Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Wireless Router Choice

While shopping for wireless router, I came across this article that explained many things that have been confusing me.

802.11n - The consequences of abandoning the 5 GHz frontier

It answered/confirmed following of my questions/understandings:

1. 802.11n is capable of running on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.
2. 802.11n is best to run on 5GHz.
3. Simultaneous dual-band routers have two radios which could be dedicated to one of frequencies.
4. Using dual-band within 2.4GHz is prone to congestions and interferences.
5. Corporate users are smart enough to be not fooled by bogus MIMO technology introduced in 2005 claiming to deliver dual bandwidth, therefore staying with 802.11b/g before true dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n routers are available. Consumers were fooled to purchase high priced MIMO router and single-band 802.11n router.

On a side note, Windows Vista vs Windows 7 is another example of wisdom of corporate users, i.e., only home users upgraded to Vista after its release while most of companies sticked with Windows XP until Windows 7 came out. The bottom line is, consumers are easy to fool. This is where Apple and Steve Jobs won.