[MW Forums]

Apple on Tuesday quietly revealed a new AirPort Extreme base station that supports a draft specification of IEEE 802.11n, a faster wireless networking standard that works up to five times faster than 802.11g and at up to twice the range. more

[kwill]

So how fast is 802.11n? (AirPort G1=10Mb; AirPort G2=54Mb)

[George76]

So is Apple going to make this "enabling software" available to the general populace are you going to be required to buy an AppleTV or Airport Extreme Base Station to acquire it?

[MacTel]

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So how fast is 802.11n? (AirPort G1=10Mb; AirPort G2=54Mb)

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Between 300mbps and 600mbps but over a longer distance.

[flybynight]

My guess would be that until the 802.11n "draft" becomes final, you are only going to be able to get it with Apple's devices. But, that's just a guess.

[schalliol]

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Apple on Tuesday quietly revealed a new AirPort Extreme base station that supports a draft specification of IEEE 802.11n, a faster wireless networking standard that works up to five times faster than 802.11g and at up to twice the range. <a href="/news/2007/01/09/80211n/index.php">[more]</a>

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Wow! Can I get a card for my regular Core [1] Duo MacBook Pro, or is all on the main board?

[Wondercow]

The headline should read that Apple will allow 802.11n on newer Macs. Because, as the article clearly sates, apple has not enabled 802.11n on newer Macs.

[kwill]

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So how fast is 802.11n? (AirPort G1=10Mb; AirPort G2=54Mb)

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Between 300mbps and 600mbps but over a longer distance.

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Thanks. Probably closer to 300Mb since Apple says up to 5x faster (than what?).

[VidPro]

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So how fast is 802.11n? (AirPort G1=10Mb; AirPort G2=54Mb)

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Probably closer to 300Mb since Apple says up to 5x faster (than what?).

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According to Apple's website, based on a comparison with Apples 802.11g products, so it depends on whether Apple follows the original 54 Mb/sec standard, or the newer 104 Mb/sec version, so 5X a "g" standard is either about 250 Mb/sec or 500 Mb/sec (or inbetween).

[CreativeOne]

Wow - I hope the wording on this just needs to be cleared up. Every wireless router/access point vendor has had 802.11n gateways available since the end of last year. (IE: Linksys, Netgear, DLink, etc.). For them to only offer an update with their product ... This is more of Apple showing their true colors. This is almost asking for a lawsuit. Maybe they can do it because of the draft specification, and the only way they can make sure it is compatible with 802.11n is to use an Airport Base station. BULL CRAP

[iSunfish]

Also interesting to note is this, from Apple's website:

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Speed and range will be less if an 802.11a/b/g product joins the network.

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So if any slower device joins the network, it will automatically ratchet back to the lowest common speed denominator. How does one check on the speed a wireless (or wired, for that matter) network is operating at?

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Apple was the first to adopt both 802.11b and 802.11g and it worked out fine. With this draft standard, no company guarantees 802.11n compatibility with other vendors just yet. The positive being is that no hardware changes will likely happen when n is finalized and most companies will do a couple firmware updates to make things much smoother.

[Dan Frakes]

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Also interesting to note is this, from Apple's website:

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Speed and range will be less if an 802.11a/b/g product joins the network.

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So if any slower device joins the network, it will automatically ratchet back to the lowest common speed denominator.

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No, that's not quite what it means. Just as an 802.11a/g network is slower than an 802.11g-only one, an n network is slower if it has to accommodate a and/or g devices, but in neither case does the network sink to the "slowest" protocol. Devices using the faster protocol will perform a bit slower than if they were on a network dedicated to that protocol, but performance for those devices won't be as slow as the slower protocol. Does that make sense?

[kerby74]

Can anyone answer this... Why if the airport extreme card that is currently in our Mac is the same one in the ones coming out and the change is just a software update that comes on a disk with the new base station are PowerPC Mac's screwed out of the n technology? Is there something in the PowerPC architecture that even with the same extreme card installed does not work with n? Are they just trying to force upgrades and kill off PowerPC support?
I want a new n router and am planning to get an Intel Mac soon but want ALL of my airport extreme Mac's to get the advantage from the new router.