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August 7, 2003
Another Reason to Prefer 802.11g
A report from researchers at the Institut d'Informatique et Mathématiques Appliquées de Grenoble in France have found that a single user with a bad connection can dramatically slow down the access for all users of an 802.11b wireless network.
If someone connected to a Wi-Fi network at, say, 1 Mbps (the slowest transmission rate), then the transmission protocol used by the 802.11b access point will degrade everyone else using the same network to that slower speed. This happens even if another user has a strong enough signal to support the full 11 Mbps that 802.11b supports.
Given that the 802.11g standard is about 5X faster than 802.11b, and it does not suffer from this same failing, anyone thinking about setting up a new network (or upgrading an old one) should definitely steer towards 802.11g even if it is slightly more expensive. Read the full story...