Belkin's Pre-N Delivers Promised Speed

Belkin's Pre-N Delivers Promised Speed.
The industry rightly has qualms about pre-802.11n labeled devices, but
speed sells: If we've learned anything from the 108 Mbps and 125 Mbps
branding on a variety of Wi-Fi gateways, it's that speed apparently
does sell even if standards built the foundation on which Wi-Fi
thrives. Belkin's pre-802.11n (high-throughput standard) router and PC
card lives up to its promises of increased speed, according to PC World
test. Now I have a test unit–still in the box at the moment–that says
on the packaging that it beats 802.11g sixfold. That seemed unlikely.
But PC World did find the Pre-N units doubled or tripled comparable
802.11g performance while serving as a better tool for 802.11g clients
that were unable to reach an 802.11g gateway at the same distance that
Pre-N worked. The fundamental result of this early review is that the
MIMO approach of multiple input and output antennas obviously has
promise. And the good news is that you can add just a Pre-N router and
still have backwards compatibility and forward gains in distance. That
doesn't bode well for a standardized future given, as the article
states, it might be 2007 before there's an 802.11n certification in
Wi-Fi. In the meantime, the Wi-Fi Alliance said it will pull Wi-Fi
certification from Pre-N devices that break Wi-Fi compatibility.
Perhaps that threat will keep compatibility at the forefront…. [Wi-Fi Networking News]

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