I bought the hype that 802.11g is 54 Megabits/second. I paid extra for expensive 802.11g gear. I had this stupid idea that 802.11g's 54Mbps was close enough to 100Mbps ethernet that I didn't need to run wires in my house. It says so right on the box of my Linksys WET54g and in the product sheet: "Wireless-G (54 Mbps)".

This is false advertising. The fastest 802.11g will go is 20Mbps, not 54Mbps. And in a mixed 802.11b/g network the fastest two 802.11g devices can go is 14Mbps. I verified this with a WET54g sitting right next to a WAP54g. Throughput on an FTP? 12.8Mbps. And this is best-case, quiet network with devices right next to each other. In a real deployment I get 30% packet loss.

Between speed, security concerns, and general flakiness wireless is really not a reasonable option for regularly copying 2 gig files around. Good thing Amazon has a generous return policy. At least I get my $150 back.

techbad
  2003-12-25 00:29 Z