Just looking for general comments on the article. Did you learn anything? What info were you looking for that you didn't find?

thanks for updating this. Wireless has been my nemesis for so long now. I have actually disconnected my wireless POS and have not done anything because I just don't know which way to turn. I don't want to waste my money again.
I don't feel like you gave me a real definitive direction tho, just echoed the issues that have been my complaint.
What I want is to stream video over wireless to my pocket pc and my laptop. I just don't think that I can do it reliably yet. I feel like we should already be there. If you are looking for simple connectivity, check email, surf sites what we have worksfor now, as long as your phones aren't running 2.4GHZ as well.
I guess frustration is just my lot. I'm a geek - i have a lot of electronic devices and the RF in my house must be immense

Sorahl

Thanks for the feedback. As I said, I feel wireless product manufacturers are selling snake oil when they push 2.4GHz products for video streaming. Throwing throughput at the problem isn't going to help, especially in high interference environments.

I strongly recommend you try 802.11a if you're going to even attempt to stream video. Dual band products have come down a bit, but you'll still pay a premium for the shot at a better RF environment.

The guys over at HD Beat have a couple of good articles describing their attempts at wireless HD streaming:

HDTV over WiFi: tips and tricks
http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/12/15/h [...] pressions/

HDTV over WiFi: 802.11a helps
http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/12/21/h [...] fi-80211a/
and one trying HomePlug Turbo:

Netgear XE104 not ready for HDTV Primetime
http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/02/02/n [...] primetime/

Worth a read!

Tim,
you are absolutely right when it comes to the throughput and the 'lies'.
Those guys all come from the same place that spawned the measurement of monitors/tvs, and 56KB modems
I'll check out those links. I am lucky to have the ability to run cabling just about where ever I want it in my house. I just really want the freedom from my cables, atleast where it comes to my laptop. I've moved over to bluetooth for my Axim x50v now so that's not an issue.
However, the geek in me just HAS to watch the latest 24 episode outside on my hammock! or i'd just ditch wireless altogether...

John

Great article, but you might want to add a few things.. (unless they were there and I missed them).

Wireless access point are only Half-Duplex.. and when one person is broadcasting, everybody else is listening (cdma/ca). That is why the connection can be slow sometimes. The more active clients you have, the slower it gets.

A small problem with the 802.11a is that it's located in the 5GHZ range, and it tends to be stopped more easily by obstacle.. the Higher it gets in the frequency range, the more easily it will be affected by diverse materials. (Exactly as sounds, Bass will go through walls, while normal sounds gets stopped by them). It's not THAT much of a problem, but it's still there.

You might also want to say that 802.11b has only 3 non overlapping channels (they say there is 11, but only 3 of them are not overlapping), because each of them is 22mhz wide, so it's easier for 802.11b to get affected by interference.

802.11A and G has a definite advantage there since they both use OFDM. Each Channel is 20 MHz wide and is broken up into 52 subchannels (48 for data, 4 for error correction), each approximately 300 KHz wide.

Cheers!

Kiltak
<a href="http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com">[Geeks Are Sexy] Tech. News</a>

Great article!

You guys need to add a "Print Article" button though..

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