[clug] linux wireless n

[Daniel Pittman]

Ian Bardsley <ifb777 at tpg.com.au> writes:

> Having resolved my NFS mounting problem, I now move on to the next
> challenge
>
> I'm now looking to upgrade my wireless network to wireless N.  Having
> rumaged around on the faithful Internet there seems to be a dirth of
> information with regard to the success or otherwise of making such a
> move.

Yeah, isn't it exciting?  On the plus side, like 802.11[abg], so long as
the NIC supports it you should have a passable time with N support.
Hopefully.[1]

> Yet again I seek to draw on the collective wisdom of this august
> group.  Has anyone successfuly moved to wireless N and if so, are
> there any recommendations with regard to hardware known to work
> effectively with an all Linux network and are there any known pitfalls
> associated with such a move

Well, I can advise on a couple of fronts:

The first is that there is huge performance variation among the 802.11N
access points out there.  Reading up random performance tests shows
anything up to 100Mbit differences in data rate for bench-testing.

This is going to be mostly OS independent, so you should be able to use
whatever benchmarks have been done as a guide to hardware performance.


The second is that you very much want a dual-band 802.11N router, so
that you can run in the uncontested 5GHz bands rather than the heavily
contested 2.4GHz bands.

That limits your range of hardware, though.

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  My personal exposure is limited, but there have not been huge
     numbers of "802.11N doesn't work with ..." bugs for in-kernel
     drivers.  So, either no one uses N networking or it more or less
     works.