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November 29, 2004

Belkin's Pre-N Delivers Promised Speed

By Glenn Fleishman

The industry rightly has qualms about pre-802.11n labeled devices, but speed sells: If we’ve learned anything from the 108 Mbps and 125 Mbps branding on a variety of Wi-Fi gateways, it’s that speed apparently does sell even if standards built the foundation on which Wi-Fi thrives. Belkin’s pre-802.11n (high-throughput standard) router and PC card lives up to its promises of increased speed, according to PC World test. Now I have a test unit—still in the box at the moment—that says on the packaging that it beats 802.11g sixfold. That seemed unlikely. But PC World did find the Pre-N units doubled or tripled comparable 802.11g performance while serving as a better tool for 802.11g clients that were unable to reach an 802.11g gateway at the same distance that Pre-N worked.

The fundamental result of this early review is that the MIMO approach of multiple input and output antennas obviously has promise. And the good news is that you can add just a Pre-N router and still have backwards compatibility and forward gains in distance. That doesn’t bode well for a standardized future given, as the article states, it might be 2007 before there’s an 802.11n certification in Wi-Fi. In the meantime, the Wi-Fi Alliance said it will pull Wi-Fi certification from Pre-N devices that break Wi-Fi compatibility. Perhaps that threat will keep compatibility at the forefront.

Posted by Glennf at November 29, 2004 7:03 AM

Categories: 802.11n, Future, Hardware

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Belkin's Pre-N Delivers Promised Speed:

» Pre-802.11n Speed Lives Up To Claims from Elektroblog
Glenn Fleishmann reports on a PC World test that checks out Belkin's pre-802.11n gear. I think that the biggest advantage for 802.11n users is the increase in wireless range. This is particularly true for home users: it could remove the [Read More]

Tracked on November 29, 2004 11:15 AM

» Pre-802.11n Speed Lives Up To Claims from Elektroblog
Glenn Fleishmann reports on a PC World test that checks out Belkin's pre-802.11n gear. I think that the biggest advantage for 802.11n users is the increase in wireless range. This is particularly true for home users: it could remove the [Read More]

Tracked on November 29, 2004 11:16 AM

» Belkin Pre-N Performance from John's Weblog
Wi-Fi Networking News reports on a review by PC World that contains some performance numbers from the Belkin Pre-N wireless solution (the one with the Airgo Networks chipset in it). While PC World and Wi-Fi Networking News seem to be impressed by the 4... [Read More]

Tracked on November 30, 2004 1:07 AM

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