Message-Id: <20050207205054-10312-9@2rosenthals.com>
In-Reply-To: <420816F0.7080400@2rosenthals.com>
Date:  Mon, 07 Feb 2005 20:50:46 -0500
Sender: os2-wireless_users-owner <os2-wireless_users-owner@2rosenthals.com>
Reply-To: os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com
From: <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com>
To:  os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com
Subject: [OS2Wireless] 802.11g

Spake Harry,

With too few OS/2 magazines, we don't mind the journalism, Lewis. The
problem for us and  "b" is mostly that the prism-based "b" cards with
drivers are going away. (In the US) Netgear is no longer listing
theirs. (And, they came with 5 yr warrantees. Will I better off should
mine fail before Xmas '05 at age 3 and they send me a current "g" card
for which there's no driver?

Otherwise, I wouldn't care. 

answering:
        Lewis G Rosenthal <lgrosenthal@2rosenthals.com>  ' message of:
        02/07/05  at 08:33 PM,
        About:[OS2Wireless] 802.11g
>My web guy was so excited when he found a 108Mbps DLink AP... Imagine
> how downtrodden he became when I explained to him that even our
>cable  connection is only 2-3Mbps, and there ain't no such thing as
>108Mbps  Wi-Fi (it's a dual channel model, so it sends on one channel
>and  receives on the other; a nice sleight of hand, but you need to
>have a  DLink WLAN card in order to make use of it, as it's a
>completely  proprietary implementation...I hate when people get
>hoodwinked into  spending more $$ than they need to).

>Neil, as you've correctly pointed out, 802.11g is fully backward 
>compatible to 802.11b (unless 802.11b clients have been specifically 
>locked out of the AP). In fact, while all the hotspots we're now 
>deploying use 802.11g AP's, as per the standard (the "standard"
>refers  to the behavior, not the 11g APs!), as soon as a single
>802.11b (yours  truly, usually!) gets on the WLAN, everyone slows to
>11Mbps maximum  bandwidth. And you know...? We haven't had one person
>come up to any of  us and ask what happened to the throughput.

>When will it really make a difference? When there are (for example)
>10  WLAN users on the network with a single AP. 11g typically puts
>out  22Mbps or so (yes, I know I've probably opened a can of worms
>with that  statement, and everyone will start jumping all over me,
>but in truth,  11g drops off rather quickly, especially in public
>spaces with lots of  heavy metals - refrigerators, freezers, and
>ovens, to name a few - in  the area). So, if you consider that WLANs
>are like hubs and not  switches, if unmanaged (the Sputnik software
>allows us to throttle users  - hey, I know of a few users I'd like to
>throttle! - but this is  atypical of most APs) each user receives an
>equal amount of the  available bandwidth. So, with ten users on an
>11g network, with a 22Mbps  average throughput, each client would
>receive approximately 2.2Mbps of  bandwidth. Compare that to an 11b
>WLAN, where each user would get a  maximum of 1.1Mbps (typically a
>little less). You might not notice it  for regular browsing, but
>downloads and streaming media might be  affected (I'm constantly
>amazed by the amount of data people pull down  at the hotspots;
>again, the Sputnik Control Center is pretty neat in  that it will
>give me minute-by-minute reports of how much traffic has  gone up and
>down to a particular station...one Sunday, I guess someone  was
>downloading CD images, because there were hundreds of megs coming 
>down to one user's station).

>Anyway, I'm way long winded tonight, so please forgive me (everyone).
> I've been down with a really lousy chest cold the past couple days,
>and  I'm finding myself rambling this evening...maybe it's the
>meds... :-)   Oh, and apologies to those who might be offended that
>I'm sending this  post from my Citrix server running Wintendo 2K
>Advanced Server (hey, at  least I'm using Thunderbird!). I need to
>work in the lab on - you  guessed it! - yet another couple of buggy,
>bloated Wintendo machines, so  I'm pretty much strapped in here for
>the ride. One more quick follow up  to my earlier post, and then I'm
>back to work...

>Neil Waldhauer wrote:

>>On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 00:12:25 +0100, "Massimo @ eCS.it" <massimo@ecomstation.it>
>>wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>>802.11b is so slow and obsolete to be quite useless nowadays...
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>Maybe so in Italy. But in USA, it is 802.11g that is useless. A cheap
>>connection is likely to be DSL or a Cable modem in the USA. Both these
>>connections are far slower than 803.11b, at least for most subscribers. So, for
>>all the connections I'm likely to see, 802.11b is exactly the same speed as
>>802.11g.
>>
>>While I support the concept of the faster standard, 802.11g, the devices
>>running it always fall back to 802.11b, so I don't ever see any difference. So
>>for the present, I am quite happy with my 802.11b support.
>>
>>I hope that we get to try GENMAC, once it is ready, in this group, along with
>>an XWLAN that gives us access to the newer features of the drivers.
>>
>>Neil
>>  
>>


HPT
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
htravis at attglobal dot net
DemostiX
-----------------------------------------------------------



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
steward@2rosenthals.com with the command
"unsubscribe os2-wireless_users" in the body
(omit the quotes).

For help with other commands, send a message
to steward@2rosenthals.com with the command
"help" in the body (omit the quotes).

This list is hosted by Rosenthal & Rosenthal
P.O. Box 281, Deer Park, NY 11729-0281. Non-
electronic communications related to content
contained in these messages should be directed
to the above address. (CAN-SPAM Act of 2003)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=