802.11n Draft 2.0 Approved by Working Group 105
[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.'"
About f***ing time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:802.11n -- what's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:802.11n -- what's the point? (Score:5, 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.)
Re:802.11n -- what's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
That's great, but what I want to know is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They need to prioritize (Score:2, Interesting)