802.11b range

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

MS Press book for 270 states <802.11b is availible at a low cost and has the best overall range>

Is this the case?
I thought b and g were both the same range wise.

Si

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

It sounds a bit out of date - hardly surprising as WiFi is a very rapidly moving market. It is now quite hard to buy 'b' only kit!

In general both b and g will drop the speed when conditions become difficult, as a slower speed will work better, so in that sense the book is right. But many people don't realize that the speed *has* dropped!

Harry.

 

Harry,

Yeah, a fair point. Latest edition of book print date 2005.

Si

 

Finally I can actually put to use something I learned on the networking course I did a couple of months ago!!

IEEE 802 specifications demonstrate the following:

802.11a = data rate of 11mgb/ps
802.11b = data rate of 54mgb/ps
802.11g = is compatible with both of the above data rates

Although we weren't told this in so many words, I believe g was introduced because at that time, a & b were unable to communicate with each other.

 

Er - that isn't quite right!

a is 54Mbps and b is 11Mbps. a is on a completely different frequency to b, so that is why they won't talk.
g is the same speed as a, but on the same frequency as b, so they can interoperate (to some extent).

Harry.

 

Interesting... so basically I forked out £100+ on a networking course to be taught incorrectly?! Grate

Might go through my notes later, make sure it's not me making a blunder.

 

This page from Wikipedia is a fairly good summary of the state of WiFi.

Note that that page gives the same range for both b and g!

Harry.

 

I'm wasn't questioning what you're telling me don't worry, I just want to check my course notes later anyway for my own sanity, to see what information they provided us with, or if somehow I got my a's and b's back to front.

I was aware that g had the same data rate as a, just that g is also meant to be compatible with b.

 

The comment about rates was really a reference to Boyce's original question.

And I thought that the whole page was a useful addition to the various resources pointed to in this forum.

Harry.