, given that this is based on a draft, that has been superceded, waiting is certianly a good idea.
meh
I had one of the first in-home 802.11b networks. I plunked down like $700 for a Cisco WAP back in 2000 or 2001 because I had a really challenging home network solution that would've cost a lot more than that to run wiring where I needed it. The WAP kept chugging along - those old Cisco units were really reliable - and I finally retired it about a month ago.
My DSL is (supposedly) 6Mbps downstream, so I could've justified it just on that grounds. My wireless was definitely slower than my network connection. But, at the end of the day, the fact that I process video and (now very large RAW) pictures on my laptop caused me to pull the trigger. After I'm done processing, I generally want to copy my files up to a server for backup. On a recent trip, I shot 8 GB of photos. Copying that on b would take about 18 hours. Copying it on g would take about 20 minutes. Obviously, even bigger video files would be worse.
As for security - I certainly don't trust ANY wireless (or wired, for that matter) system for security. I depend on application level security whenever I can get it (SSL, SSH) and VPNs when that's not an option. It's hard for me to imagine upgrading to g or n just for security - anything that does need to be secure in my world already is. Trusting ANY network is a good way to get caught with your pants down.
So, don't dismiss the performance gains from b to g. I increased my Internet download speed from 1Mbps to 6Mbps, and that was certainly worth the (compared to 2001) cheap cost of my new WAP. Even if your Internet connection is 1Mbps or slower, you may still have significant benefits if you copy large files around inside your network.
How good is your router? I have found that the quality of your networking equipment can make a huge difference. I too live in an apartment building with lots of nearby access points--at night if I sit by my window I can catch at least ten signals. I used to have a POS Netgear router that would drop the connection repeatedly. Then I got the DLink DGL 4300, and this thing is rock solid. Drops maybe once a month.
Keeping the equipment cool also matters. For awhile I had the DGL 4300 on the floor, on its side, behind my PC, near the case and power supply exhaust fans. In the summer it sure gets hot back there, and my connection would drop quite a bit. I moved the router so it's on top of my case, and now the performance is rock solid.
All routers are not of the same quality. (I could say the same of cable modems, but that's another story entirely.) Cheap networking equipment does not pay. Make sure you have a good router and WiFi can work well even in tough circumstances.
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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.
When 802.11b first became standardized I bought a PCMCIA card for my laptop and a base station.
My next laptop had 802.11b built in.
My next laptop had 802.11a/b/g built in.
I'm still using the 802.11b bridge that I originally bought. I'll get a new base station eventually, but there's not any hurry, since the bottleneck out of my apartment is the 1.5Mb DSL line, and the 11Mb WiFi is just fine.
I especially don't see the need to buy some add in card for my laptop that may hang out the side and cause other problems.
For those who don't know: WPA (1/2, tkip, AES) in pre-shared key mode is vulnerable to a brute force attack. The four packet authentication sequence can be captured and brute force attacked offline. There are WPA rainbow tables based on dictionary words "in the wild." A long multi word passphrase with some numbers should be sufficient. A 63 character string of upper and lower case letters, and numbers is best. Unfortunately many access point web interfaces do not handle special characters and punctuation well.
You can generate a longer psk with:it is a pain in the ass to manage though.
As for security - I certainly don't trust ANY wireless (or wired, for that matter) system for security. I depend on application level security whenever I can get it (SSL, SSH) and VPNs when that's not an option.
Properly configured WPA and WPA2 are just as secure as your application-level security or VPN (and more secure than some crappy VPNs). Although the weakness of WEP was a major problem, its failure ensured that its successors would get very heavy scrutiny, and the WPA variants have stood up very well. If you really want to be careful, use both wireless network security and end-to-end security. If you don't need to be that paranoid, WPA is just as good as and more convenient than using a home VPN.
OTOH, if you're like me, I like to leave my WLAN open so that passersby can use it if they need it. I appreciate all of the open WLANs I make use of, so I like to return the favor. In that case, a VPN is critical.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Just out of curiosity, where was your 2000/2001-era Cisco WAP made?
I saw an aritcle (which has since gone offline: Manufacturing: Probably made in China, by someone else) that said Intel made motherboards in Silicon Valley until 1999 or so. The massive movement to Chinese factories was triggered by the need to cut costs at the tail end of the dot-com bubble.
$700 sounds like a price you'd have to charge if you were paying Americans to put your industrial-grade wireless widget together... (I'm assuming your WAP was built like a tank - cisco used to be all about quality, until they bought Linksys for the "consumer grade" product lines.)
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"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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I've purchased several Airlink gigE switches. All of them use Broadcom chipsets, and the chipset technically supports jumbo frames. Typically I payed $5/port for the 8port and $6/port for the 5port.
I'm running a mix of Airlink (rt8169), nFORCE4 onboard, Marvell, etc. on the NIC side. All cheap cards (the rt8169 is now $6 at frys).
I can typically push 350Mbps (all machines are running with an MTU of 1500). CPU utilization on my Athlon64 is maybe 20%. Same on my friend's computer (sempron barton 2800).
I have a SMC switch that specifically supports jumbo frames, but I have not been able to test it because whenever I use jumbo frames I cannot contact machines that are running 100megabit.
I agree with you on the cabling, I have run with 10 year old cat5 that's stapled in my crawlspace, and brand new cat6. Both will run gigabit no problem.
cat5 UTP is not shielded (the U stands for unshielded). STP is available, but generally quite expensive and usually not worth it.
Instead of spending $100s so get the the newest "wifi" standard, make the real upgrade, the one that actually makes your network faster, the one that operates almost at advertised speed, rather than 1/6th of it, the one that doesn't require you behind your computer aligning your antenna to transmit on the same plane as your AP's antenna to squeeze out that extra 10 ft of connectivity. Good ol' 802.3ab
I fear the Y2038 bug