Doubling of Wi-Fi to 108Mbps

Lemming

From The Register

US-based Airgo Networks today began sampling a WLAN chipset it claims can improve the speed, range and reliability of 802.11-based wireless networks.

The part, the AGN100, employs multiple antennae to boost, say, 802.11g from a maximum throughput of 54Mbps to 108Mbps, the company claims. The part also boosts 802.11a and 802.11b

Just a shame the article goes on to point out the uncertainty on whether or not 802.11b is enhanced, or merely supported via backwards compatibility. Would be great to see the former happen which would open up the further opportunity for WISPs here in Ireland.

The only other issue is that multiple antennae are needed (??) which incurs costs at a base-station level, which could well be passed onto consumers.

Rew

It sounds like there are using 2 Radios (at each end) and 2 antenna (at each end). Because WiFi uses Radio its essentially Half-Duplex (a device can only send or recive at any one point in time but not both at the same time)

By using one radio for pure recive and another for pure send they can achive faster data rates.

Iv hear of people doing it with hacked Linux drivers and multiple WiFI cards.

Handy for fast point 2 point links not sure about point 2 multipoint.z

BigEejit

That article is kind of lacking in facts ..... the whole multiple antenna thing sounds expensive ... seems to say that it uses multiple channels to send the data and it is reassembled at the receiving end....

Anyway, its not like consumer grade wireless 108Mb/s is new .. my Netgear 802.11a pccard can go it .. (uses two channels) ...unfortunately my access point can only go up to 72Mb/s:rolleyes: ... its a bit older than the pccard

Chaz

Rew.

There are radios on the market that do full duplex. Not WIFI (802.11b) - but still in the ISM (free to air) bands.

secret_squirrel

the article kinda implies that it works by spreading the transmissions across more than 1 of the wifi channels...therefore much more likey to create contention issues with other hotspots surely????

Rew

Chaz:

U dont agree that to do a full duplex radio connection u need 2 reciveing radios and 2 sending ones ie total of 4 radios?
(or 2 radios cabable of sending and reciving at the same time)

And that they would ahve to be sending on diferant channels due to the fact that only one radio can transmit on a channel at any one time

secret_squirrel:

No more contentious than 2 or more overlapping WiFI nets. the 802.11 MAC was designed to cope with 2 or more networks in the same physical space but it does degrade preformance...

of the 11 (or 13 depending on where ya are) WiFi channels only 3 are seperate and dont interfear with each other 1,5,11 (iforget what the story is with 13 channel cards).

So most WiFi nets interfere with each other at some level.

Chaz

I agree if the equipment is in the 802.11b range. There are radios that run in ISM - including 5.8Ghz that use split Frequencies for Rx and Tx.

The reason i made the comment is due the the fact that you blamed 'radio' for the inability to full duplex. It has nothing to do with radio (RF) but simply due to the collision detection algorithms and such as employed in 802.11b

secret_squirrel

Originally posted by Rew
Chaz:

secret_squirrel:

No more contentious than 2 or more overlapping WiFI nets. the 802.11 MAC was designed to cope with 2 or more networks in the same physical space but it does degrade preformance...

My point exactly - say for example every one moves to 2 channel 108 operation then you will have twice the conjestion that you had on say 54g. Which might be an issue for densely packed areas like city centres or corporate offices.

Rew

Originally posted by Chaz
I agree if the equipment is in the 802.11b range. There are radios that run in ISM - including 5.8Ghz that use split Frequencies for Rx and Tx.

The reason i made the comment is due the the fact that you blamed 'radio' for the inability to full duplex. It has nothing to do with radio (RF) but simply due to the collision detection algorithms and such as employed in 802.11b

What i ment (when blameing radio) is that you cannt tx and rx on the same channel/frequency at the same time thats all

secret_squirrel:

Probably would be an issue is some american cities where WiFi is used in a big way. I work in a building that has server differant nets and its never been an issue. Basicly what im trying to say is that there has to be a lot of nets and trafic before the problem shows up...