eeeks ... (i have not been able to test this since DLink has yet to release
firmware upgrade for the revision of my 624+ AP) ...

- jon

[ Permanent archived item: <http://wifinetnews.com/archives/002525.html> ]

[1] Broadcom says that Atheros's 108 Mbps mode in its Super G featureset
found in NetGear and D-Link devices significantly degrades nearby network
performance across the entire 2.4 GHz band: Associate Editor Nancy Gohring
and I filed this breaking news for PC World's online news site today. The
allegations by Broadcom could shake the consumer industry slightly. We wrote
this story now because Broadcom plans to demonstrate their findings at
Comdex next week, and we felt this was the right time to provide the context
we'd be been researching all week for the story.

The methodology Broadcom used to conduct the tests that they claim show that
Atheros's products have a large negative impact on 802.11b and 802.11g
networks is reproducible, D-Link, NetGear, and Atheros will need to issue
firmware upgrades, disable the mode, or recall equipment. Equally
problematic: if Broadcom's claims are not reproducible or their testing
methods and assumptions are faulty, they've gone a long distance out of
their way to make themselves look unreasonable.

You might wonder why Nancy and I filed for PC World instead of breaking this
news directly at this site. When Broadcom first briefed me on this problem
on Monday of this week, I turned to the PC World editor who had recently
assembled [2] an exhaustive coverage section on 802.11g access points and
their configuration and compatibility. That set of articles showed that many
current 802.11g devices still have bugs to be worked out.

In discussions with the reviews editor and the online news editor at PC
World, we talked about how best this story could be written without being
either speculative or sensationalist. Their advice and willingness to act as
touchstones in our reporting made it clear that we should work with them on
the story. They vetted this through their network experts as well to confirm
that the technical details were right.

I had and have a lot of trepidation about this story. We don't want to seem
naive and give credence to a claim that's scientifically provable and which
I've seen the results of but not the process until we know that it's
reproducible. But given that this is about to go prime time, as it were, we
all felt it was the right point to provide as much background as possible to
root Broadcom's claims and Atheros's rebuttal in reality.

URLs referenced:
[1] <http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113428,00.asp>
[2] <http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,112467,pg,1,00.asp>

pgp key: http://www.jonbaer.net/jonbaer.asc
fingerprint: F438 A47E C45E 8B27 F68C 1F9B 41DB DB8B 9A0C AF47

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