Wireless Home Networking - Index of

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Part I: Wireless Networking Fundamentals
Like 802.11b, 802.11a has pretty much been superseded by newer technologies
(802.11n is significantly faster and can also use those higher frequencies
used by 802.11a). It’s hard to find 802.11a wireless home routers or 802.11a
network adapters on the market these days, with one exception. Some manufacturers
carry dual-band, dual-mode networking gear that supports 802.11a
and 802.11g in a single device — this equipment is often labeled 802.11a/b/g
because it also supports 802.11b equipment on the network. The idea behind
this dual-band gear is that you can use the 802.11a frequencies for a “fast
channel” for a specific purpose (such as sending audio and video from your
PC to home theater) while using the 802.11g frequencies for all the normal
Internet traffic in your network. 802.11n will support the same usage, with
higher speeds, so many manufacturers have discontinued their a/b/g equipment.
As we write in late 2007, several manufacturers (such as NETGEAR)
still offer such wireless equipment.
The current standard: 802.11g
The most recent of the IEEE standards-based products to hit the street is
802.11g, which has become the standard wireless gear found in new computers
and other devices. The g standard was finalized in June 2003. The appeal
of 802.11g is so great that many vendors didn’t wait for the final standard to
be adopted before they released their first products based on this technology.
802.11g is backward compatible with 802.11b wireless networking technology,
but delivers the same transmission speeds as 802.11a — up to 54 Mbps —
thus effectively combining the best of both worlds.
802.11g equipment offers a nice upgrade path for people who have already
invested in IEEE 802.11b equipment. When the first products were released,
they carried prices that were only marginally more expensive than plain-old
IEEE 802.11b, but today the prices for 802.11g equipment are considerably
lower than 802.11b ever was.
Although 802.11g works great, if you’re considering doing more than just
share Internet connections on your wireless network, you should consider
investing in the newer 802.11n technology discussed in the next section. This
newer standard (well it’s almost a standard, as we discuss) provides speeds
up to five times as fast as 802.11g or 802.11a, and can support both frequency
ranges (the 2.4 GHz frequency supported by 802.11g as well as the 5 GHz frequency
supported by 802.11a) — opening up more channels and decreasing
the possibility that your neighbor’s network will interfere with yours (a
potential problem in urban and even suburban areas).