[skyman]

The range for 802.11g is only 50 feet. Any further and it drops to 11Mbps. That sucks!

50-foot range from the base station in typical use at 54-Mbps data rate (range depends on building construction) (2)

150-foot range from the base station in typical use at 11-Mbps data rate (range depends on building construction)

http://www.apple.com/airport/specs.html

[Cipher13]

Is that with or without the optional antenna?

[ickettpe]

but still... how often do you really need 54mb?


edit: well, is that range issue really the fault of the g spec. or just the particular hardware?

[Camelot]

Originally posted by skyman:
The range for 802.11g is only 50 feet. Any further and it drops to 11Mbps. That sucks!

50-foot range from the base station in typical use at 54-Mbps data rate (range depends on building construction) (2)

150-foot range from the base station in typical use at 11-Mbps data rate (range depends on building construction)

http://www.apple.com/airport/specs.html

So? What more do you want?

next you'll be wanting 110V power over wireless links so you don't have to plug your PowerBook in ever.

Shame there's a limit to wireless technology.

[ebolla]

also by being on the 2.4ghz fequency it will still interfer with cordless phones-microwaves- & BLUETOOTH!
i'm curious to see how apple will deal with all that

54-Mbps is pretty well usefull and neccessary if you wanna set up a wireless network for filesharing

does any one know of anybody manufacturing and 802.11a card for the mac?

802.11a cards for pc run at speeds up to 108 Mbps now(and i've seen that speed reached in my own personnal real world testing) for the same price of apples airport 'extreme'
also 802.11a runs on 5ghz so you can actually run iSync at the same time as Safari!

802.11g is already a year out of date technology
so sad- you can get 802.11a+802.11b combo cards for the same price as apples 'extreme' card

[rustyclockwork]

I too was worried about wireless technology... and interference or "glitches"

Then I thought... those computers sending the data (and accepting data) are also sending info that makes sure the data accepted is the same data sent. Say some electrical glitch happens in a building causing a millisecond of interference... The data correction and error-checking will see that, and rebroadcast the message that was damaged, if it was indeed damaged.

does this sound correct? I'm assuming the data sent has header and footers as well, making the error checking possible.

Jason

[skyman]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Is that with or without the optional antenna?

Without.

[Leia Shoots Like a Girl]

I agree, 50 feet is sorta pointless as we all know that it won't even get that far if any sort of wall is involved.

[Camelot]

Originally posted by ebolla:
also by being on the 2.4ghz fequency it will still interfer with cordless phones-microwaves- & BLUETOOTH!
i'm curious to see how apple will deal with all that

54-Mbps is pretty well usefull and neccessary if you wanna set up a wireless network for filesharing

does any one know of anybody manufacturing and 802.11a card for the mac?

802.11a cards for pc run at speeds up to 108 Mbps now(and i've seen that speed reached in my own personnal real world testing) for the same price of apples airport 'extreme'
also 802.11a runs on 5ghz so you can actually run iSync at the same time as Safari!

802.11g is already a year out of date technology
so sad- you can get 802.11a+802.11b combo cards for the same price as apples 'extreme' card

802.11a is a dead horse.

Sure, you might be able to get a card that talks a and b, but what about the base station. You now need two base stations, one for the 'a' users in addition to the existing 'b' station you already have.

g has the advantage that people can leverage the technology they already have in place, upgrading to g on an as-needed basis (e.g. CEO wants more speed, network admins want toys, etc), without throwing away everything.

[ebisix]

Originally posted by skyman:
The range for 802.11g is only 50 feet. Any further and it drops to 11Mbps. That sucks!

50-foot range from the base station in typical use at 54-Mbps data rate (range depends on building construction) (2)

150-foot range from the base station in typical use at 11-Mbps data rate (range depends on building construction)

http://www.apple.com/airport/specs.html

Thanks for telling us this. However, the problem which you have stated is only for file sharing. For internet, I don't think anyone is getting up to 11 megabytes per second. So, just go a little closer when you are transferring files. Not the biggest deal I don't think.

[Ken_F2]

802.11a is a dead horse.

Not so fast--Intel, Nortel, and Cisco are still firmly behind 802.11a. Though I understand Cisco plans several 802.11g products as well. However, 802.11b, and later 802.11b, will be integrated in the Intel chipsets used in all PCs sold in the second half of the year; as a result, 802.11a installations will probably outnumber 802.11g installations by a factor of 100:1 or 1000:1 by the end of the year.

Sure, you might be able to get a card that talks a and b, but what about the base station. You now need two base stations, one for the 'a' users in addition to the existing 'b' station you already have.

Several current, and many upcoming, base stations support both 802.11a and 802.11b. Cisco, Intel, and Nortel all offer such products.

From what I understand, Apple chose not to go that route in part because a) dual 802.11a and 802.11b was more expensive, b) 802.11a presented problems for customers in some European countries that have not authorized the use of that spectrum; and most importantly c) 802.11a Airport cards were not compatible with the existing 802.11b Airport cards in desktops and integrated into their notebooks.

Interesting to note, several consumer electronics vendors, including Toshiba and Samsung, have chosen to use 802.11a (not 802.11g) on their forthcoming and next-generation satellite television and PVR home distribution products. With these products, you can wireless transmit HDTV and Dolby Digital 5.1 directly to a plasma or LCD hanging on a wall (that has a built-in 802.11a receiver). They are also developing combination DVD player / HDTV set-top box / PVR base stations which are used to transmit the picture and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio to a small receiver box (with appropriate outputs) that you connect to each TV in your house. That way, you buy one relatively expensive HDTV/DVD/PVR base station, and share it wirelessly among all your TVs and hometheater systems without any degradation in quality. Click here and then select exhibition products for more info.

[thesearcher]

Originally posted by Ken_F2:
However, 802.11b, and later 802.11b, will be integrated in the Intel chipsets used in all PCs sold in the second half of the year;

Was that supposed to be 'b' and 'a'?

Personally, I'm waiting for 'I' (or is it 'i'?) to be finished, so I don't mind if 'a' and 'g' fight it out in the meantime.

[Yoda's Erotic Piggyback]

Originally posted by thesearcher:
Was that supposed to be 'b' and 'a'?

Personally, I'm waiting for 'I' (or is it 'i'?) to be finished, so I don't mind if 'a' and 'g' fight it out in the meantime.

You rather wait 3+ years then drop $199 on a Airport extreme now?

[vmpaul]

Originally posted by Ken_F2:

They are also developing combination DVD player / HDTV set-top box / PVR base stations which are used to transmit the picture and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio to a small receiver box (with appropriate outputs) that you connect to each TV in your house. That way, you buy one relatively expensive HDTV/DVD/PVR base station, and share it wirelessly among all your TVs and hometheater systems without any degradation in quality. Click here and then select exhibition products for more info.

That is very cool. So it looks like you may need only 1 wire comng into the house and every TV could use the wireless streaming capability to hook up to the cable system.

The only question is how many streams wil it handle? Can you have 3 different Tv's in different rooms show different shows?

[thesearcher]

Originally posted by Yoda's Erotic Piggyback:
You rather wait 3+ years then drop $199 on a Airport extreme now?

Last I heard, 802.11i was supposed to be ready by this December. (This is the replacement for WEP, perhaps they've changed the name?) Anyway, I hope it hasn't been delayed 3 years!

[Peter]

Originally posted by Camelot:
So? What more do you want?

next you'll be wanting 110V power over wireless links so you don't have to plug your PowerBook in ever.

Shame there's a limit to wireless technology.

wow when will that happen? can I buy that in the shops?

[Ken_F2]

That is very cool. So it looks like you may need only 1 wire comng into the house and every TV could use the wireless streaming capability to hook up to the cable system.

The only question is how many streams wil it handle? Can you have 3 different Tv's in different rooms show different shows?

Yes, it is very cool. It will eliminate the need to do rewiring for satellite or cable TV throughout one's house/apartment.

Actually, for satellite, you need one cable running into the house for every separate tuner, but at least you only have to run the cables into one room, or through one hole; you don't have to worry about wiring the whole house. With cable, unlike satellite, only one cable is needed.

The box Samsung was demonstrating only had two tuners, afaik, so you could only watch two different channels on two different TVs simultaneously. However, there is nothing that would prevent future boxes from incorporating four or even six tuners (to support watching different channels on each of four or six TVs).

The fact that two vendors (Samsung and Toshiba) were demonstrating such boxes does seem to suggest the possibility that at some time in the future, all the TV manufacturers could agree on a standard wireless interface to integrate into all [mid to upper range] displays. That way, you wouldn't need a small receiver box for every TV, but only the base station to wireless transmit the signals directly to your equipment without any cables of any kind.

[vmpaul]

Originally posted by Ken_F2:

Actually, for satellite, you need one cable running into the house for every separate tuner, but at least you only have to run the cables into one room, or through one hole; you don't have to worry about wiring the whole house.

That's what I'd like to to see. Not having to wire the whole house for networking purposes, only power.

The fact that two vendors (Samsung and Toshiba) were demonstrating such boxes does seem to suggest the possibility that at some time in the future, all the TV manufacturers could agree on a standard wireless interface to integrate into all [mid to upper range] displays. That way, you wouldn't need a small receiver box for every TV, but only the base station to wireless transmit the signals directly to your equipment without any cables of any kind.

That would be my ideal. The question I have is how much bandwidth would you need to have HDTV quality TV streamed throughout a typical house? Is 54-Mbps just enough for one stream or is that enough of a pipeline to broadcast more?

Waiting for a standard will take time. Firewire has been around for years now and I still only see it in relatively few consumer appliances. I was hoping by now Firewire would remove the cable mess in back of most stereo setups you see. I was hoping you'd see FW connections that daisy chained from the reciever to each component and that provided power and content. Hasn't happened yet.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by rustyclockwork:
I too was worried about wireless technology... and interference or "glitches"...I'm assuming the data sent has header and footers as well, making the error checking possible.

Jason

You are absolutely correct. Note that 802.11b's top data rate is quoted as 11Mbps. Tests show a throughput equivalent to a 10Mbps wired ethernet connection. You can think of that extra 1Mbps as the error correction code. It's actually a bit more involved than that; it uses a redundant encoding scheme that allows both compression and error avoidance. In any case, a chunk of the wireless bitstream is dedicated to making sure that if you transmit the Gettysburg Address that "four score and seven" still adds up to 87 when it's received.

[ebisix]

Originally posted by thesearcher:
Last I heard, 802.11i was supposed to be ready by this December. (This is the replacement for WEP, perhaps they've changed the name?) Anyway, I hope it hasn't been delayed 3 years!

Wow! I've never even heard of that until now. Thanks.

[Ken_F2]

That would be my ideal. The question I have is how much bandwidth would you need to have HDTV quality TV streamed throughout a typical house? Is 54-Mbps just enough for one stream or is that enough of a pipeline to broadcast more?

The maximum bit rate for ATSC (over-the-air) HDTV is 19.4 Mbps. Most of the HDTV channels on satellite use 14-15 Mbps. A blue-laser or blue-ray HD-DVD standard , probably in three years, will run in the range of 30-38 Mbps, while a red-laser HD-DVD standard (if one materializes) would use considerably less. So for cable and satellite, you could distribute at least two different HD feeds using current wireless standards.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by thesearcher:
Last I heard, 802.11i was supposed to be ready by this December. (This is the replacement for WEP, perhaps they've changed the name?) Anyway, I hope it hasn't been delayed 3 years!

There is a new, catchy name: WiFi Protected Access, but it isn't the name of the 802.11i standard. It's an interim step that's supposed to be both backward (and firmware update) compatible with WEP products, and forward compatible with the new standard. Check out WECA's description for more. WPA is due out VERY SOON (as opposed to "Real Soon Now," a synonym for sometime before the sun burns out). I'm keeping my eyes on the web sites for all the different manufacturers whose products I will need to update (that's a lot!), and as soon as I see an update, I'll post here.

[tullamore]

50 feet is long way, that's good enough for anything I will be using g for.

[petek]

Originally posted by tullamore:
50 feet is long way, that's good enough for anything I will be using g for.

FWIW, I just got an Airport Extreme base station and am getting whole-house coverage (two floors) to the .11b Airport card in my 1 GHz TiBook. And that was with the BS just plopped on a desk between a monitor and a wall, with no external antenna. The Airport signal dropped to two bars at the far extreme from the BS, about 50 linear feet and several frame walls overall.

Note that was with a TiBook - known for it's (lack of) range. I'll put an external antenna on the AP BS when the weather gets nice so I can take the 'book out doors.

[HouseSold]

Interesting perspective about compatibility for early adopters of 802.11g here: http://www.80211-planet.com/news/article.php/1577701

[JEB]

Originally posted by petek:
FWIW. . . was with the BS just plopped on a desk between a monitor and a wall, with no external antenna. The Airport signal dropped to two bars at the far extreme from the BS, about 50 linear feet and several frame walls overall . . . .

Wow, you should really be careful about having Bulls on your desk!

:]