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Cisco Announces 802.11n Products After All
Kurtz'sKompund writes to mention that by announcing new 802.11n-compliant products Cisco has reversed their previous claims that the 802.11n standard was not ready for business use. "The Aironet 1250 access point can be used on its own, or as a thin access point connecting to Cisco's wireless switches - an approach that appears to duck the architectural issues which have split other Wi-Fi players. The AP, due next month, is capable of a theoretical rate of 300 Mbit/s (actual throughput probably around 100 Mbit/s) compared with todays 802.11g access points, and will cost $1299."
Wow,
That's a pretty hefty price for a small increase in speed and range. I am still skeptical as to how 802.11N will actually play out.
The problem was that it took too long to come out and it has given a big foothold for other players such as WiMax etc to maybe get a hold of the market. The promise of 802.11n and other wireless networks is to eventually increase the range so that you can have coverage over a larger area for a mesh type network but I think that with the amount of time and cost issues involved that another technology would be better suited.
As for home and small biz use 802G seems to be better but the speed is always nice. Not at that price though
Software Defined RFID - The Rifidi Emulator
But seriously upset your neighbor's users.
The reason I'm so against n-draft access points is because of how they don't peacefully co-exist. They're specifically designed to reduce interference -- for the 802.11n devices themselves. We're three neighbours here living wall-to-wall, each with our own 802.11b/g networks, on channels 1, 6 and 11. If any one of us switch to n, the other two will suffer. The one with the weaker signal and most problems already will suffer the most, due to n's genius approach of avoiding other strong signals.
Play nice. Just say n-no!
What's going to happen?
The beautiful part about the enterprise deployments is the ability to just plug in to the wired network. This will then automatically grab the policies and certificates needed to connect to the wifi network assuming the workstation/user combo are authorized. This is exceedingly easy to setup for small companies and can be done with only a single server and a managed switch. 802.1x authentication is transparent to the user if it is done right. Microsoft makes it mighty easy to do. FreeRADIUS and OpenLDAP on the Linux side are pretty simple as far as Linux alternatives go. They are both well documented.
Of course me being the geek I am I have the same setup at my house in addition to four sites of the company I work for. If someone manages to compromise that level of security they can have free Internet, my hat is off to them.