Interoperability Tests of Draft 802.11n Routers

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has done interoperability testing of five wireless routers from Belkin, Buffalo, D-Link, and Netgear — along with their matched NICs. Results (summarized in a color-coded table) are very mixed, with several of the products not talking to one another at all. From the review: 'Netgear's RangeMax NEXT devices dominated in the throughput race, but interoperability was a mixed bag...Stick to a single brand and a single product line...Don't expect all of your existing clients to work with the new hardware. If some don't, you may have to pony up for some new wireless equipment. No one ever said early adoption was cheap.'"

Comments

This is why

[Amouth]

This is why you wait for it to be a standard.. and not a draft.... anyone buying 802.11n stuff should realize that they are paying to be beta testers

What the bulk of the public just doesn't get

[frovingslosh]

What amazes me is that by far the majority of the public who think they have to have the fastest technology out there will be using it exclusively to access the Internet with their 1.5 meg DSL or 3 to 5 meg cable connection, a situation where they will see no improvemnent over existing, compatablle, and less costly 802-11g technology, in may cases that they already own. Sure, high speed wireless access is nice if you frequently move huge files across the wireless link between local machines, but in my experience talking to users who have bought into high speed, the average smuck that just has to have the newest fastest technology has no clue where his bottleneck is.

Re:What the bulk of the public just doesn't get

[carl67lp]

I've had this discussion with my father-in-law many times. I've even used the straw/pipe analogy: Your Internet is a 2" pipe, and your wireless is a 12" pipe. Doesn't matter how big you make the wireless pipe, it will always have more than enough room to slide the Internet pipe through it.

So indeed, there are plenty of people--not necessarily all schmucks (my father-in-law is, in general, a very smart man)--who think that the faster the wireless is, the faster their Internet connection will be.

Re:Has anyone thought...

[Kesch]

What do you count as innovation? I see two ways in which wireless can get better 1) more bandwith 2) more range. 802.11n adds more bandwith (and range too I think, I can't remember). If it's cheaper/easier to use 2 antennas in a MIMO setup instead of making one really expensive super antenna then why not do it?

Dont think incompatibility but increased security!

[Kenja]

Sure, your access point only works with one brand of hardware, that just makes it harder for people to steal your precious bandwidth!

You can buy now;standards-firmware? Two years away

[postbigbang]

Next summer, the first standards-compliant firmware will arrive. A year later, that firmware will have been debugged and protected.

By then, WPA-PSK will have been handily cracked.

So buy now, if you need the speed, and hang on to your 802.11a/b/g card just in case you have to leave your 802.11n captive-vendor AP behind for a while.

And remember: gross payload might be 108mb, but actual max next-hop throughput is on the order of about 3.2megabytes/sec., using bsd ftp's number as a guide with puts and gets, on a clean GBE switch with no other users or interference or other obstructions.

Re:Didn't we go through the same shit with 802.11g

[Wesley Felter]

Isn't this a lesson we should have learned by now?

They learned the lesson all right, but it wasn't the lesson you wanted. Chip and system vendors learned that products based on draft standards make money, especially if you release yours first. So for every future version of 802.11 there will be a race to the bottom to ship draft hardware as early as possible.

Firmware fixes?

[Junior J. Junior III]

How many of these problems can be fixed by firmware patches once the N standard is finally finalized?