Skip to main content

Faster wireless gear in works

Bye-bye, wires: a new generation of super-fast wireless networking gear is arriving in stores.

But don't buy anything just yet, some tech experts say.

Gear maker Linksys last week launched its first products using a new kind of wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi, technology. Called 802.11n, the new Wi-Fi is almost twice as fast as the speediest older version. And it's designed for multiple data streams, which makes it easier to download music and stream a movie from the Internet at the same time.

Linksys is currently offering an antenna, or router, and a card that lets a PC pick up the wireless signal. But expect to see 802.11n in everything from personal digital assistants to cellphones, says Linksys Vice President Malachy Moynihan. (Linksys is owned by networking giant Cisco Systems (CSCO).)

Rivals such as Netgear (NTGR) are also rushing 802.11n products to market. And that could be a problem, says Andrew Garcia, a technical analyst for researcher eWeek Labs.

The reason: The technical guidelines for 802.11n products have not yet been finalized. They're still being developed by the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a trade group. Linksys and other equipment-makers are using a draft version from the IEEE.

That means today's 802.11n products might not work with future ones. "It's not a good time to buy," Garcia says.

Linksys say it can't make guarantees, but it hopes a future software upgrade will make its product compatible.

As is common with most new technologies, there may also be other kinks in early products. When Garcia tested the Linksys system, transfer rates tumbled when there was an older Wi-Fi network nearby.

Consumers might also want to wait until other developing wireless technologies come to market, says analyst Brian O'Rourke at researcher In-Stat. The most notable is wireless USB, which promises even faster data transfer rates than 802.11n.

The two are designed for different things. Wi-Fi is best for connecting a computer to the Internet, while wireless USB is better for connecting a mouse or digital camera to a computer.

Still in some cases consumers may have a choice, such as the best way to link a printer and a laptop, O'Rourke says. To compare, consumers will have to wait until this summer, when the first wireless USB products are expected to hit the market.

It's unclear how the new offerings will affect Bluetooth, another older wireless networking technology. Bluetooth is best known as the technology behind wireless cellphone headsets. This year, more than 40% of the cellphones sold worldwide will have Bluetooth installed, O'Rourke says.

Bluetooth is downright pokey compared with 802.11n. But it uses much less power, which is important for devices that run off batteries.

O'Rourke thinks there may a niche market for several kinds of wireless. "It's hard to say that any one technology will overwhelm," he says.

There's room for growth. For example, while many U.S. businesses already have some kind of wireless Internet, only about 48% of employees have access to it, a recent In-Stat survey said. In-Stat predicts that worldwide Wi-Fi service revenue alone will jump from $969 million in 2005 to $3.5 billion in 2009.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

US says world safer, despite 11,000 attacks in '05

The U.S. war on terrorism has made the world safer, the State Department's counterterrorism chief said on Friday, despite more than 11,000 terrorist attacks worldwide last year that killed 14,600 people. The U.S. State Department said the numbers, listed in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism released on Friday, were based on a broader definition of terrorism and could not be compared to the 3,129 international attacks listed the previous year. But the new 2005 figures, which showed attacks in Iraq jumped and accounted for about a third of the world's total, may fuel criticism of the Bush administration's assertion that it is winning the fight against terrorism. Asked if the world was safer than the previous year, U.S. State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Henry Crumpton told a news conference, "I think so. But I think that (if) you look at the ups and downs of this battle, it's going to take us a long time to win this. You can't measure this month ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Al-Qaeda number two in new video

Al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in a video saying that Iraqi insurgents have "broken the back" of the US military. He praised "martyrdom operations" carried out by al-Qaeda in Iraq in the video, posted on an Islamist website. And he called on the people and army of Pakistan to fight against President Musharraf's administration. This is the third message from prominent al-Qaeda leaders to emerge within a week. A tape from Osama Bin Laden was broadcast on 23 April, followed two days later by a message from Iraqi insurgent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Pakistan focus Zawahiri, who wore a black turban and a white robe in the video, described the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as traitors, and urged Muslims to "confront them". He praised Iraqi militants, saying that the US, Britain and allies had "achieved nothing but losses, disasters and misfortunes" in Iraq. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq alone has carried out 800 ma...
Post a Comment
Read more

Does light have mass?

The short answer is "no", but it is a qualified "no" because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer "yes". Light is composed of photons so we could ask if the photon has mass. The answer is then definitely "no": The photon is a massless particle. According to theory it has energy and momentum but no mass and this is confirmed by experiment to within strict limits. Even before it was known that light is composed of photons it was known that light carries momentum and will exert a pressure on a surface. This is not evidence that it has mass since momentum can exist without mass. [ For details see the Physics FAQ article What is the mass of the photon? ]. Sometimes people like to say that the photon does have mass because a photon has energy E = hf where h is Planck's constant and f is the frequency of the photon. Energy, they say, is equivalent to mass according to Einstein's famous formula E = m...
6 comments
Read more