HomeRF

HomeRF, a competing wireless standard to 802.11b, initially showed quite a bit of promise due to its multimedia capabilities. The companies that produced HomeRF equipment, however, recently decided to stop making these products.

The wireless networking standard can be used with cordless phones, since it shares the 2.4GHz band used by some cordless phones. In addition, HomeRF (Figure 5.2) is quite handy at playing multimedia, such as MP3 audio files. The networking standard gives priority to multimedia over other network communication, which helps to offer smooth playback.

Figure 5.2. A HomeRF access point from Proxim.

So, why didn't everybody use HomeRF? A fair question. The bottom line is that 802.11b was already widely used in corporate settings, which gave it a built-in audience at the office and offered double-duty at home. But, most importantly, 802.11b offers greater speeds.

The first version of HomeRF worked at 1 megabit per second. Not bad for Web surfing, but too slow for file sharing. The first version of 802.11 (the precursor to 802.11b) offered speeds of 2 megabits per second. The second version of 802.11b (running at 11 megabits per second) hit the ground well before HomeRF 2.0 (10 megabits per second) was released. The delay in releasing the second version of HomeRF gave 802.11b a considerable speed advantage, and consumers took advantage of it.