Just read an article on ZDNet about Wi-Fi, by way of Glenn Fleishman's Wi-Fi blog. The ZDNet article raises some valid points, but contains so many misconceptions and inaccuracies that, as a whole, the article does more harm than good.
First, the good stuff. As mentioned in the article, 802.11b equipment is much faster than almost all internet access types available for home users. Upgrading to 802.11g for home use will not affect applications that move data in and out of the house (via the internet). Applications that use the higher throughput of 802.11g will be those that move data around the home, not in & out. Similarly, in an office setting, 802.11g will speed up access on the internal corporate network, but probably not for anything that goes through the internet bottleneck.
The article also has a nice, concise summary of WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access).
Now, the content I have issues with. I'll list them in the same order they appear.
- 802.11g and 11a are 54 Mbps, not 55. (Small, but the devil is in the details, ya know :)
- Multiplayer games are not typically bandwidth hogs. They are designed so those poor folks with dialup can play, to maximize the potential player pool. However, MP game traffic is time-sensitive; you don't want a 300 ms ping time in a first-person shooter. Bandwidth never hurts, though :)
- 802.11g will be backward-compatible with 11b. The main issue is that interoperability between different 802.11g chipsets is not guaranteed for the newer 11g operating speeds and waveforms. The IEEE has not yet formally ratified the additional OFDM PHY modes and necessary MAC extensions for 11g, but the 11b modes will be supported by 11g. The purpose of the Wi-Fi alliance is to insure interoperability, there are 11g activities under way, and 11g will be included in Wi-Fi certification once the IEEE ratifies it.
- 11b and 11g protocols can run at the same time, and one 11b card will not force the entire network to 11 Mbps. 11g devices use RTS/CTS messages (which 11b devices can hear) to reserve bandwidth for OFDM messages (which 11b devices cannot hear).
- There will not be tri-mode cards, just dual mode. 802.11g is a superset of 11b. The new dual mode cards will be 11a/11g, running at 54 Mbps in either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz.
- 802.11a is more secure because it has shorter range? Please. The article mentioned that this is a weak argument, but why was this even brought up?