[TriLUG] interoperability: 802.11g and n

[Heath Roberts]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at wm7d.net> wrote:

> I want to link some 802.11g networks. Presumably I can use repeaters or a
> point to point WDS, but I was wondering if I can put an 802.11n router
> somewhere in there and use its mesh routing to relay packets like it was a
> regular ethernet router. I can't find much about 802.11n with google (any
> pointers?) so I'm pretty clueless as to what n does and if it's
> interoperable with g.
>

How many networks? And over what sorts of distances and topographies? Is
this commercial or fun?

Mostly, 'n' is an extension to the wi-fi standards that uses wider channels
(20 to 40MHz) and allows multiple channels (streams) to be used for a single
'connection'. Lots of interesting math to make that happen. It's usable on
both 2.4 (b/g) and 5GHz (a) bands, but there's a lot more bandwidth on the
5GHz, so I'm not sure how much sense it makes to use 'n' on 2.4G. You'd
probably want to set up a client network on 2.4GHz and a backhaul network on
5GHz. Of course, unless you have a lot of clients, you're really not going
to take advantage of the 'n' features (it's like saying you want a gigabit
LAN interface on your cable modem), and you could just use 'a' for the
backhaul.

I don't remember any new features particular to mesh networks, but that
doesn't mean they're not there.

There's a decent article right on Wikipedia...

-- 
Heath Roberts
htroberts at gmail.com