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802.11n Draft 2.0 Approved by Working Group

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the stamp-of-approval dept.

[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.'"

6 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. About f***ing time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  2. Re:802.11n -- what's the point? by Normal+Dan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Even for gamers, where the multiplayer gaming protocols are optimized for ordinary cablemodem connections (and even dialup still for some), you're still not going to flood that 54 Mbps connection. I disagree. I had a wireless hub hooked up to a cable modem so we did not have to run a cable though the house. The wireless connection did slow me down a bit. It would have been nice to have a faster connection so my ping could be on par with the other player. Those few extra milliseconds can and often do mean the difference between life and death. Because of my high ping rates I became discouraged when it came to playing games and instead turned to my studies and other activities. Now I have a great paying job and I am quite healthy and financially successful. I never meant for this to happen, I just wanted to play games and have fun and I was robbed of such a life by wireless... damn you wireless, damn you!
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  3. N already? by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

    "Guess what! My network is now running exclusively on 802.11blue-dodecahedron-with-lemon-scent-and-sandp apery-texture!"

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  4. Re:They need to prioritize by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Informative

    >MORE packets per second on these networks,

    That makes no sense. WPA (using TKIP) changes keys every x packets, not x seconds. Usually under 10,000. WPA using AES/CCMP is even more difficult (if not impossible) to crack. WPA and WPA2 are just fine for wireless networks at 108mpbs. Hell, I'd be happy just to see people migrate away from WEP with this new release of products.

    The real vulnerability is still weak passwords. Wireless devices could do more to enforce better passwords and limit the amount of tries per minute per mac.

  5. Re:802.11n -- what's the point? by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:802.11n -- what's the point? by volsung · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.)