Introduction

The Holy Grail sought by every marketeer of consumer WLAN products has seemed to be whole-house coverage with speeds capable of supporting multiple digital video streams. Although widespread need for this "requirement" still seems aways off, any wireless product that promises wider range or faster speed is sure to fly off the shelf.

The latest campaign in the battle for your wireless networking bucks are products that promise both higher speed and extended range. (A more recent development is the rediscovery of 802.11a by consumer networking vendors as the latest "solution" for reliable video streaming - this from the same folks who until now have been telling you that "enhanced 802.11g" was the solution for the very same thing. But I'll leave that for another article.)

In this article, I'll take a look at two technologies that make this claim: Airgo Networks' True MIMO and Atheros' Super G with XR. I'll also look at how these two fare against ParkerVision's D2D Technology - which currently supports only 802.11b speeds and makes no speed enhancement claims.

NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I was contracted by Airgo Networks to perform an evaluation of engineering samples of pre-release Pre-N products. However, all testing presented in this report was performed on released, Belkin Pre-N product.

Tags: Airgo, Atheros, Belkin, MIMO, Netgear, ParkerVision, Super G, WiFi,

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