These are good points. Your observation that all but the lowest-end notebooks ship with 11n is fairly consistent with my own observations. In fact, I don't know whether Intel even offers a new Centrino solution that doesn't include the 3945 abgn adapter. That fact, along with the Wi-Fi Certification program, makes it extremely unlikely that there will be major changes to the final 11n standard. The market dynamics are much different than they were when I was deploying draft 10BaseT many, many years ago or even draft 11g a few years ago. I just don't think the standards-compliance risk is low.
Having said that, I do feel the risks associated with early adoption generally outweigh the benefits but there are always unique circumstances. Sometimes, it's an uncertain long-term budget issue, sometimes it's internal political pressure, sometimes it's a desire for visibility. But you need to weigh that against the maturity and stability of new silicon and new AP's. Implementing 11n systems that use first-generation silicon has trade-offs, including PoE and other power management issues, perhaps others that I'm not aware of. I'd much rather wait for second-generation silicon, which will be available in products in early 2008. The other risk is that some vendors are making changes to their architectures, distributing the controller functionality closer to the edge (in Aerohive's case, all the way to the edge) to provide more efficient traffic management. While these new architectures might have merit, I wouldn't want to be the first person on the block to deploy a new architecture in my production environment. Like others, I think it's a good idea to track the market in coming months and implement a pilot next summer. dm _____ From: Toby Krohn (tkrohn) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 5:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] 802.11n Draft 2.0 Actually, all but the lowest end of client devices are already shipping with n. With that said, assuming a conservative 4 year refresh cycle, in just 2 years the simple majority of the clients will be n and in 4 years the overwhelming majority will be n. Besides, with MIMO you will see better performance from your legacy abg clients so the move to n aps has mutiple drivers/benefits. Toby Krohn 4049060909 from my Treo -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Pait [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 04:49 PM Eastern Standard Time To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] 802.11n Draft 2.0 We are currently rolling out Cisco a/b/g wireless and asked the vendor about designing with 802.11n in mind. The overall response was that the technology is too immature and any predictions would be highly speculative. They also said that the consumer base would not be populated with N - capable devices within the next 5-8 years in sufficient numbers to realize an advantage. So what does the population think about the lifespan of the current 802.11a/b/g technology? On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 16:09 -0500, Jorj Bauer wrote: > > > We are looking at a campus wide wireless deployment, and my supervisor is > > > pushing for a complete Cisco 1252 with N draft 2.0 capability. We would > > > have about a total of 250 to 300 AP's in full deployment. Our wired > > > infrastructure is currently 100% Procurve with about 90% of it being 10/100 > > > switched. I'd like to know what other schools are doing with 802.11n. > > > > I think you are right on. I think as long as your a/b/g network is working > > well, the students aren't going to care about 11n. In my mind this is still > > a very immature technology. > > Personally, I'd hate to put any draft technology on my production > network. > > We went through the same thing with 802.11g. Network researchers (here) > that started using 802.11g draft hardware suffered innumerable > interoperability headaches. > > -- Jorj > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - > Jorj Bauer | [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Director of Networking | 3330 Walnut St. > School of Engineering and Applied Science | Levine Building, Room 160 > University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, PA 19104 > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - > > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
