SolveYourProblem
eLearning Series
Wireless Networking
Wireless
Cards: What's the Difference Anyway?
by Jeff Cohen
At this point,
you might have read a few feature lists for wireless cards,
and you're about to ask a very common question: what's the
difference anyway? Well, answering that question requires
a brief rundown of the history of wireless networking so
far.
The Beginning:
802.11
The first wireless
networking standard was simply called 802.11, without a letter
after its name, and was released in 1997. It is now sometimes
called 'legacy 802.11' -- no-one uses the original 802.11
standard any more.
The 802.11 standard
was never really popular to begin with, in fact, mainly because
it offered wireless equipment manufacturers so many different
choices on which parts of the standard to implement. This
left users in a situation where they were more-or-less stuck
with one set of wireless devices, and interoperability was
hard to come by.
A Breakout
Hit: 802.11b
With the revision
of the standard in 1999, 802.11 became 802.11b, and that's
when things really started to take off. 802.11b streamlined
the standards to provide greater interoperability, without
making too many changes -- existing wireless devices were
easily upgraded to the new standard, which meant that 802.11b
wireless appeared on the market quickly.
Many advantages
came with the upgrade to 802.11b. It was over ten times faster
than 802.11 (11Mbps instead of 1Mbps), and yet cheaper. People
loved 802.11b, and it was around this time that wireless
networking technology started to take off in a big way.
Oops:
802.11a
As a counterpoint
to the 802.11b success story, consider 802.11a. The a and
b standards were originally intended to present a choice
to the consumer, with a offering higher speeds than b in
exchange for reduced range. As it turned out, though, 802.11a
was an utter failure.
Why? Well, 802.11a's
downsides were simply too great to bear. Sure, it gave speeds
of 54Mbps -- almost five times faster than 802.11b -- but
it would only work if you had a clear line of sight between
the two wireless devices. If there's nothing between the
devices then, well, why not just use a wire?
As a final nail
in the coffin, 802.11a products didn't start to appear on
the market until 2001. By then, people were used to 802.11b,
and no-one was interested in getting a speed increase in
exchange for such a dramatic range decrease.
Speed
With No Downsides: 802.11g
In 2003, with
the lessons of the 802.11a failure learned, a new standard
was created -- 802.11g. The aim of this standard was to combine
the best of both worlds, giving the speed of 802.11a with
the range of 802.11b.
Well, it was some
time in the making, but they managed it. 802.11g devices
run at 54Mbps, but are otherwise the same as 802.11b ones.
Even better, 802.11g devices are backwards compatible with
802.11b ones, meaning that you can use them together in your
network.
What to
Choose?
So you know the
advantages and disadvantages of everything, but what should
you choose if you're buying a wireless device today?
Well, first of
all, avoid legacy 802.11 (if you somehow find it) or 802.11a.
They will not work with your other wireless equipment, and
are generally quite useless.
That leaves you
with the choice of 802.11b or 802.11g. Considering that most
broadband connections run well below the speed of 802.11b
(11Mbps), which you choose probably won't make any difference
to your external Internet access. The area where it matters
is when you transfer things around within your network --
if you're sending a file from your laptop computer to your
desktop one, for example, it will happen five times faster
with g than it would with b.
There is another
consideration in your decision, however, and that's price:
g devices are still quite a lot more expensive than b ones.
If you're mainly planning to use your wireless network to
connect to the Internet then b will do everything you need,
but that hasn't stopped lots of people upgrading to g who
didn't really need to. This means that the market is flooded
with cheap 802.11b wireless equipment that still works perfectly!
If you want to
know the secret of wireless networking on a budget, then
that's it: get 802.11b equipment for a few dollars, then
sit back and watch your network work just as well as the
ones that cost hundreds.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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