Right... "Token Ring on the other hand passes a token around and a NIC can send only when they have it."
That's just about the same way this works. The server "box" polls the clients. If your client isn't getting polled when you want to send, you wait. Therefore you lose throughput. And you don't just lose the top 30-40% like wired ethernet you lose about 70% once you get 3 or 4 clients. This equipment works great for linking two wired lans, in,say, two seperate buildings. It just isn't designed to link 50 clients together. If you want to see it, go down to your nearest CarMax(tm). At my nearest location (Sterling, VA) they have a showroom with terminals hooked together by wlan technology.
You can hook an antenna up to it to make it go further but that gets complex because you have to point each antenna at the base station. If you have ever hooked up a DSS dish, you know it's not the easiest thing in the world.
I work at an ISP and have used these wireless 11MB things before. They work generally well once you get them going. They may say 11MB but once you get three or more connected it goes down to about 3-5MB. Not that that is all that bad but it's not 11. It works like ethernet over token ring. The main unit polls each of the clients about 1500 times per second. If they don't have anything to send then it goes to the next client... If you start playing TF on these radios they go to shit. The UDP packets go way too fast for the polling system and things get laggy. But if you just want to transfer files it'll do the job. It really shouldn't need any drivers so all you should have to do is plug yer nic into it. Good Luck if you buy one.
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Right... "Token Ring on the other hand passes a token around and a NIC can send only when they have it."
,say, two seperate buildings. It just isn't designed to link 50 clients together. If you want to see it, go down to your nearest CarMax(tm). At my nearest location (Sterling, VA) they have a showroom with terminals hooked together by wlan technology.
That's just about the same way this works. The server "box" polls the clients. If your client isn't getting polled when you want to send, you wait. Therefore you lose throughput. And you don't just lose the top 30-40% like wired ethernet you lose about 70% once you get 3 or 4 clients. This equipment works great for linking two wired lans, in
You can hook an antenna up to it to make it go further but that gets complex because you have to point each antenna at the base station. If you have ever hooked up a DSS dish, you know it's not the easiest thing in the world.
I work at an ISP and have used these wireless 11MB things before. They work generally well once you get them going. They may say 11MB but once you get three or more connected it goes down to about 3-5MB. Not that that is all that bad but it's not 11. It works like ethernet over token ring. The main unit polls each of the clients about 1500 times per second. If they don't have anything to send then it goes to the next client... If you start playing TF on these radios they go to shit. The UDP packets go way too fast for the polling system and things get laggy. But if you just want to transfer files it'll do the job. It really shouldn't need any drivers so all you should have to do is plug yer nic into it. Good Luck if you buy one.