| 802.11n: The Top 5 Reasons To Wait |
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| Written by Devin Akin | |
| Wednesday, 31 October 2007 | |
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Trust me, there are many reasons to wait. I just thought I'd share a "quick 5" with you. I've been playing with 802.11n gear now for quite a while, and I deal with these issues quite a bit. I've been talking to quite a number of people about the "why / why not" of 802.11n implementation, and here are some that are pretty common. Enjoy.
1. You don't actually NEED the bandwidth, you just WANT it. 2. 802.11n APs are expensive. 5. You won't get the full benefit out of 802.11n APs without a PoE upgrade. Comments (13)
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written by Daniel Addison, November 01, 2007 ...
written by George Appiah, November 05, 2007
At long last... a view from the other direction. Thanks, Devin, for this great article.
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written by Mark B. Hilderbrandt - Fishent Technology Group, November 12, 2007
5 very good points........
Thanks for sharing! ...
written by Glenn De Haes, November 12, 2007
Reasons to get 11n:
- you do have a lot of high bandwidth users that use or would like to use their wireless connection as a main connection - you have a number of users that sometimes need simultaneous access to one or more files. The files don't need to be that big but with the right number of users, it will quickly get your WLAN struggle - you want people with 11n cards to be able to use their gear at full speed A lot of these require an intelligent system that handles a lare number of users per AP, that can control air access for fair access and consistent bandwidth for all users and perhaps with 11n the most important facts: that it can coexist with a bg network and does not penalize the 11n clients for the 11bg presence. We are testing these things now with the Meru Networks system and are quit delighted. The PoE does remain a problem though. PowerdSign has a new draft at or af device with gigabit ports. Works quit well. ...
written by realwirelessman, November 12, 2007
Here are my 5 reasons that these 5 reasons are weak.
1) Bandwidth, storage and processing speed are almost always built for anticipated need. How many people are delivering out PC's with just enough power for today's applications? Imagine how quickly a PC company would go out of business if that were the strategy! 2) if costs where a top reason to make decisions, we'd all be using $49 access points and asking why only 6 people can connect and ignoring everyone's complaints about cruddy service! The newest always cost more and that didn't stop 1M iPhone buyers. Cheap solutions are cheap in every way - face it, you're not going to build an enterprise network with gear from Wal-Mart! .11n offers 8X the bandwidth for 20% more cost - looks like a great deal to me! 3) What if the sensor network is built into the solution (and I'm not talking time slicing). Kind of negates this point I think. Since when did we start expecting the management tools for RF to NOT be included in our Wi-Fi solution? 4) auto power and channel technologies that don't conform to Wi-Fi standards should be a reason to stop moving forward delivering better services? We'd still have token ring if anyone followed this logic! If this technology was really mature, we wouldn't see it break with every advance. Last install I saw this used actually had more co channel, not less! Whoever's really using these needs to have their head examined, nothing to say of making decisions based on this technology. 5) PoE can barely feed IP handsets. Face it, this technology has run out of steam a long time ago. PoE standards are a convenience that reduces the cost of placing AC power everywhere...proprietary standards still save money, just a little less...this is a marginal reason at best and how many decisions are made on the margin? Seems to me a bigger reason might be the need for Gig drops everywhere - but, I don't want to help Devin. How about we all stop making any kind of "move forward" decision with technology? Maybe we should all just wait for Cisco to make these decisions for us? Maybe we should only choose Cisco - that would make our training and certification much more valuable to other companies and raise our earning potential. Wait, we all work for companies that expect us to help them be stronger competitors in their respective markets. Maybe the idea of waiting will cost our companies the edge to win business. Funny we almost never think about this - maybe it's why so many of us are treated like the expense side of the business by our companies! Hope the view is nice from behind me (evil grin) - don't mind that smell either, that's just the rubber I'm burning as I create an even bigger gap between your expertise and mine! An ardent early adopter and technology value driver. ...
written by Mike Zeberlein, November 12, 2007
You are leaving out a few major benefits, extended range primarily, the opportunity to move to 5.8 Ghz and have less interference, the opportunity to standardize on one standard and dump a/b/g altogether. The benefits you will get from the range by deploying fewer APs as well as the ability to support more users per AP. -Michael Zeberlein Wireless Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton
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written by Paul Shiffer, November 12, 2007
I agree that it probably is not the time to rip out an existing a/b/g network just to support 802.11n, however if you are at the point of just building a mission-critical Wireless network, it could be the perfect time to put in an architecture that will support a/b/g clients today and support 802.11n clients when they start shipping in numbers. 802.11n APs with MIMO will give the legacy clients better performance characteristics, support higher (but not greenfield) throughput for 802.11n clients and support the migration from 802.11a/b/g to 802.11n (and if you use a modular AP maybe even to WiMAX) with a reasonable amount of effort on the part of the IT staff and their partners.
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written by Frank Bulk, November 12, 2007
Even a vendor admitted to me last week that the speed thing is probably more a matter of perception than necessity. Looking at the performance results of 802.11b/g or 802.11a access points one would think that a shared ~25 Mbps is not enough, but find me one network that has one AP that exceeds over 10 Mbps in a 5-minute polling interval?
But 802.11n now gives us speeds that are more palatable to the enterprise network architect, and admittedly, higher burst rates. ...
written by Frank Bulk, November 12, 2007
The planning and survey tools are indeed weak! See my post (http://www.networkcomputing.co...d_sit.html) for more details.
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written by Arul Vadivel, November 13, 2007
Thanks for this article.
The reasons are good. I would be better to include another one reason ie., to utilize full throughput of 11n, users needs to upgrade their backbone(wired router/switch) network to support GigaBit Ethernet. This is the another cost concern for people who have 10/100Mbps FastEthernet wired network. ... written by Hugh Jorgan, January 09, 2008
Consistent 5.8 GHz exposure should grow your tumor twice as fast as the preceding technology - I'm all for that!
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