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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."
Of a, b, g, y, n? If they started with o at least they could have a joke in there.
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
There's a lot new in the 1250. A lot more than 802.11n. First off because it's 802.11n you're getting MIMO which is going to benefit your existing B and G users. You're also getting a gig uplink port, which you're going to need now. You also get modular wifi cards. That last one is the important part. My university just deployed about 100 access points, and to replace them now we have to go swap the entire units. It would be a lot simpler and cheaper to just swap the radios. Beyond just saving money not having to replace the entire unit you save no having to pay someone to take the time to swap the entire unit our including the mounting hardware and then reconfigure the unit. If Cisco follows through and uses the 1250 as a real platform similar to the catalyst line, then customers have a lot to gain.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
If it has a "theoretical rate of 300 Mbit/s ... compared with todays 802.11g access points", what theoretical rate does it have compared with yesterdays 802.11b access points?
...which means it's NOT a standard at all.
And draft standards have large-type caveats on their first pages: DO NOT DESIGN PRODUCTS TO THIS DRAFT STANDARD.
The implication, of course, is that the final released standard most likely will deviate from draft standards in some manner. Some deviances might be fixable via a simple firmware update. Other deviances may require ASIC respins ($$$$) or PCB spins due to form-factor changes.
Yet the various network-products manufacturers got themselves into a bind: in order to make their products seem faster than the next guy, someone jumped the gun and released a product based on a draft standard. Of course, since that industry is made up of sheep, the others followed in short order, releasing products also based on a draft. And guess what? The stuff from Vendor A doesn't play well, if at all, with the stuff from Vendor B.
There's a reason why various vendors' so-called 802.11N products have serious interoperability issues: there's no standard yet!
This particular standard is quite complex (see the article in EDN magazine) and it seems like every vendor implements different features in their own way. Of course each vendor wants their particular features to be part of the standard, and that's one reason why the standard has been delayed. The industry can't stand the delay; after all, 802.11g products are dead since 802.11n became "imminent," and if they can't sell anything, they have problems. So they sell products that are not ready for prime time, promising firmware upgrades if/when the standard is actually ratified. It'll be interesting to see how that all shakes out.
In that same issue of EDN, an editorial makes clear that basically consumers should just wait for the standard. Gimme gigabit Ethernet on a wire any day.
What's going to happen?
The comment on this linked article isn't on the mark. Cisco is specifically releasing a device that's got firmware based on Draft 2.0 from Task Group N, which has been certified as an interim release by the Wi-Fi Alliance. What all that means is that Cisco and other firms had to go through lab-based (not just plugfest-based) interoperability and conformance testing to get the Draft N Wi-Fi label. That's the baseline for the next year to 18 months for what 802.11n will look like. That's a far cry from Cisco just denigrating 802.11n's current state; they certainly didn't think it was ready several months ago (and it wasn't).
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Besides a client configuration nightmare?
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
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.