802.11b Is Expected To Virtually Disappear By 2009

[bangbuathong]

San Francisco, CA - Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. Last October, Gartner changed its overall recommendation for basic WLAN technology from 802.11b only to 802.11a/g. In a session today, Gartner restated its position on which physical standards should be selected for notebooks and access points.

Notebooks, which tax networks the most with bandwidth needs, should be moved to 5GHz using 802.11a. 802.11g is not recommended as a sole strategy because it operates in a band (2.4 GHz) that is increasingly crowded due to its backward compatibility with 801.11b, said the Gartner analyst .

If your orgnization uses Web-enabled handhelds, remember that unlike notebooks, they don’t have the bus speeds to support data transfers of 54Mbps, so they must operate at the slower 802.11b and remain at 2.4GHz. They’ll gain more operational bandwidth since these devices will not be sharing with notebooks, Gartner noted. Furthermore, wireless-enabled peripherals such as printers have limited bandwidth requirements, so they too should be running on the slower 802.11b networks.

Gartner recommended reviewing all equipment to ensure it conforms to all legal frequencies with the country of use, and to consider WAN installation within the building at the same time as WLAN deployment. Specific recommendations include purchasing 802.11a/g access points and adapters with WPA or WPA2 support, and planning a future WLAN with 802.11a at the center, not 802.11g

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[waldwolf]

The next standard will be 802.11n, if the IEEE Task Group N can ever reach agreement. The vote on the new standard earlier this week in Australia, failed to meet the required 75%.

The next meeting is scheduled for July, in San Francisco.

[Crushdepth]

I'll upgrade in 2009. I expect to go through a few handhelds and desktops between now and then

[bkk_mike]

Standard rule is - upgrade when you need to.

If you've already got 802.11b equipment at home, and you just use it to share internet access, you don't need to upgrade until your Wi-Fi connection is slower than your Internet connection (which could be some time away, at least in Thailand).

Personally, I probably wouldn't buy any new 802.11b stuff (but that's not that much of a problem, since 802.11g hardware is usually backwardly compatible, so will run happily on an 802.11b network).

As for 802.11a, you won't find it in Thailand, as the frequency it uses isn't allocated for home use here.

802.11n may be the next big thing, if it delivers on it's promises. (basically faster overall connection speed, a better connection in bad conditions, or over slightly longer distances). However, if they don't hurry up and approve the standard, they may miss the boat. There are already some 802.11g products which match the 802.11n top speed by binding 2 channels together.

[bangbuathong]

thanks you all for the reply