Wireless A, B, G, and now 'N'?

D

dwayne001

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 9, 2003
Messages
468
Sometime late last year netgear found a way to double the bandwidth of wireless G products. They have a router with a proprietary standard located here:
http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.asp?prodID=214&view=
called the Model WGT624.

It does what I'm dubbing as wireless N (for netgear) and it also reads B and G standards as well.

Have any of you heard about an emerging 108mbps standard for wireless? I'm about to upgrade from wireless B and the proprietary nature of this product isnt so much a turn off if i can get all my machines working on the wireless N standard...i feel like if it allows me to turn off B and G support i can lock out anyone who wants to piggyback on my network in addition to my WEP. The only thing is that it doest seem to have any USB 2.0 adapters for the wireless aspect...I'm not much for the idea of a PCI adapter when it comes to wireless technology.

your thoughts are appreciated.
 
Its just full duplex 54mbps. dlink has had it for a while too. its nothing too special. both the adapter and router must support it to work. its not even close to 108mbps though.
they will work with non full duplex equipment, its not a problem.

edit: actuall its not full duplex but channel bonding. everything else applies though.
 
its basically dual channel G. and much like dual channel RAM, its not much faster, it may top out at 40 mbit, max.

propietary formats = NO!
 
Jay caught his mistake. It's not full duplex. It's channel bonding but also uses compression when all nodes are using the turbo G only mode. From 40-50 Mb under perfect conditions depending on the AP maker. It is not .11n. That will surface sometime in 2005. I wouldn't worry about .11n anytime soon. Nice to talk about but you won't be using it at home this year. On the other hand, broadcom may come out this year with their new chipset that is advertising 125 Mbps, using standard .11g ofdm modulation. Supposedly they are benching raw 70 Mbps in their labs. This all with one frequency base (channel). Would be nice. Will still be .11g. Things are looking pretty good over the next few years for higher speed microwave LAN's, affordable ones too.

On another note, there is full duplex wireless but on bridges, point to point is the most effective solution and the only true full duplex. Two radios on slight different frequency bases in each radio. Western Tsunami, now owned by Proxim (as is lucent's wireless division (avaya, agere, etc..) has been doing this for years. There's also something a company is calling wireless switching using standard 802.11b and g gear. Multiple panel technology. Name escapes me at the moment. Company I used to work for is putting them up at a few sites. Not working too well unfortunately.

Edit: Company with the wireless switching is Vivato.net. Again, from my hearsay experience, this is not going well, and the WLAN community has pretty much dismissed this approach.
 
And after all the tests are done the "turbo" G is still barely faster if at all than standard A spec.
 
Incorrect if your talking about the standard 802.11a. .11a has it's own channel bonding using the atheros chipset. Havent' benched them in close to a year but that "turbo" mode wasn't a very solid performance boost. On the other hand, straight turbo G is substantial gains. Pushing 50 Mb under optimal conditions for the D-Link. Netgear isn't far behind. Stock .11a gear is doign well if it gets close to 30 Mb. The only real downfall of the turbo G is interoperability. Need to go with the same Mfg goodies if you want the best numbers. Frankly I don't see what this has to do with anything. .11a is pretty much dead in the consumer market.
 
Please don't buy those crappy products as the "turbo" mode kills the entire 2.4Ghz spectrum.... people have even reported that their cordless phones (also 2.4Ghz) are affected. Since these products don't play nice, please don't support them by buying them.
 
Who said anything about the consumer market?

And who in the hell has perfect lab conditions in their living room or bedroom, or anywhere else in their house. How bad does the range take a hit when you enable turbo mode in G? I'd imagine that it makes turbo about useless... What about Clutter of the 2.4Ghz range? What if someone turns on a Cordless phone? How's that affect it? Real world is all that matter. I can bench till I'm blue in the face and it means nothing if I can't duplicate it in any circumstance.

Dude, Comparisons work best under real world apple to apple conditions.
 
Ah, this misinformed. Comic fodder. They channel bond. Yes, they operate in two frequency bases. Yes, they would have a greater chance of affecting your 2.4 phones. So what. If you have a 2.4 WLAN you probably are better off running 900 Mhz or 5 Ghz phones anyway.

The range is about the same in "turbo" mode.

Calm down fellas. It'll be ok. The turbo mode is an excellent choice for those that must have the fastest wireless available. Double the bandwidth. The negatives are pounded into the ground by the positives if that is what your require, throughput. As far a .11a. Who said anything about consumer? That is 99% of the what the posts are about in this forum as it pertains to wireless. Try to keep up. .11a material is basically irrelevant in this form. dslreports.com or 80211planet on the other hand has some pretty good dialogue about the enterprise and wireless.

If you don't want to get then by all means don't, but to dismiss it or ask people not to support it by buying it. Stupidity.

Having said all that, those that must have alot of bandwidth for their WLAN, but don't want to use the dreaded Channel bonding, and (gasp), compression techniques of turbo G, they can wait for Broadcom's 125 Mbps .11g chipset to come out. But by all means, completely disregard any websites bench numbers. They are completely useless. lol Now since I have been installing microwave LAN's and WAN's for a living for the past 7 years, from 900 Mhz to 35 Ghz gear, I guess I'll just go by my own, including my turbo G "realworld" benches.

Edit: Oh I forgot. Dude.
 
Dismissing it as a bastardized standard, or even a potentially harmful implementation if it is NOT plain stupidity. Asking others to research the issue is not stupid. I administer a fairly large WAN that uses 802.11b bridges in several sections. I'm not totaly in the dark in this topic. I also try to keep involved with the Seattle Wireless project.

Having said that, there was a slashdot about this awhile ago.... you should check it out.

Here's a comment someone posted in regards to that article:

The 2.4GHz unlicensed band has 3 non-overlapping channels (1, 6 and 11). You can use up to three DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum) devices in the same location without them interfering with one another to a great extent. This would include one or more Wi-Fi networks, 2.4GHz cordless phones (that use DSSS, not FHSS), Baby Monitor, etc.

Anytime you have more than three devices co-located some of them are going to interfere with one another. That interference is going to either degrade your connection speed or it's going to prevent you from being able to connect all together.

If this 108Mbps technology is truly setup to use channel 5 and 6, then Broadcom is right. It is going to interfere with 2/3's of the available non-overlapping channels.

On a quick side note, because wireless connections do not have collision detection, they have to rely on collision avoidance. Once a packet is sent the receiving station has to reply with a receipt acknowledgement before more data is sent, this basically works to cut the actual data transfer rate in half, not that it matters anyway, since almost all wireless networks are used for internet access from ISP's that are lucky to break 3Mbps.

Back to my point though...if you have a wireless network, then be a conscientious wireless user and keep to channels 1, 6 or 11. You can also use the site survey software that came with your wireless adapters to find out what channel other nearby users have occupied already so you can avoid those. Additionally, if you buy other wireless products, avoid the 2.4GHz band if you can. If you must get a 2.4GHz cordless phone or baby monitor then do your homework and strictly avoid those devices which use FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum) - they are frequency hogs which have a tendency to kill other wireless devices.

Craenor - Senior Wireless Networking Specialist for Dell, Inc
Click to expand...

I would also just like to mention that there are public safety WANs (police / fire / medical) that span hundreds of square miles that rely on 802.11b to function. This is where I would begin to view products like these that unfairly monopolize a huge swath of the unlicensed 2.4Ghz spectrum as dangerous and irresponsible because they could potentially harm such a network.
 
Very little relevance in that post. I deal mostly with schools though have put in WWAN's for a few counties as well, govt officials, even a few fire departments. If federal, state, or local authorities used unlicensed bands for their network then they are stupid. Point to point is fine, or PtoMP, because you can get your bridge or the antenna anyway, up on a tower, above the noise. Regardless, this forum is predominately for the home consumer, especially when it comes to wireless. Using channel bonding in your home affects nobody, except perhaps your neighbor. I've read most of the relevant literature including some slashdot articles. That particular one is misguided, but well intended. Dismissing major performance gains based on slashdot article filled with opinions, not facts is in fact dumb imo. Having said that, my response may have been a bit harsh for a few in this thread and for that I apologize. As a WLAN and WWAN specialist I do get a bit edgy when guys who have put together a few WLAN's for their neighbors become "experts" in the field I have been in for about 7 years. Sometimes it gets the best of me.
 
I understand how that goes... the |33t kids do one thing on their parents comptuer and suddenly they are "experts". That bugs me too. I have also been doing this for awhile, but I tend to take a different aproach with the know-it-alls.... I try to teach them rather than offend them / piss them off. The saying that the first step to enlightenment is knowing what you don't know is very true. Having said that, I will rarely outright reject a statement made by someone else... by saying "that's stupid", you are putting a lot of faith into the fact that the companies radio hardware is capable of operating on several frequencies simultaniously without generating a lot of noise in the process. Sure, in theory it sounds great, but sometimes the actual implementation of that theory leaves something to be desired. Take the WAP11 for example. There are many hacks to boost the RF output to 100mW or more... that sounds like a no brainer, right? Unfortunatly, several people have shown that most of the additional RF output is noise... yes, you will get a better signal and range, but at the cost of adding a lot more noise to the surounding RF spectrum.

Here's a link for pics/ comments of the above example

http://www.maokhian.com/wireless/wap11.html

The municiple WLAN where I live uses the unlicensed spectrum because of the hardware costs... they are actually affordable. Cisco has some press releases about the WLAN on their website actually (since it is the largest so far... and it uses Cisco gear).
 
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