We are using a T1 line at a school and we want to make a couple of our
computer labs wireless. We have been told by some people that 80211.g is not
fully supported yet and is unstable. Is there any truth to this? Is there
any reason why we would not want to use 80211.g but rather 80211.b? Can
anyone give me the pros and cons? Thanks!

Nick wrote:

> We are using a T1 line at a school and we want to make a couple of our
> computer labs wireless. We have been told by some people that 80211.g is not
> fully supported yet and is unstable. Is there any truth to this? Is there
> any reason why we would not want to use 80211.g but rather 80211.b? Can
> anyone give me the pros and cons? Thanks!
>
>
802.11b is old and stable, with relatively few interoperability
problems. 802.11g is new. While the standard is now stable AFAIK,
I would expect to hit some interoperability problems, because most
of the stuff on the shelves was designed before the standard was
stable.

The only advantage of 11g over 11b is transfer rate. If you do a
lot of copying of large files between your PCs, you might notice
a difference; but, since either 11g or 11b is much faster than
your T1 line, you are unlikely to notice any difference in download
or upload speed. And, while 11g is supposed to be backward compatible
with 11b nodes, as soon as any 11b node joins the 11g net, the entire
net downshifts to 11b speed.
--
Cheers, Bob

Thanks for the reply.

So:

1. 11g and 11b are both faster than our T1 line? so there is no advantage of
using either one as far as upload or download since they both fully take
advantage of the connection?

2. what do you mean by as soon as a 11b node joins the net? can you give me
an example?

Thanks!


"Bob Willard" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Nick wrote:
>
> > We are using a T1 line at a school and we want to make a couple of
our
> > computer labs wireless. We have been told by some people that 80211.g is
not
> > fully supported yet and is unstable. Is there any truth to this? Is
there
> > any reason why we would not want to use 80211.g but rather 80211.b? Can
> > anyone give me the pros and cons? Thanks!
> >
> >
> 802.11b is old and stable, with relatively few interoperability
> problems. 802.11g is new. While the standard is now stable AFAIK,
> I would expect to hit some interoperability problems, because most
> of the stuff on the shelves was designed before the standard was
> stable.
>
> The only advantage of 11g over 11b is transfer rate. If you do a
> lot of copying of large files between your PCs, you might notice
> a difference; but, since either 11g or 11b is much faster than
> your T1 line, you are unlikely to notice any difference in download
> or upload speed. And, while 11g is supposed to be backward compatible
> with 11b nodes, as soon as any 11b node joins the 11g net, the entire
> net downshifts to 11b speed.
> --
> Cheers, Bob
>

Nick wrote:

> Thanks for the reply.
>
> So:
>
> 1. 11g and 11b are both faster than our T1 line? so there is no advantage of
> using either one as far as upload or download since they both fully take
> advantage of the connection?
>
> 2. what do you mean by as soon as a 11b node joins the net? can you give me
> an example?
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> "Bob Willard" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>>Nick wrote:
>>
>>
>>> We are using a T1 line at a school and we want to make a couple of
>
> our
>
>>>computer labs wireless. We have been told by some people that 80211.g is
>
> not
>
>>>fully supported yet and is unstable. Is there any truth to this? Is
>
> there
>
>>>any reason why we would not want to use 80211.g but rather 80211.b? Can
>>>anyone give me the pros and cons? Thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>
>>802.11b is old and stable, with relatively few interoperability
>>problems. 802.11g is new. While the standard is now stable AFAIK,
>>I would expect to hit some interoperability problems, because most
>>of the stuff on the shelves was designed before the standard was
>>stable.
>>
>>The only advantage of 11g over 11b is transfer rate. If you do a
>>lot of copying of large files between your PCs, you might notice
>>a difference; but, since either 11g or 11b is much faster than
>>your T1 line, you are unlikely to notice any difference in download
>>or upload speed. And, while 11g is supposed to be backward compatible
>>with 11b nodes, as soon as any 11b node joins the 11g net, the entire
>>net downshifts to 11b speed.
>>--
>>Cheers, Bob
>>
>
>
>
T1 runs 1.544 Mb/s. 802.11b runs 11 Mb/s. 802.11g runs 54 Mb/s.
So, for downloads (T1 -> 802.11whatever), T1 is the bottleneck.

802.11g is a radio-based network segment. If you have a bunch of
nodes on that segment which are all 802.11g nodes, then they may
be able to transmit at 54 Mb/s. But, if a node which only uses
802.11b starts to transmit at the same frequency (~2.4 GHz), the
802.11g nodes will detect that 802.11b interloper and the 11g nodes
will shift down to 11 Mb/s to be compatible with that 802.11b node.
--
Cheers, Bob