More about .11n

Pre-N and now Draft N 802.11 implementations have been on the market for several months now, long enough for people to begin testing them in earnest.  A recent – and very thorough – set of tests was just published by Anandtech.

What they found was that performance was mixed, and that there were a number of nagging problems with the implementations:

In our preliminary mixed mode testing we experienced the "bad neighbor" effect several times. Not only with our own internal 802.11g network but also visits from actual neighbors who were upset with having to constantly reboot their systems during our testing phase.

In addition, Anandtech observed:

We would notice stutters when saving large files to the network or trying to stream compressed (DivX) video from our server.

Many of our customers have also been testing .11n for use in video distribution in consumer electronics devices.  What they’ve found is similar to the results reported in the Anandtech article.  And in particular, these customers are continuing to prove to themselves that WiFi in any flavor isn’t suitable for video.  Some have gone as far as to build prototypes and take them to tradeshows only to have them fail onsite.

For the full report on 802.11n, visit the Anandtech site.