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Wireless Networking Hardware

Wireless Networking Speeds of 540 Mbps w/ 802.11n 225

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-believe-it-when-the-bits-are-in-the-air dept.
GuitarNeophyte writes "The Register reports three of the major players in forming the 802.11n standard have agreed to join forces in order to bring the new protocol into reality. Speculation states that the speeds using the new standard could be in the 540Mbps area! "Rather than see the 802.11n standards-setting process become deadlocked, as has happened in other cases, most notably ultrawideband, TGn Sync and WWiSE have clearly realized it makes more sense to work together than against each other.""
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Wireless Networking Speeds of 540 Mbps w/ 802.11n More

Wireless Networking Speeds of 540 Mbps w/ 802.11n

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  • This is excellent news for everyone, although there's a world of difference between pledging to work together and actually submitting a unified proposal to the IEEE.
    • I think it behooves all parties to expedite this as quickly as possible. I wouldn't anticipate any delays/ problems in submitting this proposal. Sounds like they're already on the same page.
    • And don't forget there is a world of difference between advertised speed and actual speed.

      If the pattern holds true to the same as 802.11g, we will see 200mbit at close range, and 100mbit at normal range.

      In other words they will claim 540mbit but we'll get 100mbit wired performance.

      The problem is that even 540mbit is not enough because a wireless network is like a hub, not a switch. All bandwidth is shared, and it is half duplex; only one person can send at a time on the entire wireless network. 540mbit sou

  • Muahahahaha (Score:3, Funny)

    by donleyp ( 745680 ) * on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @09:53AM (#13221712) Homepage
    Now, I will be able to hijack my neighbor's high speed connection ten times as fast!
    • Exactly, and when the Florida police come knocking at your door, you'll be just as happy about it. Heh heh.
    • and ten times as far...

    • Re:Muahahahaha (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hexalite ( 904492 )
      I plan to ping flood my whole neighbourhood offline, those wireless B modems won't stand a chance!
  • If Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD has taught us anything, it's obviously better to have an overzealous, point-missing war over two completely incompatible formats.

  • n? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by should_be_linear ( 779431 )
    How does this "n" letter compares to WiMAX?

    • Re:n? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Khakionion ( 544166 )
      WiMax is 802.16. It's not intended for single household use, like 802.11.

  • In the past... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @09:57AM (#13221752) Homepage
    ...three apartments I've lived in, we've struggled to get over 20Mbps with 100Mbps-rated gear. Does this mean we'll actually get 100Mbps from this, or will they somehow be able to avoid whatever's causing current-gen wireless gear to degrade when going through anything thicker than a fibreboard partition? :(
    • Are you talking wireless or not? I was under the impression that the fastest wireless spec for consumers is 54Mbs (802.11g and 802.11a), and that the higher speed equipment was using proprietary extensions, e.g. Linksys' SpeedBooster. If that's the case, I can't help feeling a little sceptical about the speed claims, especially considering how long it took bog-standard 802.11g equipment from different manufacturers to interoperate properly. In fact, the wireless in my Dell M60 (Dell TrueMobile 1400, or s
      • Many of the wireless products out there allow you to use two different frequencies to double pump the wireless connection.

        Here is one of Dlink's offering called AirPlusXtremeG [dlink.com]
        • "With the D-Link 108G enhancement, the DWL-2100AP can achieve wireless speeds up to 15x in a pure D-Link 108G environment"

          I thought we liked standards around here! ;)

          Sounds like a recipe for disaster (or at least low speed wireless). And I'm also curious where they get that 15x from: "now capable of delivering transfer rates up to 15x faster than the standard 802.11b ". 802.11b is 11Mbs. 11 x 15 = 165Mbs. 108/15 = 7.2... so are they admitting that their 802.11b equipment only delivers 65% thoughput? Ex
          • Not sure on the math for actual throughput, but D-Link's Extreme G products are based on the Atheros chipset, which I've had great luck with on the client side. The routers tend to have rebooting issues. Netgear and Airlink's 108Mbs routers are based on the exact same logic board, and inherit many of the same problems. But again, just as an 802.11G card, Atheros is hard to beat, and for a long time they were the only a/b/g solution out there.
      • It's not the technology which is unreliable, but the software drivers which are unreliable. For example, I was getting extremely frustrated that my Linksys 802.11g network was not working for shit in my apartment building (WPC54G and WRT54G). Even 15ft away my Windows XP laptop would lose signal, take 5-10 minutes to log back on (I use WPA), and generally pick up and drop the connection seemingly at random. I went through every knowledge base article on Linksys website, downloaded all the latest BIOS's f
        • Does your XP laptop have a Texas Instruments CardBus controller? There's a known issue that matches your description that I suffered with too. They used to have a beta release of some drivers that was supposed to fix it. They didn't make a proper release of them, and now it's hard to find them as there are multiple revisions of the hardware and they tend to hide drivers for older versions. Depending on your security configuration, Windows XP has an issue where it frequently drops the connection, but I d

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:In the past... (Score:2, Informative)

        by thue ( 121682 )
        you will have a very high SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio)

        That should be low SNR I think.

      • Re:In the past... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by __aaijsn7246 ( 86192 )
        From wikipedia:

        Channels and international compatibility

        802.11b and 802.11g divide the spectrum into 14 overlapping, staggered channels whose center frequencies are 5 megahertz (MHz) apart. It is common to hear that channels 1, 6 and 11 (and, if available in the regulatory domain, channel 14) do not overlap and those channels (or other sets with similar gaps) can be used such that multiple networks can operate in close proximity without interfering with each other, but this statement is somewhat over-simplif
    • Buy a wireless signal booster for ~$50 and stop complaining.
       
      Also, the latest wireless standard is 54Mbps, not 100Mbps.

  • Distance! (Score:3)

    by PhYrE2k2 ( 806396 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @09:57AM (#13221758)
    I'd rather have distance over speed... like the article a couple days about about 125mi WiFi. Has a lot more purpose, as anything important and needing the speed isn't going to be going over Wireless.

    -M
    • I agree, speed is nice, but at this point, I'm more interested in WiMax (omnidirectional distance) and roaming Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi in your car?). Those technologies will revolutionize the way we use Wi-Fi and the Internet.. then speed and security will be a top issue again.
    • I'd rather have distance over speed.
      Aw, come on ... how much pr0n do you think a carrier pigeon can carry, anyway?
    • Given the density of most cities, it seems like decent (eg, > 256k) speed long-haul wireless, especially ad-hoc unlicensed, would be less meaningful than high-speed 'standard distance' wireless.

      I just don't see a scheme where 10k people in 5 mi^2 can all have 1Mbps wireless without using way more spectrum than will ever be allocated to unlicensed consumer products.

      I agree that a decent speed implementation of a wide area wireless would be nice, but it's a carrier tech, not a consumer one.
      • I just don't see a scheme where 10k people in 5 mi^2 can all have 1Mbps wireless without using way more spectrum than will ever be allocated to unlicensed consumer products.

        You never know; there is 7GHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 60GHz band. That stuff is years away from commercialization, though.
        • Even assuming 1 bit per Hz of spectrum (eg, 7Gbits), that's still only 700kbps for 10k people, and 10k people is a cushy number relative to very high density locations like Manhattan.

          Of course this doesn't take into account oversubscription, but it also doesn't take into account signalling overhead nor loss of bandwidth due to interference (which would likely be huge if it was a consumer technology).

      • Personally, my wireless can't make it to the other side of the house. I've also done coroporate implementations where wireless needs to be placed a little too regularly, versus say a couple APs per hotel or large office building.

        Distance is key- as long as it's adjustable.

        -M
    • A technology that provides more gain can be used for higher speed at equal distance or greater distance at equal speed.
  • Running speeds like that over wireless is going to raise many questions like.

    What are the long term health risks going to be?.

    At what point will the governing bodies start to enforce legislation regarding notifications and health warnings that are seen on many mobile phone products already in many parts of the world.

    • Maybe I'm just not thinking enough about this, but why would faster speeds be any more dangerous than existing wireless technology?
      • Well there are more questions that can be asked. If mobile phone can cause health problems "possibly". and high power microwave is known to cause problems. Then why would there be no issues with current technology letalone higher speed specifications.
        • Well there are more questions that can be asked. If mobile phone can cause health problems "possibly". and high power microwave is known to cause problems. Then why would there be no issues with current technology letalone higher speed specifications.

          Yes, high power microwaves cause this health problem called "cooking".

          Low power gear like cell phones WiFi haven't been shown to cause problems.

          For the people that think "OMG the radiation!" think of it this way - you have no problems with a 1 degree chan

          • For the people that think "OMG the radiation!" think of it this way - you have no problems with a 1 degree change in temperature. You'd have a big problem with a 100 degree in temperature. Likewise, some radiation is ok

            Sure, if you assume the human body is built like a thermometer, but that would be a ridiculously naive assumption. Studies have demonstrated that microwave power levels which don't cause significant heating still cause significant and harmful effects, some by directly damaging DNA in a non-i
        • The legal limit for radiated power from wifi devices is something like 100mW. Your cell phone radiates many times that, and your microwave goes several orders of magnitude above that.

          Additionally, "speed" has little to do with how much radiation you will be getting. Picture yourself talking slowly on a CB radio. Now talk twice as fast. Are you somehow making that radio transmit more power by talking faster? Nope... you're just cramming more information into the same radio signal.

          Consider also that "fas
    • I, being the proactive person that I am, have placed two warning signs in my front yard. One states, that the unencrypted open wireless broadband access point in my house is not for public use, the other warns that the radiation emitted by said device may cause cancer, impotence, hunger, pregnancy, and/or death, BEWARE!

  • Network Burn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @10:01AM (#13221800) Homepage Journal
    We know that some EM radiation does cause cancer and other health problems. Which bands and frequencies, targeted for use by telecom (licensed or not), actually are hazardous? And how long before they're used by telecom providers struggling to deploy bandwidth?
    • Well, probably the best place to start is with the FCC RF Safety FAQ [fcc.gov]. The FCC bases their safety limits on recommendations from the IEEE [ieee.org] and National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements [ncrp.com]. The thing is, even if you have decided upon a specific power level beyond which it's "unsafe", figuring your exposure is complicated without carrying around and constantly monitoring an RF meter (might as well wear a tinfoil hat if you're gonna do that). If you want to check a specific antenna and have all t
  • This may be fine and good for some high-end applications, but I don't believe that a lot of places have upgraded to Gigabit Ethernet yet. For the home user whose main activity would be surfing the internet anywhere in the house, communicating with the router 10 time faster than 802.11g won't make the internet any faster.

    I'm all in favor of the advance of technology, but the only use I can find for this is faster streaming of video on a local basis once Gigabit ethernet becomes the standard. For right now,
    • There's a lot more to the world than the home user. I'm busy putting together the wireless office where all users will have wireless laptops and for me wireless bandwidth is a big issue.

      Oh, and incidentally I stream MP3s arround my home to a number of netgear MP101s and I notice the performance suffering when I'm downloading bittorrents or when ny son is playing on-line games so maybe I'd like more bandwidth at home too. Yes - I'm at the technically savvy end of the market but much more domestic data stream

    • I would personally use such a fast wireless network to stream movies and video around the house. My dream is to have a MythTV and file servers in the garage with nano-ITX or mini-ITX clients hooked up to the various TVs.

      That would allow me to store DVD images, MPs, recorded TV shows, and software CD images on the servers, and make use of them from any computer or media center in the house.

      Gigabit ethernet would be perfect for this, but installation would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. My at

    • Applications I thought of off the top of my head when I first saw it:

      1. Go get a wireless media center extender in every room of my house.
      2. Start using file servers more for my documents

      but I'm sure this will open up the door to some more interesting stuff in the future. 540MB/s will streaming 100 HDTV movies simultaneously. Why would we want that is a question I can't answer at the moment.
  • I wish they would focus on somehow fixing the conjestion of the current 2.4GHz spectrum. Having three non-overlapping channels (in the US) is simply not enough. Of course, you won't even have that because some company will come out with an "OMG-1Gb-WIRELESS!!" type AP which will use the whole damn spectrum.

    From my apartment I can pick up no less than 20 wireless networks using netstumbler. I'd be much more interested in having 11 or 54 megabit wireless, but a whole bunch of non-overlapping channels.

  • What happened to H,I,J,K,L,& M?

    Seems like a waste of alphabet to me. And what happens when we get to Z? Will there then be Aa Ab,Ac and so on through Zz?

    • From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11 [wikipedia.org] :

      IEEE 802.11 - The original 1 Mbit/s and 2 Mbit/s, 2.4 GHz RF and IR standard
      IEEE 802.11a - 54 Mbit/s, 5 GHz standard (1999, shipping products in 2001)
      IEEE 802.11b - Enhancements to 802.11 to support 5.5 and 11 Mbit/s (1999)
      IEEE 802.11d - International (country-to-country) roaming extensions
      IEEE 802.11e - Enhancements: QoS, including packet bursting
      IEEE 802.11F - Inter-Access Point Protocol (IAPP)
      IEEE 802.11g - 54 Mbit/s, 2.4 GHz standard (backwards compatible w

  • Antennas (Score:2)

    by MECC ( 8478 ) *

    Both proposals are based on the Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) many-antennae technique and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) to boost data throughput rates using two- and four-antenna arrays

    Is one of the antennas propellor shaped - placed atop beannie?

  • In a few years we'll have wireless that's almost half as fast as gigabit ethernet! Wooohooo!

    I love hearing the PHB's squaking about how "Pretty soon we won't need to bother cabling buildings." My last employer (http://www.wcccd.edu/ [wcccd.edu]) thought that MAC-Whitelisted, unencrypted, 802.11b was the wave of the future. Yeah, try pushing an image to 20 clients over that connection. Sigh, Wayne County.

    Wireless won't replace cabling in the near future. It's nice for a general connection to the web, but not for heavy-d
  • Man, Steve Jobs must be stubborn as hell!

    It's still not (really) a two button mouse!!

  • Carrier pigeons have been bred which fly at Mach 3 and carry twenty pounds of letters!

    Seriously, what's the range of 802.11n - ten inches?

    What's the medical risk of the 1 mega-watt this is likely to require to get any range at this speed?

    When it gets close to ratification - and Belkin is making a "pre-" version available at CompUSA - let me know.
  • Is this the same definition of "mbps" as in the current standard? Because if it is, you'll be lucky to get 54 mbps out of this gizmo, just like right now you often get only about 12 mbps out of a "54 mbps" wireless connection (as in 1MB/sec).
    • That's because your "bits" are too large. Perhaps you should not reply to all that spam!
    • The medium does get 54mbps, in total, raw bits. The problem, however, is that there is protocol overhead and latency to deal with that makes your data throughput something around 12mbps.

      You can't just send an Ethernet II or 802.3 frame out onto the air and expect it to get where you want it to go without additional header information. Data collisions also become more interesting when not every node can see every other node's traffic (which is different from wired traffic), which means that there needs to be
      • However, I'd rather have them specify the _real_ data throughput instead of some arbitrary number that can not be measured. If it's 30Mbps, I'm fine with that as long as it's reasonably close to that in the real life.
        • That can be easier said than done, since the "real" throughput greatly depends on the number of clients associated to the same access point, the number of access points on the same channel, the amount of traffic going to each client, etc, etc.

          Also, what counts as "real" throughput? Can we count the overhead of an FTP or HTTP transfer, or do we have to discount those overheads as well? (In which case your "100Mbps Ethernet" isn't 100Mbps, either).

          You ask that the industry specifies something that can be meas
  • 802.11s [wikipedia.org] stands to be the next big thing, IMHO. A P2P wireless Internet brings so much more potential and allows "blanketing" of entire areas with much better throughput. I'd be interested in seeing IEEE settle on a standard for that, since there are like 5 competiting protocols for it right now.
  • Will there be mandatory security for this stuff? eg, the AP won't work until you configure it sort-of-thing.

    I'm sick and tired of people who buy wireless routers "just in case" when they don't even use the wireless features. Sometimes wireless routers are even cheaper than the wired-only versions so people install them without disabling the wireless features.

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