Mobile Magazine, July 2004

 

Wi-Fi Road Hogs Turbocharged wireless promises to double your bandwidth, but in so doing it might be stomping all over your neighbor's network.

Nobody wants to be a bad neighbor.

You mow the lawn, keep the dog from barking all night, and refrain from throwing loud parties. But if you buy a turbo-boosted wireless 802.11g router, are you invading your neighbor's wireless space? It's possible. What's more, you may be doing it for no good reason. Speed-boosted Wireless G routers promise as much as 108Mbps of throughput, twice as fast as standard Wireless G products. How do they do it? First, through packet bursting, in which shorter data packets are rebuilt into longer, more efficient ones that transfer data more quickly. Second, these products compress data whenever possible. Broadcom 108Mbps chipsets, found in Linksys's SpeedBooster 108Mbps routers and adapters, use both of these methods to speed up wireless transmission.

Atheros chipsets, found in Netgear and D-Link turbo products, also use a third, more controversial, speed trick called channel bonding. Instead of using one channel to transmit data--the traditional Wi-Fi way--these products use two channels simultaneously to send more data. But in taking up more space on the channel spectrum, you may be leaving less room for other wireless networks near you. Tests run by the website Small Net Builder confirm that Atheros' Super G technology does degrade nearby wireless network performance. "It's what we call a 'bad neighbor' technology," says Mani Dhillon, senior product manager for Linksys. "You shouldn't negatively impact another person's network, and we try to take that into consideration."

What Dhillon sees as consideration, his competitors see as fair game. "There is no inherent interference taking place with this product," says Vivek Pathela, Netgear's director of product marketing. "When two wireless networks are working closely, there will be some level of signal exchange. The competition is sweating because the technology is so good."

Twice as fast, my ass So you cut into your neighbor's network space a little. But how much extra speed do you get for your effort? In reality, much less than the advertised speeds of 108Mbps. In Mobile PC tests, D-Link's DI-624 AirPlus Xtreme router registered only 49 Mbps--a noticeably boost but nowhere near triple digits. Netgear's WGT64 Wireless Firewall Router clocked a mere 29Mbps. (Linksys's SpeedBooster WRT54GS, which promises a 35 percent speed increase over Wireless G, has not yet been tested in the Mobile PC lab.

Pathela avers that Netgear's main aim right now is to increase coverage, not bandwidth. "If you don't have good coverage in your house, throughput degrades dramatically," he says. "Microwaves, cordless phones, walls...these things can affect performance."

Linksys, however, says that it's all about the bandwidth--if not for current content, for the multimedia you'll be streaming over your network in the near future. "It's not meant to improve your range, it's meant to improve throughput in your existing range," says Dhillon. "People want to be careful of obsolescence. They want a product that will allow them to be current for as long as possible."

According to Julie Ask, an analyst with Jupiter Communications, turbo wireless is all about stoking the consumer engine until the next standard comes along. After all, 802.11n (which will offer 100Mbps of bandwidth) is at least a year away from ratification. "Companies need to be pushing the envelopes," says Ask. "It stirs up the standards committee to speed up the process."

So should you buy a turbo wireless router? If your current 802.11g router is working just fine, save your money until 802.11n comes along. But if you're upgrading from 802.11b, go for it: The 108Mbps costs the same as a standard G router. And who knows, you might actually boost your speed a little. Just remember: Routers and standards come and go, but your neighbors will always be there.