Overview of the 802.11g Standard

The fact that IEEE 802.11a and 802.11b manufacturers are now selling hardware that will work with either standard indicates that the same should be true for 802.11g.

Note

The IEEE 803.11a standard uses the 5GHz spectrum. This is the most significant difference between 802.11a and 802.11g. Hardware based on the 802.11g standard suffers from the same limitations as the 802.11b standard ”interference from microwave ovens and some portable telephone devices, as well as from other electrical devices. Thus, for some environments, the 802.11a standard may be more appropriate. However, you can locate interfering devices so that they do not impact your 802.11g network.

Increasing Bandwidth in the 2.4GHz Spectrum

The newer 802.11g specification increases the bandwidth from 11Mbps (802.11b) in the 2.4GHz radio spectrum to 54Mbps. With backward compatibility built into most new hardware, you can preserve your investment in IEEE 802.11b equipment when you begin to incorporate 802.11g hardware into your wireless network.

But does 802.11b provide for your bandwidth needs? Consider that the basic bandwidth of 11Mbps is about the same speed you could obtain with a 10Mbps switched Ethernet wired network. A wired network consisting of 10Mbps (also known as 10BASE-T), if already installed, is already considered legacy hardware. You should probably have already increased your network bandwidth by upgrading the wired network to 100Mbps (100BASE-T). In this situation you need to consider whether you really need wireless networking in your enterprise (or your SOHO). Because most users don't actually make full use of the 100Mbps that 100BASE-T enables, using wireless connectivity, with its lower bandwidth, may be a cost-effective solution. This is especially true for mobile users.

Newer Gigabit and 10Gigabit Ethernet wired specifications are generally used for network backbone cabling, and have not reached the desktop except in a few instances. For example, if your office only uses word processing, email, and spreadsheet software, then 10Mbps (or 11Mbps provided by 802.11b) will probably suffice.

However, if you are using newer applications that require a larger bandwidth to satisfy users, such as graphic or other similar software, then the difference between 54Mbps and 100Mbps is not that great. Although 100Mbps is twice as fast as 54Mbps, you needn't consider 100Mbps unless your clients actually use the entire bandwidth! Even when transferring large amounts of data, 54Mbps (wireless) versus 100Mbps will probably not be noticed by your users.

In the rest of this chapter, I'll show you examples for installing a wireless Access Point (AP), as well as a wireless network adapter card.