Blog802.11n (Draft-N) Woes (Updated)
At PhoneNews.com, we’re all things wireless to all people. So, of course, we’ve been running 802.11n since the moment Apple screwed up and made us pay for it. We understand Apple makes mistakes, even with AirPort, but we let them slide on charging $2… so long as they never make such a foolish mistake again.
However, the problems with 802.11n didn’t end there. The Linksys WRT350N started crashing our workhorse (a Core 2 Duo) MacBook, right after installing the 802.11n enabler on the laptop. Fun.
Swapped the WRT350N out with a Netgear WNR854T. Problem is, the bandwidth only clocked in at 25 mbps, sporadically, with 802.11n Greenfield (no a/b/g devices) across the network.
I’m becoming convinced that the most major problem with Draft-N at this point is a failure for all these devices to talk together on a stable agreement. At this point, the best thing I can advise is for folks to only use one complete 802.11n solution. If you’ve got a Mac, only use an Airport Extreme base station. If you have a Linksys base station, only use Linksys gear. Same goes for Netgear, Belkin, D-Link, and everyone else.
Worse, there’s no solid suggestions for people with integrated 802.11n other than Apple (Apple tests their sourced chipsets with their 802.11n AirPort Extreme). There’s no way to know if a Centrino Duo (or Atheros, or Broadcomm, or whoever’s) chipset will talk best with say, Netgear over Linksys… you have to test your specific laptop with each to know.
This week, I’ll be swapping my Netgerar WNR854T for an Airport Extreme. Which, I really don’t want to do since I like Gigabit Ethernet on my router, but I don’t have a choice… and unfortunately, neither do you.
Update: Sure enough, the industry has chimed in with agreement. David Pogue has torn apart Netgear for the same speed issues we reported on. And, likewise, I’m going to agree with his new findings… AirPort Extreme does remedy these speed problems. This is consistent with what I said previously… if you want 802.11n, buy into one complete solution from one hardware provider.
However… things are not completely terrific on the AirPort Extreme front.
One problem I’ve noticed however is the failure for AirPort Extreme to restart properly. This appears to be a chronic problem with many 802.11n routers… possibly due to a chipset-firmware integration bug. Essentially, you save new settings, and the router won’t work until unplugged and plugged back in. This, of course, is a bad thing if you want to remote admin any part of your network infrastructure.
