Soon, we’ll be hearing less of 802.11g and more of 802.11n. That is the new WiFi standard, which was formed in January this year but unfortunately has yet to be ratified. In other words, these early products that NetGear and other vendors are shipping actually works on the draft version of the standard and might have a chance of not being compatible with future 802.11n products. But the vendors think otherwise, believing that any changes to the draft in the final standard can be easily solved with a software update.
Dubbed the RangeMax Next series and supposedly already shipping, the NetGear’s 802.11n offering claims to deliver speed up to 300Mbps, which we believe is not possible to achieve in real world performances. But it’s still pretty amazing, considering that it’s wireless and it’s actually faster than 100Mbps wired Ethernet.
It’s clear that careful buyers should control their craving for speed and wait for the equipments that works on the final 802.11n standard. Alternatively, hang around your local networking forums and wait for guinea pigs to report on their findings.
April 9th, 2006 at 1:12 am
The speed being 300mbps is doable if you have the right equipment and source but then when does that happen? Is there software to keep up with the hardware?
April 9th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Netgear products don’t work like they say they do.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
they’ve always worked fine for me and the 150 i’ve sold to customers.
April 10th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
I agree with John, Netgear work, but I do believe their products boast more than they actually offer. After purchasing the original range max router, i did get a small increase in range and speed, but not the 1000% that their products were advertised to do. I sure wont be waiting around for netgears next flop product.