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

Re:This is why

[rcw-work]

kflex tried to rush to market.. but i personaly think it was USR that made v.90 stick

That's rewriting history. USR promoted X2, Lucent/Rockwell promoted K56Flex. There was no interoperability. A year or so later, with poor sales and no clear market leader, they both compromised with the v.90 standard. USR equipment sold after that point typically supported X2 and v.90, Lucent/Rockwell equipment sold after that point typically supported K56Flex and v.90.

Sort of reminiscent of DVD+RW vs. DVD-RW, Bluray vs. HD-DVD, etc, etc. It seems that if you want everybody's product to follow a documented open standard, you should have the first implementation of it be done by an academic institution.

Not Promising...

[TripMaster Monkey]

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.

I'll say. Doing a quick-and-dirty measurement of the fitness of 802.11n for prime time by taking all the numbers in that table and averaging them, one comes up with the unappetizing figure of 30.9. I'll stick with my 802.11G, thanks....at least I know it'll work pretty much the same wherever I go.

Dial N for $$$

[Kesch]

I don't even know why the notorius early adopter crowd would buy draft-n wireless equipment. When buying a laptop recently I had the choice to get a draft-n wireless card, however some quick googling showed me that draft-n devices universally underperform. The biggest thing though is that there is no garuntee whatsoever that these cards will work with n networks (they don't even play well with other draft-n devices) when they finalize the spec. I don't see any reason to buy into draft-n except that it contain 85% percent more buzzwords than leading competitors.

the great thing about this..

[loose electron]

That's the great thing about "standards" there are so many to pick from!!!

Funny thing, the data thruput bottleneck is generally not at the 802.11X point anymore.

802.11"X" - hm, that has a nice ring to it.... Sorta sounds like upgrading my 80286 to a 386, to a 486, to a...

Seriously the 802.11 interface will shake out.

Stay tuned for 802.16A WiMax!

Re:the great thing about this..

[loose electron]

Um....

I have sat on IEEE standards committees, boring political push and shove exercise that they can be. (hm... should I go AC here?)

802.11X in all its variations is largely a variation on modulation/BW schema, nothing new or exciting here. It's just another ISM band data link.

802.15.4 has some interesting applications in remote low speed data monitoring (aka ZigBee)

802.16.a (and the ones there after) have some exciting applications in distance networking. (WiMax)

What everyone has been trying to make WiFi (802.11X) do (which it is not designed for) will be done using 802.16, that one is designed for wireless links over multi km distances.

Google 802.16 WiMax and 802.15.4 Zigbee and you will find plenty to read.

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

[poot_rootbeer]

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.

What's it like being married to Sen. Ted Stevens' child?

pre n no thank you.

[atarione]

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/30/opinion_wifi_all iance/

The cease-fire agreement included the "Draft 1.0" of the standard that allowed manufacturers of consumer WLAN gear to spawn the current crop of "draft 802.11n" products. These half-baked, rushed-to-market products are buggy and interfere with legacy 802.11b/g WLANs. They also, with the rare exception, fail to crack the magic 100 Mbps mark under best-case conditions and mostly lack the gigabit Ethernet switches that should go hand-in-hand with products that prominently display speeds in the hundreds of Mbps on their product boxes.

until 802.11n routers can play nicely with other wireless networks and not interfere with 802.11b/g WLANS...and can offere some actual performance benifit I fail to see any reason to have anything to do with 802.11n (pre n)

Re:pre n no thank you.

[MojoStan]

until 802.11n routers can play nicely with other wireless networks and not interfere with 802.11b/g WLANS...

The conclusion to Anandtech's review on "draft 802.11n" routers showed just how bad these products can interfere with existing 802.11b/g networks. It's pretty freakin' bad (bold emphasis mine):

In our preliminary mixed mode testing we experienced the "bad neighbor" effect several times. Not only with our own internal 802.11g network but also visits from actual neighbors who were upset with having to constantly reboot their systems during our testing phase. As we stated earlier, the current 802.11n Draft 1.0 products utilize channel bonding to combine two 20MHz channels into a one wide 40MHz channel. Without proper fall-back techniques, this type of channel bonding can basically take over the entire 2.4GHz band that these products utilize. While the current 802.11n draft states that routers should not interfere with other networks in the area there are not any specifics as to how this will occur. At this time it is left up to the individual manufacturers to determine a "good neighbor" policy.

So even if you can get good 802.11n performance now, you'd probably be an arsehole to your neighbors (literally crashing their wireless networks). I hope the sellers of "draft n" products include an appropriate warning on their products for those who aren't arseholes.

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.

I have the D-Link RangeBooster N

[engine matrix]

Everyone seems to be criticizing people for buying draft wireless equipment. I bought the D-Link RangeBooster N for my home laptop (which never leaves the table) because I was tired of my neighbors G routers constantly dropping my connection.

I've never been happier. The speed is extremely fast, the signal is strong, and best of all my connection never drops. When I get home my SSH sessions are still logged in... that's a first. It's also a great router too with decent QoS.

I'm totally happy to be a beta tester if it means I'm flying solo in the frequency spectrum for a year or so.

Re:I have the D-Link RangeBooster N

[finkployd]

I am sure they are happy also. Your crappy, pre-standard N card likely screws up their g network. Good neighbor :(

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2824&p=9

Finkployd

Santa Rosa (Intel)

[Chowser]

I was just reading something interesting as well. Intel plans on releasing the next platform chip Santa Rosa before the final standard. Santa Rosa will supposedly have the new 802.11n centrino technology. Check out the news story here http://news.com.com/2061-10791_3-6110311.html

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

[Hamster Lover]

If memory serves, networking gear manufacturers did the same thing with 802.11g by releasing "802.11g ready" routers and wireless network cards before the standard was even finalized. I remember this because I bought a "g ready" Linksys wirelss card that worked with my 802.11b router, but never worked with the D-Link "true" 802.11g router I upgraded to, so I tossed the card and had to buy another.

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

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?