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802.11n Draft 2.0 Approved by Working Group
[Geeks Are Sexy] writes "Yes folks, the 802.11 Working Group has finally approved Draft 2.0 of the 802.11n spec, bringing us a step closer to its final form. 'With the positive vote from the 802.11n Working Group, the Wi-Fi Alliance will now begin officially certifying equipment as being compliant with Draft 2.0. That's an important step, as official Draft 2.0-compliant gear is guaranteed to be fully compatible with the final 802.11n standard.'"
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ISO seems to be more efficient at ramrodding through standards we don't want (OOXML) rather than getting out the ones we are desperately waiting for. :p
It will take a couple of months at least for certified equipment to appear. Having participated in a couple of the working group meetings, I can say that (unfortunately) one of the unsaid goals for any of the participating companies was to make sure that none of their competitor's proposals go through as is. The rationale being that the competitor would have a chip design almost ready to go with that technique and will be faster to hit the market and grab market share...
With this speed increase, we will see even MORE packets per second on these networks, which only makes cracking of WEP, WPA, and LEAP that much faster now that the cryptographic sample set increases.
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You're thinking mostly home. Think full-scale enterprise, like I have to. It takes very little to saturate the links, especially when you factor in how much of the operations are now handled over the network. It's not just a few e-mails; Outlook can consume significant bandwidth (as can any client that keeps at least a copy client-side), and many companies require all data to be kept on network shares. Throw in roaming profiles and group policy-based software installations (even using BITS), and you can eat up wireless bandwidth very quickly.
The ability to match wire speeds for numerous users is going to be a huge benefit to companies that want to deploy wireless for something other than convenience in the conference rooms. Even when using a proper channel layout, even using 802.11a, you still have bandwidth contention within a channel on a single AP, and it mars the experience for the general user. Splitting higher bandwidth will assist in alleviating these issues.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
not to rain on your case but there is more then just internet traffic on my home network. I stream content and move files around to where I need them.
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We're more than halfway through the alphabet already. How long until we run out of letters, and have to designate our wireless standards by shapes, colors, or other designations?
p apery-texture!"
"Guess what! My network is now running exclusively on 802.11blue-dodecahedron-with-lemon-scent-and-sand
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Once official N gear starts hitting store shelves in full force, the G stuff is going to go "free after rebate" to clear the shelves.
Then we will see people buying trunk-fulls of G access points, and distributing grids of the free access points all over their property, providing greater coverage and more (net) bandwidth for the cost of $0 + time.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
more important than increased speed is the touted additional distance....
Those few extra milliseconds can and often do mean the difference between life and death.
Perhaps you would be happier with hobby a little less lethal?
But, people don't only use their networks for web traffic.
I know quite a few people who have wireless media players integrated into their stereos. If you're streaming your A/V stuff over your network, or copying files about between your computers, bandwidth is *good*.
I know when I'm backing up data from my work laptop to my FreeBSD file server over wireless, I sometimes wish it was faster.
Once your wireless runs most of your lan, there are lots of reasons why more local bandwidth is a thing you may want. Some people might have more local traffic that internet traffic.
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Wireless gaming is quite the little nightmare isnt it?
Here are some things you can do. The goal is getting the ping to the wireless router to be 1ms (or less) consistantly. 2-4ms consistantly is okay but past that lots of problems creep in.
1. Some wireless managers do something stupid every 30 or 60 seconds that causes lost packets and delays. The MS XP SP2 manager is one of these. I use the linksys manager that came with my card now.
2. Find a free channel in you area. Or the one with the least amount of interference on one of the three non overlapping channels.
3. Set your router to be either G or B only (pick one). Doing both adds some time slicing silliness that hurts latency. You might want to try both and see which one works out best for you.
4. Get as close as possible to the router.
5. Get a better antenna/chipset. You need a stellar connection with no interference.
I finally got my desktop to ping the router at 1ms consistantly with no lost packets. Well, once in a great while. Its so much more effort than running an unslightly wire and the wireless still 'feels' slow on BF2. Other games that arent as network demanding may fare better. Now I just run a wire when I want to play just to be extra safe and leave wireless for when im not gaming.
Lastly, an n-connection may not be at all faster in terms of latency. You may still have time slicing problems, weird interference issues, extra CPU usage, etc. Its not really like ethernet at all. Depending on the manufacturer and what the air interface is like near you it could be worse (latency wise) than running an old B router with a decent antenna.
Actually, I tend to agree. I can't imagine ever using wireless for anything more important than say, reading Slashdot or Perez Hilton. Slow, insecure by definition, and inconsistent. I'll take wires over wireless any day.
I don't respond to AC's.
It would be nice if the shift to 802.11n meant that we saw more built-in support for the 5 GHz band. 802.11a seems to have mostly died in the consumer market, while the 2.4 GHz band with its overlapping channels gets more and more congested with b/g devices. Unless you live in low density housing, you aren't going to get anywhere near 54 Mbps to your router, even if you wanted to.
Unfortunately, since 802.11n allows for 2.4 GHz and/or 5 GHz operation, there are some people who are pessimistic that we'll see many consumer grade devices that are dual band. (A quick check revealed that the Airport Extreme base station does both 2.4 and 5 GHz, which is nice, but I can't tell if the Macbooks with draft-n cards do both bands as well.)
I just want to jump in here and say that running a wire is much, much easier than most people think it is. The only time it can really be a pain is when you live in an apartment... in which case you are likely to have neighbors polluting the region of the radio spectrum near 2.4GHz.
In fact, you don't even need to know anything about wiring to install a network cable. All you need to know is how you're going to run the cable. The connectors have color codes on them (if you buy anything but the very cheapest) and you can just press the wires into the proper areas, matching their color codes, and snap the little crimp connectors on.
Wireless is indeed the answer in some situations - those situations are all ones in which you're moving around, or a remote site to which you cannot run a wire. For everything else, you owe it to yourself to run a wire. You can run 100Mbps for hundreds of meters...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...will it include priority packet support for Duke Nukem Forever?
I've got a Pre-N router/card combo, and It's not "basically G". The "Basically G" router I used to have, would be hard pushed to give me a signal at the bottom of the garden. It also had a major problem with DECT phones, and if anyone decided to use the microwave oven, I could kiss goodbye to any data transfer during cooking. Now I'm blackspot-free, there's a clear signal all the way to a friend's house three doors up across the street, through his house into the fields beyond, and my signal is about as likely to get jammed by a leaky oven or noisy telephone as a fly is to knock out a 40 ton truck.
Mmmm, I like N. Even the dodgy draft versions.
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