dru
join:2000-09-14
Corona, CA
| If early MIMO gear is any indication
I bought and tested MIMO gear from two different manufacturers. Although both worked with various "legacy" devices with which I was expecting problems, *both* exhibited range and loss of signal issues when using them purely in MIMO/"super whatsit" mode with remote cards of the same manufacturer. And one brand's MIMO adapter failed / would not connect at all if there were any "legacy" devices in my network.
In short, I was expecting better range and throughput with MIMO equipment, and what I experienced was far less than what I get experience with well supported, 802.11B gear.
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I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe. |
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ace41690
join:2003-01-24
Northfield, CT
| I have netgears mimo router and its terrible. The wireless internet doesnt go any faster than 5mbps and I cant get data to go more than 20mbps out of the supposed 108.
Still I say bring on N. Data goes flying all over the place in my house and I could use the extra bandwidth. |
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dru
join:2000-09-14
Corona, CA
| Your experience mirrors mine. In fact, Netgear was one of the brands I tried.
I believe the engineering concepts behind MIMO and 802.11N are solid, however, in the rush to be "first" to market with consumer products under $150, early adopters become unwilling alpha- or beta-testers.
Also, no matter what they say now, products initially released as "pre-(anything)" now may or may not be compatible with the final standard, or truly interoperable with other brands. I've been bitten by that several times, and it usually isn't caused by Netgear, Linksys or D-link but rather due to engineering miscalculations by the underlying chipmakers like Atheros. The right thing for these companies to do is to trade out buggy or flawed gear with a free upgrade, but lately it seems they are simply sticking it to the consumer or hiding behind technicalities. For example, the current crop of pre-N gear might work with their brand's final implementation of 802.11N but not be upgradeable to a level with full interoperability.
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I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe. |
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Nman
@shawcable.net
| Dude,
MIMO is very similar to Pre-N and N so if you were disappointed with the range of MIMO you will also be disappointed with the N stuff.
That is not necessarily true of issues you had with wired stuff such as the limited speed of the WAN port. You could expect that stuff to improve, as well as the compatibility since MIMO was not really a standard as opposed to N stuff. |
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