Home Phone and Internet $60/mo
- Related Stories
-
Why Wi-Fi has to change--or else
July 12, 2007 -
Motorola waits on 802.11n approval
May 25, 2007 -
Wi-Fi Alliance to begin certifying 802.11n gear
May 16, 2007 -
Apple's AirPort Extreme can pose security risk
April 9, 2007 -
Apple's 802.11n software now available
January 30, 2007 -
Intel speeds up delivery of faster Wi-Fi
January 23, 2007 -
Apple's 802.11n accounting conundrum
January 19, 2007 - Related Blogs
-
802.11n draft standard closer to final approval
January 22, 2007
In a report comparing gigabit Ethernet with the latest version of Wi-Fi, 802.11n, Burton Group suggests that companies should begin making plans for switching their local-area networks (LANs) from wired to wireless.
The new 802.11n standard "will put pervasive mobility on the fast track," Burton analyst Paul DeBeasi said Tuesday.
"IT professionals should start thinking now about how they will deploy, maintain and benefit from an all-wireless LAN."
In the report, DeBeasi claimed that 802.11n would make serious inroads into wired Ethernet's market within 24 to 36 months.
DeBeasi listed several reasons for the switch to 802.11n, including growing numbers of laptop users, increased use of mobile applications and the deployment of voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.
He also suggested that users consider the switch, if they found "fast Ethernet"--the current widely deployed standard, as opposed to the new gigabit Ethernet standard--to offer sufficient throughput for their needs. Fast Ethernet offers a theoretical maximum throughput of 100 megabits per second, while 802.11n offers a maximum of 248Mbps.
"One can analyze the differences between 802.11n and Ethernet with regard to performance, security, manageability, cost and impact on staff," DeBeasi said. "However, the definitive and unalterable competitive advantage that 802.11n has over Ethernet is pervasive mobility."
DeBeasi added that, while recent advances in radio design, security and wireless management would soon make 802.11n the preferred LAN access technology, wired Ethernet would continue to be necessary in switch trunks and data center networks for many years to come.
The new version of 802.11n promises higher throughput, and better range and bandwidth, than its predecessors. However, the standard's ratification has been a controversial affair, with final approval by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) poised to come as late as 2009.
As a result of that delay, the Wi-Fi Alliance, the nonprofit formed to certify interoperability between Wi-Fi products, began certifying equipment conforming to the draft standard earlier this year in a bid to give customers, particularly those in the consumer sector, some confidence in the interoperability of various vendors' 802.11n devices.
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.
See more CNET content tagged:
IEEE 802.11n,
Fast Ethernet,
Ethernet,
throughput,
Wi-Fi
concur with the above poster. While wireless is very useful, and the
tech is improving, It still not going to over take a tethered system
for quite some time. Most of the puters in my house use wireless
WEP, however, my own personal daily puter is still connected by
ethernet, with a switch to turn the flow off when I'm away from it.
There is another reason IT does not like wireless: bandwidth and latency. The standard today is a 100mb connection to each computer and linked by a switch with a 1 GB core for the servers. One computer downloading a 200 MB file doesn't noticably affect any other computer's bandwidth. Each computer has a dedicated 100 mb pipe to the switch which gets merged into the gigabit backbone. This is not the case with wireless. All the computers share a single link to the switch. Overhead from wireless protocols and encryption will reduce the usable bandwidth by half and the latency from the encryption/decryption and bridging to wireless is poor. 802.11n may be 200 megabit but the people who use it will be reminded of the 10baseT days when it comes to bandwidth. I've seen it and it's not pretty.
Whoever commissioned that report is obviously being paid by the Wireless industry.
802.11n adapters are still in the $100 ballpark figure. It doesn't seem cost effective to upgrade 250 systems to .n just because users find it too difficult or time consuming to plug in a cat5 cable.
.n is going to have to drop significantly in price and there will need to be advances in wireless security before it replaces a wired network.
If the bandwidth is shared, then there's no way wireless will replace wired connections. 100 users on a 200 MB/sec would give each user 2 MB/sec.
Also, At least in my home 802.11g router, the bandwidth drops by at least 50% when I'm using WEP-2 encryption.