Discussion on:

10 things you should know before you buy an 802.11n wireless device

If you bought one of these devices are you happy with it? Has your business organization considered 802.11n products? Are you concerned about possible changes to the standard?

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/Ou/?p=247

I think George has it nailed, concerning interference and interoperability. The fact of the matter is that the FCC, has lost control once again of the airways, similar to when CB ran amok. This one will not be solved easy either. For those of you not familiar with it, they just dispensed with licensing of CB to solve the problem, and everyone went away but the truckers, who use it constantly.
Now for the real problem. I install commercial wireless for Marina's and Yacht Clubs. In order to penetrate the fiberglass of these boats, we have to do two things: Increase the power by amplification (limited by FCC standards), and use relatively small antennas which cross polarize all signals and concentrate the signal further, so that penetration is possible. Guess what! These signals can be detected as much as 5 miles away! I am sure there are other applications of this which are very much the same. I used in one installation a cisco setup, with 1 watt power, that had a solid range of 13 miles with a dish up at 100 ft. Now the new bandwidth is going to destroy the number of channels being used at the present time, and certainly limit the future use of the airwaves as such. Questions?

We have used the Belkin Pre-N device and the firmware version 1000 works a treat so we when and purchased a couple more but these were with the fireware version 2000 and we can not get them to work, Belkin have no plans to update the fireware as yet and we are now looking into sending them back so beware of the new firmware 2000.
hope this helps

I purchased a Netgear pre (draft, whatever) N router on the promise of greater coverage.

One issue is that you need pre n in your computer to get this kind of coverage and very few folks have got that. Since this was for a public area there was no advantage there.

Second issue also had to do with coverage. The Netgear pre n actually didn't give me as much coverage as the Netgear WPN824 MIMO router. I spent $140 for the pre n and $40 (refurbished at Fry's) for the WPN824 MIMO. The MIMO router definitely gave superior coverage.

Here's another issue of mine with going high speed on wireless... If you are passing data from one device to another then this higher speed does make a difference, but if all you're doing is providing wireless access to the Internet then what is the big deal? At home I have cable modem with a top speed of 4mbs or so. Doesn't matter if my wireless can talk 11mbs or 108mbs, I still can't get to Google any faster than the broadband allows.

Give me coverage and signal strength any time.

We switched about a year ago to a Belkin Pre-N router. The result was much stronger signal when used between upper and lower floors. Solved a big problem for us with Wireless.

Working for the Educational market, I need something that is going to be compatible with multiple vendors! Until the 802.11n standard is ratified, I won't touch it. I will keep my 802.11g or switch to 802.11a before I go with any pre N deployment. The way I see it, we still have 6 months to a year before anyone can seriously look at 802.11n.

I think most of the people w.r.t. the 11n supported devices are very excited about the new technology and standards. And since the specs itself are not yet frozen, it is too early to comment much on it.
Yes, the possible changes are inevitable, but I really do not think it will have any major impact on the current specs that we have in place. WiFi itself is aware of the facts and the extent of damage that could happen in case any major changes are done to the standards, esp at this point of time. Although there will be little cosmetic changes but definitely not major. And as the heading says, "............"; only the time will tell.

I have just installed my NEW Belkin Wireless N1 Router, it has taken me about 3 days because there is no software to install, the CD that comes with it only has a manual (pdf) so
after a few headache's and swear words
I have now got it working and it's very good
and would recommend it, if you have the headache pils, but dont take my word for it, go and get one, it's the future.

Malc

Of course everyone in the similar domain is more or less excited about 11n and associated products. But since the specs are still not finalized, there would always remain a fair amount of scope of std to change. Although a lot of vendors associated to the technology have already launched products, based on the available specs(draft stage). The obvious reason is that no one expects a major change in standards. But yes, there would definitely a change, otherwise it would have already be finalized and closed without waiting for the 1st week of May

I bought Linksys Draft-N Router and 2 usb adapters and hav no problems running it at home. I can often get a 300Mbps signal, I'm often streaming DVD quality media over it with no probs.