802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5
Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.
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Linksys to ship 54 Mbps, 802.11g draft compliant hardware first week of December: Linksys announced today that they would be shipping three products that complied with the current draft of 802.11g in early December. 802.11g is the faster, but backwards compatible flavor of 802.11b (2.4 GHz Wi-Fi), that will be ratified by mid-2003. Several companies have recently announced chipsets and equipment to ship early next year. Linksys is using Broadcom chipsets. A company spokesperson said in an interview that Linksys intended this equipment to be fully firmware upgradable to the ratified release standards, as well as for WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) support.
Although the company wouldn't commit yet to benchmark throughput figures, the spokesperson estimated a rate of 28 to 35 Mbps (as opposed to about 7 Mbps in 802.11b).
Perhaps as remarkable as the early ship date of these products is their pricing: Linksys will ship the first three devices, a PC Card, an access point and a cable/DSL gateway, for an estimated 10 to 20 percent more than the current 802.11b-only equipment.
IDG News Service's Stephen Lawson delivers a status report on other vendors' near-term 802.11g draft plans, including D-Link, Symbol, Buffalo, and SMC Networks.
Other News
FatPort adds Boingo as roaming partner: FatPort hot spots will now allow Boingo Wireless subscribers access starting immediately. Boingo Wireless has roaming agreements with several networks already, notably Wayport.
Turnkey Hot Spot Systems: I've just posted a short article about systems that allow a venue (coffee shop or larger) to set up a hot spot without any engineering on their part, including the Boingo, FatPort, and Surf and Sip options. The article also notes Proxim's new AP-2500 access point, which is optimized for public enterprise use and hot-spot networks.
NY Times: entrenched interests fear Wi-Fi may cause retrenching: In a nicely clever piece of reasoning, John Markoff spells out Wi-Fi's potential to disrupt entrenched telecommunications interests especially as the FCC examines opening up more spectrum to unlicensed or related use. As I have often said, incumbent market interests always get angry when consumers produce a more efficient marketplace. Rather than fight in the market, they encourage regulation or legislation to tip the playing field that's already heavily tilted their direction. [repeated from late yesterday's entry]