Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Just Say "No" to Draft N WiFi Products
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 04:30 PM
"I am going to make myself extremely unpopular this morning by suggesting that no one buy so-called Draft N Wi-Fi gear that is pouring into the market: Buffalo and D-Link say they’ve been shipping wireless equipment based on the current draft of 802.11n, the higher-speed cousin to existing Wi-Fi, for at least two weeks. Linksys entered the fray today with a new router and PC Card. Other manufacturers who have not yet announced will follow in May and June. And it’s a bad idea. These companies are shipping Draft N devices for the bragging rights to be first out of the gate and to try to brand their Draft N products’ identities on consumers’ minds. There’s no good technical reason to release these products this early. Lest someone point to 802.11g’s early release before ratification by the IEEE, it’s important to note that 802.11g was several drafts further along when Broadcom pushed out its first chips."
I have to agree with the author of this article - just yesterday I was out shopping for a new WiFi router to replace, ironically, both my Netgear and Belkin Pre-N routers that had been giving me problems. I was looking at a LinkSys Draft-N product, and ultimately skipped over it and went with a standard 802.11g router from D-Link. Once the real 802.11n spec is finalized I'll snap up a new router quickly, but right now buying a draft N product makes no sense.
I have to agree with the author of this article - just yesterday I was out shopping for a new WiFi router to replace, ironically, both my Netgear and Belkin Pre-N routers that had been giving me problems. I was looking at a LinkSys Draft-N product, and ultimately skipped over it and went with a standard 802.11g router from D-Link. Once the real 802.11n spec is finalized I'll snap up a new router quickly, but right now buying a draft N product makes no sense.
