Wireless Alphabet Soup: What's the Difference Anyway?
At this point, you might have read a few feature lists for
wireless cards, and you're about to ask a very common question:
what's the difference anyway? Well, answering that question
requires a brief rundown of the history of wireless networking
so far.
The Beginning: 802.11
The first wireless networking standard was simply called 802.11,
without a letter after its name, and was released in 1997. It is
now sometimes called 'legacy 802.11' -- no-one uses the original
802.11 standard any more.
The 802.11 standard was never really popular to begin with, in
fact, mainly because it offered wireless equipment manufacturers
so many different choices on which parts of the standard to
implement. This left users in a situation where they were
more-or-less stuck with one set of wireless devices, and
interoperability was hard to come by.
A Breakout Hit: 802.11b
With the revision of the standard in 1999, 802.11 became
802.11b, and that's when things really started to take off.
802.11b streamlined the standards to provide greater
interoperability, without making too many changes -- existing
wireless devices were easily upgraded to the new standard, which
meant that 802.11b wireless appeared on the market quickly.
Many advantages came with the upgrade to 802.11b. It was over
ten times faster than 802.11 (11Mbps instead of 1Mbps), and yet
cheaper. People loved 802.11b, and it was around this time that
wireless networking technology started to take off in a big way.
Oops: 802.11a
As a counterpoint to the 802.11b success story, consider
802.11a. The a and b standards were originally intended to
present a choice to the consumer, with a offering higher speeds
than b in exchange for reduced range. As it turned out, though,
802.11a was an utter failure.
Why? Well, 802.11a's downsides were simply too great to bear.
Sure, it gave speeds of 54Mbps -- almost five times faster than
802.11b -- but it would only work if you had a clear line of
sight between the two wireless devices. If there's nothing
between the devices then, well, why not just use a wire?
As a final nail in the coffin, 802.11a products didn't start to
appear on the market until 2001. By then, people were used to
802.11b, and no-one was interested in getting a speed increase
in exchange for such a dramatic range
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decrease.
Speed With No Downsides: 802.11g
In 2003, with the lessons of the 802.11a failure learned, a new
standard was created -- 802.11g. The aim of this standard was to
combine the best of both worlds, giving the speed of 802.11a
with the range of 802.11b.
Well, it was some time in the making, but they managed it.
802.11g devices run at 54Mbps, but are otherwise the same as
802.11b ones. Even better, 802.11g devices are backwards
compatible with 802.11b ones, meaning that you can use them
together in your network.
What to Choose
So you know the advantages and disadvantages of everything, but
what should you choose if you're buying a wireless device today?
Well, first of all, avoid legacy 802.11 (if you somehow find it)
or 802.11a. They will not work with your other wireless
equipment, and are generally quite useless.
That leaves you with the choice of 802.11b or 802.11g.
Considering that most broadband connections run well below the
speed of 802.11b (11Mbps), which you choose probably won't make
any difference to your external Internet access. The area where
it matters is when you transfer things around within your
network -- if you're sending a file from your laptop computer to
your desktop one, for example, it will happen five times faster
with g than it would with b.
There is another consideration in your decision, however, and
that's price: g devices are still quite a lot more expensive
than b ones. If you're mainly planning to use your wireless
network to connect to the Internet then b will do everything you
need, but that hasn't stopped lots of people upgrading to g who
didn't really need to. This means that the market is flooded
with cheap 802.11b wireless equipment that still works
perfectly!
If you want to know the secret of wireless networking on a
budget, then that's it: get 802.11b equipment for a few dollars,
then sit back and watch your network work just as well as the
ones that cost hundreds.
About the author:
Original Source: Articles-Galore.com
Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of CyberTech SoftShop
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