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Faster, Stronger 802.11b 111

Posted by timothy from the sharing-with-more-neighbors dept.
stoney27 writes: "Looks like U.S. Robotics has doubled the speed of 802.11b plus increased the range. See link on MacCentral." You'll need upgraded equipment at both the base-station and computer ends to get a boost in speed, but they claim compatibility with standard 802.11b.
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Faster, Stronger 802.11b More

Faster, Stronger 802.11b

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  • http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/20/149213 &mode=thread
  • This was reported last Saturday on Slashdot. Why again?

  • Time to eat more chips (Score:3, Funny)

    by robolemon ( 575275 ) <<nertzy> <at> <gmail.com>> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @04:01AM (#3393360) Homepage
    Double the bandwidth! Does that mean I have to use two pringle cans as antennas? Once I pop, the file transfers don't stop!
  • anything to make wardriving easier.
  • This *was* on /. just a few days ago.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/20/1492 13 &mode=thread

    It's still cool, though you only get the speed boost if both the transmitter and receiver are USR.

  • Net effect is zero... (Score:5, Funny)

    by valentyn ( 248783 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @04:04AM (#3393368) Homepage
    ... when you post all your stories twice [slashdot.org].

  • We Poor Europeans ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frankske ( 570605 ) <slashdot@@@frankbruno...be> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @04:06AM (#3393377) Homepage
    So we poor .EU people (where 802.11a is not allowed as the 5.4 GHz band is not free) can get a speed bump as well? I only wonder at what range the 22Mbps will work? 50m? 25m?
    • Actually 802.11a was approved by EU recently, so no problems there.
    • To clarify further, we poor Europeans are not all the same - no matter how it may appear to US citizens.

      Frankske appears to be posting from Belgium, and I cannot speak for there, but April 24th is the big day in the UK for 802.11. Then, the Radio Authority, who control the spectrum are expected to announce that their intention is to free up this space for commercial use. At the moment, non-commercial use is allowed but don't try and take any money.

      http://www.radio.gov.uk/topics/pmc/consult/publi ct ele/public.htm
      • You mean 802.11a or b? Here in .be, any operation of 802.11a is prohibited. Use of 802.11b is permitted for all users, as long as the range is no more than 300m. If you are using it as a non-public network for more than 300m, you need to get a license (which costs you heaps of money, but the chances foor getting one are quite good), if you want of offer public services on the 802.11b band, you need to get permission from the minister of telecom himself ...
        • There has been no official indications on 802.11a. in the UK, though the lobbying is hoping to cover both varieties - as well as any variants.

          802.11b is currently open for non-commercial use but there is no licence available at any cost for commercial use. The word is that in June 802.11b becomes free-for-all with no licence needed.

          Will be interesting to see how the EU handle this don't you think? Bit unfair if we in the UK can get a licence for nothing and you in Belgium have to pay.

          Let's stir it up! :-)
  • Anybody wish to enlighten one of the unwashed, low-bandwidth folks as to what normal range on an 802.11 is? The article claims a 70% range area increase, effectively a 30% distance increase, etc., but gives no standard.

    What's the usual range?

    • What's the usual range?

      It seems to be at least 24km, large-Milo(r)-tin-to-half-omni, provided that the half-omni is in Perth's Hills area and the Milo(r) tin has clear LOS to it from the flat bit.
    • Range for 80211.b is completely dependent on line-of-sight and antennas employed. With high gain directional antennas on each end of a link, 20 miles is not impossible, although aiming those things would require near wizardry to accomplish. Laptop cards connecting to an Access Point inside a house (probably accounting for 95% of all situations)have trouble going much more than 100' depending on construction and number of walls or floors you are trying to penetrate. For endless discussions on this topic, see alt.internet.wireless
  • 802.11g (Score:4, Interesting)
    by cyr on Saturday April 20, @12:13PM (#3379398)
    (User #571397 Info | http://a26.lambo.student.liu.se/)
    A nearly free 100% speed boost is nice, but I would wait for 802.11g instead, giving 54Mbps in the 2.4GHz band and also being backward compatible with 802.11b.

    I'm not an expert, but it seems to me 802.11a is doomed. Is there any reason to prefer it over the upcoming 54Mbps 2.4GHz stuff?

    [ Reply to This | Parent ]

    A couple reasons to choose 802.11a over 802.11g (Score:5, Informative)
    by Freeptop on Saturday April 20, @01:35PM (#3379691)
    (User #123103 Info)
    First, the 2.4 GHz has a ton of other devices sharing the same spectrum, from Bluetooth to wireless headphones, to your microwave. 802.11a runs in the 5GHz band instead.

    Second, according to the last proposals I'd heard of, 802.11g is going to achieve higher bandwidth by taking up more of the spectrum. In other words, it is going to use more channels to simultaneously broadcast data, rather than just being able to shove more data down the same channel. This means your own access points will begin to interfere with each other much sooner than your 802.11a or .11b APs will.

    In general, it is going to depend on your situation as to which you wish to choose. 802.11g will be great for backwards compatibility, but the news coming out of IEEE seems to indicate that 54Mbps is more like something to shoot for than something they expect to achieve. 802.11a won't have compatibility, and it will also have a shorter range, but it will have higher speeds with less interference.

  • Users of 802.11Flex upset (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    U.S. Robotics, in doubling the speed of 802.11 by x2, has also succeeded in upsetting users of competing 802.11Flex modems.

    More to come.
  • Deja vu all over again. I think this is worth announcing twice, for those who use the technology. For the rest of us.. one day your computer won't have a blue wire permenantly attached :)
    • What if it's a blue wire attached to a little box that says Breezecom 802.11b on it? yes folks here we have WDSL service.. http://www.wdsl.net ..we have this local phone monopoly that thinks for some silly reason a hardwired 64Kbps dsl line should be $1000 a month. yea I know i told them to put down the pipe. This service works well most of the time and gets me 3MB for $100 a month...pretty neat huh?
  • ... arise from the doubling of stories on /.
  • Nice! Now I can war drive at twice the speed!

  • Works only with category 5 air! (Score:4, Funny)

    by roguerez ( 319598 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @04:31AM (#3393422) Homepage
    These chips double 802.11b speeds by functioning full duplex. The drawback however, is that this requires category 5 air.

    Not all offices and homes fulfill this requirement. Location plays an important role: in the city you'll most likely not be able to communicate full duplex. In suburbs you'll have a fair chance if you're not too close to the city. In rural area's you'll most probably always have full duplex.

    You can communicate at 22 Mbps over short distances using category 4 air, but when the peers are more than a few meters apart, category 5 air becomes a must.

    Just something you might want to know before you buy these things..

    Note: since this story seems a duplicate, I'll just duplicate my reply as well.. ;)
  • First, the 2.4 GHz has a ton of other devices sharing the same spectrum, from Bluetooth to wireless headphones, to your microwave. 802.11a runs in the 5GHz band instead.

    Second, according to the last proposals I'd heard of, 802.11g is going to achieve higher bandwidth by taking up more of the spectrum. In other words, it is going to use more channels to simultaneously broadcast data, rather than just being able to shove more data down the same channel. This means your own access points will begin to interfere with each other much sooner than your 802.11a or .11b APs will.

    In general, it is going to depend on your situation as to which you wish to choose. 802.11g will be great for backwards compatibility, but the news coming out of IEEE seems to indicate that 54Mbps is more like something to shoot for than something they expect to achieve. 802.11a won't have compatibility, and it will also have a shorter range, but it will have higher speeds with less interference.
  • So if you have a USR Courier on both ends, you get better transfer speeds?

    Let me guess -- they'll offer server-side at a steep discound if you can demonstrate that you run a BBS.

    Oops. Wrong decade. Same marketing ploy, though.

    Cheers
    -b
  • 11 Mbps to 22 Mbps SOUNDS like a 100% increase, but what is the real speed/range gain? Given an 11 Mbps system with 3 nodes each at 10m from the access point, what is the actual thruput? Is switching to the USR system going to actually DOUBLE that?

    Network speeds rank right up there with CRT sizes, CD-ROM spin speeds and tape storage capacity as some of the biggest bullshit numbers in computing.
    • CD-ROM spin speeds

      Oh, you saw the spin-CDs-to-destruction report as well? The one where CDs would consistently explode before getting to true 64x?
      • Speaking of...

        Have you noticed that all the new cdroms and burners have warning stickers now? They say not to use a badly scratched CD or risk having it exlode at high RPM. I sort of find that hard to believe, unless the thing is cracked already.
    • My guess is about 50% increase. Sounds crappy, I know, but 802.11b has a bit of overhead. The beacons and all management packets are usually broadcast at 2Mbps, and the headers of all packets usually go out at 2Mbps as well -- so that slower 2Mbps-only radios realize a packet is being transmitted so collisions can be avoided. This allows for backward compatibility with the original 802.11. The faster the advertised rate (22Mbs vs 11Mbs) the more the actual throughput is affected by the collision avoidance overhead.
    • What I think is funny is that the access point will still probably only insert to an ethernet switch at 10 half.

      :) giggle.

  • The real skippy... (Score:5, Informative)

    by siferhex ( 321391 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @05:12AM (#3393500)
    All of the 22Mbps 802.11 hardware coming out is based on the Texas Instruments ACX100 chip. TI was proffering this (their own) standard to become 802.11g, but lost out in the end. The chip is indeed fully backwards compatible with 802.11b.

    There are going to be others putting out HW based on the ACX100 as well, Linksys for one. So well see how many people jump on the the bandwagon before 802.llg gets into the market.

    The operating range for HW based on this chip will be larger. This is because the device can get a full 11Mbps signal with a signal to noise ratio half that of current HW. This means that at 11Mbps the range will be significantly larger. However at 22Mbps the range should be about the same as, perhaps slightly better than, current 802.11b systems.

    The system uses the same channels as 802.11b and AFAIK doesn't use up more channels than 802.11b (ie 3 orthogonal channels in the US).

    The chip is also all CMOS so power consumption should be somewhat better than todays 802.11 stuff as well.

    That's all I know, hope this illuminates the issue...
  • Reminds me of the HST modems of USR you would get 1700+ kbs instead of 1500-1600 kbs...

    You could only do this with 2 usr hst modems....
    • 1700kbps modem? Damn, I'd like that today!

      BTW- HST had three versions, at 9600bps, 14.4kbps, and 16.8kbps.

      Makes me wonder if you are speaking from experience, or just something you read somewhere.
    • It was experience but when was the last time you used a 14k4 modem to dial-up to a BBS...

      It's just not unlikely that 1 chipset vender can squize out extra performance if it's tuning everything to it's own equipment.
  • By reading the Headlines today I get that...While finding the Programing zone we have pay to recycle our PCs or play hardball tactics with the devil wearing solar powered wearables one the moon, surfing faster on 802.11b... wow and i didn't want to get out of bed this morning...Good Morning Slashdot!!
  • It seems the article is saying USR is proposing a new standard 802.11g. It will be backwards compatible with 802.11b.

    They have a chance at this being successfull IF other companies use the same TI (Texas Instruments) chipset that USR is using. Otherwise - the doubling of speed will ONLY work with USR products that use the TI chipset - meaning your still stuck on 802.11b. (And paid extra money to do so)

  • all that's left to do is make it Harder (better security) and Better (change the name to something cooler perhaps?). Sorry, I couldn't resist.
  • We can rebuild it. Faster. Stronger. Geekier.

    Anyone want to loan me a few million?
  • Does that mean that I now only have to sniff packets for half the time in order to decode the WEP keys?
  • I know the story has been up for hours now.

    I know I'm being redundant.

    Oh what the hell, that [slashdot.org] doesn't seem to bother anyone else here, might as well just submit and get my down mod, just like they posted and got my lame rebuke number 389...

    • I know the story has been up for hours now.

      I know I'm being redundant.

      Oh what the hell, that [slashdot.org] doesn't seem to bother anyone else here, might as well just submit and get my down mod, just like they posted and got my lame rebuke number 389... 8^)

      So sorry - I just couln't resist. I swear I will never do this again! 8^)

  • 11a,b,g factoids (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sshore ( 50665 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @07:31AM (#3393830)
    11g is really 11a-style OFDM at 2.4 Ghz rather than the 5 Ghz band. There would be two (at least) 11g modes: a compatibility mode whereby OFDM packets and legacy 11b CCK packets coexist, and one which is "pure" OFDM at 2.4 Ghz.

    The compatibility mode adds a huge overhead to each transmitted packet. An 11g transmitter in this mode must first complete a legacy 11b RTS/CTS operation on the air which, if successful, is followed by the actual packet. Even if the actual packet were transmitted at nearly infinite bandwidth, the effective bandwidth you'd see on a connection would be quite low - think 10 Mb/s on average. That's not exactly chopped liver and its way better than legacy 11b, but it's definitely not 54 Mb/s.

    There are suprisingly large differences between 11a products, even those using the exact same vlsi chips. There are two primary reasons: differences in choice of output power amplifier (or lack thereof) and differences in choice of antenna. You can deduce some of what's going on by looking at power and sensitivity ratings in manufacturers product specs. By the way, this also a great way to distinguish between 11b products as well.

    Second generation 11a products have much better receiver sensitivity and output power than the first generation versions. And they do transmit through walls... although not concrete or metal or mirrors or some ceramics.

    The main reason why 11b can reach farther than 11a in some situations is that 11b can ratchet down to 1 Mb/s whereas 11a is defined for rates from 54 down to 6 Mb/s (11g is identical to 11a in this regard). The difference in SNR and sensitivity needed at a receiver to pick out the 11a or 11g signal accounts for nearly all of the differences in range ... and these differences are quite small if you have a good 11a radio with a good antenna.

    Thus, 11g will have the same power, SNR, and receiver sensitivity challenges as 11a in the 5 Ghz band, but will also have a small boost in signal propagation efficiency in the lower band.
    Don't get bamboozled by the hype about compatibility with 11b. Compatibility for sharing the channel does not imply that the radio properties of 11g are the same as 11b.

    Most vendors are busy bringing out 11a+b base stations and NIC cards. 11g in compatibility mode looks like a nightmare, whereas 11g in "pure" mode looks like 3 more channels of high performance OFDM if you have an 11a radio that can tune to both the 5Ghz and 2.4 Ghz bands. Aside from the higher-power outdoor channels at 5.8, this provides 11 channels for OFDM (8 at 5 Ghz plus 3). And this means that a group of base stations in an AP-dense environment will certainly be able to find a clear channel.

    I didn't say much about the PBCC-based 22 Mb/s products. PBCC is actually a clever design but is likely going to be overshadowed by OFDM at 5 Ghz (11a) and OFDM at 2.4 Ghz (11g variants).
    • As someone who just purchased a couple of Linksys WiFi adapters (1 PC Card, 1 USB) I can say, I don't need anything faster for my use. Half my network was 10Mb anyway, and these WiFi adapters work full speed throughout the house. perfect for home use.

      (One of them claims up to 450 meters outside range. a couple walls arn't going to kill it.

      'cours 54Mb would be more fun. (I did not linksys had something to do 74Mb, propietary though I believe.)

      • One of them claims up to 450 meters outside range. a couple walls arn't going to kill it.

        Try it in an old building like where I live. I've got a T-1 coming into the house and I'm letting a neighbor use my connection. Same floor, two brick firewalls (with iron plates inside) and opposite corners (total direct distance about 50' between her PC and the access point) and sitting at her desk, there is no signal. If I take my notebook over and hold it up at head level, I get signal.

        Mind you, I'm using an Aironet 350 transmitting at 100mw with an 8db omni antenna and the other side is an Linksys WMP11 with the 5.5db antenna. Also swapped in a USR 2445 with an exteral antenna and about 2 ft of cable. I even put a 13db direction Yagi on the Aironet and lined it up. I'll end up using an access point in client mode or a USB version with a long cable to get it in range.

        Walls matter.

  • Double the bandwidth
    Double the posts
    Double the fun
    Dub Dub Dub Dub Double Mint Slashdot

    Its green for a reason.

    Why didn't I post this anonymously.
  • 11 mbps is fast enough thank you but if you're going to double something then double the SNR and effective max range instead.

  • Fscking great (Score:3, Funny)

    by Brummund ( 447393 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @09:16AM (#3394334)
    15 minutes ago, I brought home a new Zyxel 316 Wireless starter kit. I just figured I check slashdot before I configured it, and now its obsolete. Great.

  • Didn't 3Com buy that lame company USR? Did they get spun off again? God I hope not!
  • I love watching companies fight to be the first to announce hardware... even when the market doesn't need it
    Other companies will have this as well... D-Link, SMC, Netgear, Linksys (although they just OEM from someone else, their stuff sucks).
    Just wait for 11g

    Oh My Head
    CanNaCoke

  • TI has been pushing the PBCC modulation scheme for years. Recently, PBCC was dumped from the 802.11g spec, so now TI is trying to do an end run around the spec, and making it a done deal.
    The OFDM method used in 802.11g and 802.11a is more elegant, and provides a higher data rate than the PBCC. Of course, in fairness, Intersil is pushing for OFDM.

    Bottom line: if 802.11g isn't out soon, TI will be in a good position to put PBCC back into 802.11g by market pressure. The catch - 802.11g will be slightly (maybe $20) to support this lower performance mode.
  • 802.11b specifies a transport that goes as fast as 11mbps before DCF overheads are accounted for. If someone has a device that goes faster than this then it is not 802.11b. It is something else.

    If it can still interwork with 802.11b devices then it will be doing so at a maximum of 11mbps.

    If you want something faster, then why not use something that will not be obsoleted by a standardized solution such as 802.11a or the still-in-progress 802.11g?
  • That aint pushing the envelope, this is:

    http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/prod_041702.html

    Urd.

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