On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Al Poulin <alfred.pou...@gmail.com> wrote: > Also, you may get different results depending on whether you are using > the 2.4GHz or the 5GHz band. Shouldn't the 5GHz be faster?
My understanding from the little I've read about this over at www.smallnetbuilder.com is that 5GHz can be better if there are sources of interference in the 2.4GHz band. (Typical examples are cordless phones or a microwave or a baby monitor.) It's also potentially better in the sense of "not interfering" if you want to use 802.11g and 802.11n simultaneously. If your 802.11n is in the 5 GHz band it can't interfere with 802.11g. 5 GHz is potentially worse in that you apparently won't get as much range using it, at least with current radios. The throughput using either band should be roughly equivalent. You can potentially get a slight throughput improvement by using 40 MHz bandwidth (channel bonding?) versus the standard specified default of 20 MHz. But that comes at the cost, at least in the 2.4 GHz band, of greater interference with existing protocols. (The WI-Fi standard default of using 20 MHz is sometimes referred to informally as a "good neighbor policy".) There are two other problems with using 40 MHz. First, it appears to only work well close in. As the distance of the client increases, the throughput relationship can flip and 40 MHz can perform *worse* than with 20 MHz. The other problem is that your wireless client just may not support it. If this is the case then there is clearly no reason to enable it since it could only make things worse, not better. Apparently my early 2008 white MacBook does *not* support 40 MHz bandwidth, only the default of 20 MHz. This surprised me. > And with the early 2009 AE, would this be the automatic default > band selected by the box? Who knows? That's at least one of the reasons I'd like to read a review of the latest AE by a more comprehensive testing site like smallnetbuilder. I believe they have requested test hardware from Apple but have not heard anything back. I find this strange because Apple has supplied them with test equipment in the past. I found at least the following (historical) reviews. October 15, 2007 AirPort Extreme dual-band/single radio 11n http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30188/96/ July 16, 2007 Apple TV http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30095/80/ December 17, 2004 Apple AirPort Express 802.11g http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/24714/80/ If you know of a review of the new early 2009 dual radio AE that goes into more technical details than the usual online "review", I'd really appreciate being pointed towards it. -irrational john --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to g3-5-list-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
