According to Wired's website, the new standard for Wi-Fi is near completion and offering up to 600mbps promises lightning fast speeds along with a great deal of other bells and whistles. Around half a decade's work has gone into this development, and the new standard '802.11n' is due to be released upon the world by September, nice and early for the Christmas rush. Often referred to as 'Wireless N' the new standard could offer not only the ability for a 600mbps transfer rate, but also will allow the ability of up to four simultaneous streams of high definition video, voice and data in households.
This may seem all numbers and gibberish, so we'll put it into perspective; the current standard is '802.11g' which only offers speeds up to 54mbps, great for most people but for those who have higher expectations the new standard is something which will be welcomed. For a few years now, manufacturers of networking technology have been developing products based on a draft version of the standard, but be warned these often only contain two or three channels to transfer data on and have substantial caps on the 600mbps which the new standard can provide.
One of the most important additions to the new 802.11n standard is the addition of a capability abbreviated to MIMO. Standing for Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output, it allows for multiple antennas to resolve information at a much faster pace than the 802.11g standard.
"So far we have had products based on the version of 802.11n that is fairly basic," says Kelly Davis-Felner, marketing director for the W-Fi alliance. "Now we are likely to see more devices that have all the bells and whistles in place."
According to one of Wired's sources, the difference will certainly have a great impact upon the home network and suggests that the idea of this technology may have bred out of the need to stream video in double quick time, without having to wait: "Speed is everything and videos are the main driver for this technology, when you are home you want to get to YouTube fast and watch video and have a phone connection and surf."
"At the least we can get six times the speed of the current 802.11g standard, that means we can transmit high definition video across multiple rooms in a pretty large house with just one access point."
Mike Concannon, senior VP, Qualcomm.
















i wonder if a firmware update bring that up to 600 or will we need new hardware
im running a Dlink DGL-4500 atm
I think only a few are capable of 600mpbs actually.
I don't think manufacturer's will be busy releasing firmware updates. Instead, they will roll over new or updated revision of products. Bad for us with Draft-N routers, but I don't think we'll see many updates once the standard is published.
I don't think manufacturer's will be busy releasing firmware updates. Instead, they will roll over new or updated revision of products. Bad for us with Draft-N routers, but I don't think we'll see many updates once the standard is published.
Maybe projects like DD-WRT and Tomato can help. I hope DD-WRT can upgrade my Linksys WRT-300N in a few years.
You mean negligible not negatable right? Anyhow, how can you say the difference between draft-n and anything lower is negligible? G is 54mbps, even Draft-N is 300mbps given ideal conditions. The range is also much improved. Hardly negligible.
But 600Mbps will do nicely.
Yeah, when they're in the same room, next to each other. How is it going to get 600Mbps in the real world when Draft-N struggled with 300?
Wait! Don't answer... I'll go down to the bank now.
The wireless N increases range which is important because if signal degrades through Walls having a high throughput with range will help to get your wireless connection to real world maximum speeds. Also there will be low cost wireless devices released running off a wireless connection running to multiple TVs around the house, more efficient than wires so yis true
but i remember at college, it was hit or miss if youd get past G speeds using their N
and it was always random who did get a good speed
but i remember at college, it was hit or miss if youd get past G speeds using their N
and it was always random who did get a good speed
Yeah it seems to be really picky on what type of card/router you have.
Where did the bread come from?
i thought youtube was really more dependent on your internet connection than your LAN... at 600mbps i am thinking its more to do with streaming things like bluray videos just like you could stream mp3's around the house now?
the draft was about 320mbps or something
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Though not approved by the IEEE, since 2007[3] the Wi-Fi Alliance has been certifying interoperability of "draft N" products based on what was draft 2.0 of IEEE 802.11n specification. They have affirmed that all formerly certified products will remain compatible with the products conforming to the final standard.
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Though not approved by the IEEE, since 2007[3] the Wi-Fi Alliance has been certifying interoperability of "draft N" products based on what was draft 2.0 of IEEE 802.11n specification. They have affirmed that all formerly certified products will remain compatible with the products conforming to the final standard.
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Yes, but with these new features, the draft N stuff may operate with the final N standard, but will be missing those features, correct? As it sounds to be hardware related, I don't know that a software update would be able to provide these new features...
So one sec, whats your router? g? draft-n? For starters you DONT have a true N router, thats for sure. Secondly, I smell that you're a muppet and you're using a G router with draft-N wnics, and then you read 600mpbs here and you think this is what you should be getting.
FAIL IMO.
The 802.11n standard offers and wider capacity for connection speeds, but not for a single connection. To keep it simple, your laptop or desktop computer will never reach a 600Mbps throughput, nor was the "N" standard meant for that. Apply what you know to the wireless technology and take a your best desktop computer or server with a 1000Mbps NIC inside and move a 5GB ISO image to another destination of equal capability. Make sure you are using a switch that has a forwarding rate of at least 90MB/s (Around $1000 or more), which most switches purchased at your local Bestbuy or Dell for $100-$300 max out around 10-20 MB/s. Most of you know you will be lucky to achieve a max throughput of 400-500 Mbps. For anyone who believes that a wireless connection will perform at the ability of a hardwire Ethernet connection….Your just fooling yourself. Think more down the line of 200Mbps top speeds "per connection" for your 802.11n, and this means you have one awesome computer and are standing 5 feet from your AP and have it operating with 40Mhz over 5Ghz.
802.11n offers and advertises 300 or 600 Mbps as its total bandwidth capacity across all connections depending on if your AP allows single band 20Mhz over 2.4Ghz or 20Mhz x 2 Multiplexed 40Mhz at 5Ghz. The AP has to sync each connection at 300 or 600 or less to quota itself. Just like a normal switch would have, say, 24 ports, each port with a top sync of 1000 Mbps, but you know you will never get 24,000 Mbps (or a forward rate of 240Mbytes per sec) through that switch. But the beautiful thing about 802.11n is something that was borrowed from some later generation 802.11g AP's…MIMO (Multi-In, Multi-Out). That fancy multiplexing allows each connection to have its own path to and from the AP. So, unlike older non-MIMO AP that shared the 54Mbps across all connections….802.11n gives each connections a dedicated pipeline. Kinda like Cable Broadband and DSL (Cable Broadband is shared and DSL is dedicated). So all though you will never get actual 600Mbps to your AP (more like 100-200), each client associated to the AP will have its own 100-200, UNTIL all connections hit the 300 or 600 capacity threshold. All the other features like PEAP, AES-256, Built-in Radius, Certificate support, more stable MIMO, etc…..Those are the things you should be happy to get….
And….it was mandated that any OEM that wished to have the certified 802.11N WIFI Alliance logo on their product must agree to allow that device to be software/firmware upgradable. So I would say you should get the update (even if it takes them a year), unless that OEM wants to get sued for false advertising.
If you care to know….I run a Cisco Aironet 1252 AP….
i hope they will make it that those routers with 600mbps can send on 2.4ghz band and receive at 5ghz band, why? faster! :p
atm 11n cards & routers 2.4/5ghz can only use one band not both
m = milli = 1/1000
M = Mega = 1,000,000
b = bit
B = Byte, or 8 bits
We can be sloppy in ordinary conversation, but technical discussions demand accuracy.
I would agree with you that people seem to quickly get caught up in the specs of one device, when the capability of other devices has a direct impact on the new toy’s ability to achieve its advertise result. I feel a lot of people are going to get disappointed when they bring home their new 802.11n toy and realize its not giving them the advertised result. They will then accuse the OEM of the AP and the OEM of their computer, and anyone else they can, as to why their AP isn’t working right, when its most likely that old switch/router or some other component that is slowing down their 802.11n.
How's it confusing?
-I guarantee you if you take a survey nationwide in the US and UK that 75% of people will not understand how routers work. Many connections aren't even secured yet.
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