Linksys wins Computerworld's 802.11n speed trials, Netgear brings up the rear

 

Over at ComputerWorld, Bill O'Brien (who I used to work with in my Computer Shopper days) has authored a shootout between the latest 802.11n-rated WiFi offerings from Belkin, Cisco/Linksys, and Netgear. Although many WiFi solution makers have been offering turbocharged versions of their gear (versions that exceed the official 54 mbps bandwidth max of 802.11a and 802.11g, or the official 11 mbps bandwidth max of 802.11b; the WiFi standard used in most public hotspots), those turbocharged versions have invariably been proprietary offerings. In other words, both the adapter in your computer and the WiFi access point had to come from the same vendor in order for the so-called turbo mode to work. The 802.11n WiFi standard, which is still yet to be ratified, should theoretically solve that problem. It's theoretical max is 540 mbps and, provided an adapter from one vendor and an access point from another conform to the standard, they should be able to interoperate. 

Looking to be the early birds that get the worms, several WiFi gear makers have had what's been referred to as "pre-N" offerings on the market; gear that conforms to one of the 802.11n draft (pre-ratified) specifications.  The problem with buying such gear is that as long as the specification remains unratified, it's a moving target. A pre-N device that conforms to one of the 802.11n drafts may not necessarily conform to the final standard. Even so, that hasn't stopped companies like Belkin, Netgear, and Linksys (Cisco) from capitalizing on the 802.11n acronym and what it stands for. Last month, version 2.0 of the 802.11n draft was issued and the three companies wasted no time in getting some Draft 2.0-compliant gear on the market, the gear that O'Brien took a look at. Perhaps the best part of O'Brien's review is the part where he says:

None of the products we looked at achieve the standard's originally stated 540Mbit/sec. speed. In fact, these vendors were less grandiose in their claims, claiming their products could achieve speeds in the 270Mbit/sec.-to-300Mbit/sec. range. Even at that, we found that, short of an alignment of the planets or voodoo, these trimmed-backed expectations fell into the range wishful thinking.

Of the Belkin's N1, O'Brien wrote:

The N1 Wireless Router was the value/performance leader among our three routers, but [the adapter] was our worst performer when positioned in our distant black hole of networking when attempting to connect with a legacy 802.11b/g router. We gave up after 20 minutes when trying to transfer a 921MB file.

Of NetGear's RangeMax Next, he said:

Our only problem with the installation was that the Netgear equipment wanted to see an existing network/Internet connection before it started the router installation, which seemed counterintuitive for a first-time install. The installation process will not continue until you have such a connection....Installation was more difficult than it needed to be, it had mixed results with legacy equipment, and transfer speeds weren't quite up to par with the other equipment.

Of what of Linksys' wireless-N?

The Linksys was the overall performance winner, especially when connecting to legacy equipment, although some of its specific test results didn't match that of the Belkin router and adapters.

If there was one test I was hoping for but didn't see, it was an interoperability test between the three different offerings. In other words, does Linksys' Draft 2.0-compliant adapter work with Belkin's Draft 2.0 access point? I sent an e-mail to O'Brien asking him if he tried this or not and haven't heard back yet. If he gets back to me with any useful data, I'll be sure to publish an update. Generally speaking, corporate shops steer clear of adopting anything that's not compliant with an official ratified standard. The risks are that it will never interoperate with standard-compliant gear once the standard is ratified. That said, some pre-N offerings will attempt to mitigate those risks through downloadable firmware updates.

Since the draft 1.0 specification first came out and the first crop of pre-N devices hit the market, companies like Belkin have been issuing firmware updates on a regular basis. Are firmware updates guaranteed to make your gear standards-compliant in the future? Well, the odds are good. But 100 percent guaranteed? Corporations have been burned before on that promise. 

Finally, if your expectations are that you'll get better Web browsing performance by moving to a faster wireless technology, don't count your eggs before they hatch. At the end of the day, the performance of your Internet-bound applications will only be as fast as the slowest link.  If for example, you're getting 1 mpbs of downlink performance from your broadband provider, don't expect a jump from 54 mbps to 100 mbps or more to double the performance of your browser. You may however see some improvement. WiFi transmissions are more susceptible to interference and thusly, corruption that sometimes must be remedied through retransmission; a process that theoretically should take less time if everything is happening sooner rather than later.