RE: 802.11a - update

["Dr John Tankard" <john@xxxxxxx>]

> My experience of 802.11b suggests that unless you are in
> direct line of sight and within about a 1/4 of suggested
> range, you are NOT going to get 11 Mbps. Same applies for
> 802.11a but you have a lot more bandwidth available to fall
> from. A 50% fall with 802.11b will give you 5.5 Mbps ... with
> 802.11a you are down to 28 Mbps ... still very usable.
>

Assuming the fall off is linear, my distributor says its not, and
looking at the data in the report it confirms this. In a house the
internal walls will cause the data rate to drop, looking at the data I
would think you might be around double the speed. At 100ft range the
802.11a has dropped to 18 Mbps wile the 802.11b is still working at full
speed 11 Mbps

I am sure that 802.11a is much better, in in a office situation it is
undoughtly the way to go when VPN becomes built in, but for home use it
will have to fall in price a lot before I switch. I type this on my
laptop with a silver card and a WAP11 AP. The AP is about 25ft away, but
between us is a three foot thick stone wall, actually because of the
angle it will be more like 4 ft. its drop off is 50% if I was compiling
a big programme stored on my server I might notice the difference. But
normal work I can see no problem

John