[Ti] Netgear vs. Airport

[Kynan Shook]

Paul Russell <prussell at arc-software.com> writes:
> Yes, but it's a lowest common denominator thing - the slower 802.11b
> devices on the network will tend to drag the performance of the whole
> network down. From what I've read recently the whole 802.11g thing is
> a mess - the manufacturers have gone ahead and started shipping
> pre-802.11g products before the standard has been finalised so there
> are going to be all sorts of headaches down the road.

It's not as bad as some of those articles would have you believe; for 
one thing, if the 802.11b devices aren't using the wireless network, 
there won't be any slowdown.  The slowdown happens only while b devices 
are *actively* sending or receiving data, and it happens because every 
device must wait slightly longer after a b signal is sent than they'd 
wait after a g signal is sent before another data signal can be sent.

As far as the draft standard, I'm not sure that there are likely to be 
any changes; but if there are, pretty much every device (including 
Airport Extreme) will be firmware-upgradeable to utilize the finalized 
standard.  One problem with the early release of 802.11g, however, is 
that the devices aren't 100% optimized yet; later firmware updates 
should increase their efficiency, giving better throughput.


Kynan Shook
kshook at mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/kshook/index.html