802.11n May Stomp on 802.11b/g Networks?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/13/802_11n_backwards_compatibility_issues/' target='_blank'>http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/13/802_11n_backwards_compatibility_issues/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Airgo Networks took the occasion of last Friday's vote by the IEEE 802.11n Taskgroup to proceed to the "letter ballot" phase of the standardization process, to go public with the developing standard's little secret. The firm claims that the "802.11n Draft 1.0 does not provide for interoperability with nearby legacy 802.11b/g networks". "Specifically, if 'Draft N' or 'N Ready' products are released to market based on Draft 1.0 of the standard, they will severely degrade - or even disable - nearby 802.11b and 802.11g networks," Airgo said. The firm's announcement is the first public acknowledgment by a chipmaker of behavior that TomsNetworking documented two months ago in its review of Netgear's RangeMax 240. The Netgear product is based on Airgo's third-generation chipset that uses a 40 MHz wide band to achieve greater than 100 Mbps of application-level throughput."</i><br /><br />This is not good news at all. 8O I already have a lot of problems with wireless routers in my home because there are eight other networks within range, so I'm shuddering to think what will happen when an 802.11n router gets introduced into the mix. Although, now that I think about it more, I'll probably be the first one getting an 802.11n on my street, so I'll be the guy causing problems for everyone else. :devilboy:

[Mike Temporale]

If it's not backwards compatible, it's going to have a hard time gaining any traction in today’s market, IMHO. There are too many devices that have WiFi built-in, and if they can't connect to this new version, then a lot of people aren't going to buy it.

Lets see, we have WiFi in digital cameras, video cameras, PDAs, wirless home phones, mobile phones, laptops, ...What else am I missing?

[hylton]

I've been on 'pre-n' since Belkin put out the very first products...and I love it. Do I stomp on my neighbors connection, dunno, all I know is that I have killer range, reception, and thru-put...and I'm running just the pre-n router...my laptop has an intel 2200bg client card in it.

So, unless someone else installs pre-n and it happens to stomp the PC card in my laptop and other clients that I may add (PDA, phone, etc.), then I plan on sticking w/ it and upgrading to later versions once they have the whole 802.11e issues worked out. I think I have the only pre-n product that 'to date' supports 802.11e and supposedly works...

I started w/ wireless in the early days, homerf, rangelan (or whatever it was called), that didn't work worth beans...switch to 802.11b as soon as it was out in the early Linksys products...skipped 'g' and went straight to 'pre-n'...it's BY FAR the best thing anyone has put out, it smokes all comers...and it does it w/o signal boosters and high-gain antennas...

Chris