Wi-Fi Certified routers run at half speed

 

Gallery

Posted on 5 Feb 2009 at 11:57

The Wi-Fi Alliance has said that any 802.11n router it certifies has to be limited to run at half speed to ensure interoperability. The certification process requires manufacturers to turn off channel bonding, which uses two wireless channels to double throughput, by default.

"The products we certify are designed to have channel bonding turned off," said Kelly Davis-Felner, marketing director for the Wi-Fi Alliance. "Concern for congestion and not having to make users tinker around with settings is kind of what drove that decision."

The decision means that users will get a more reliable router out of the box, as using only a single wireless channel reduces interference, but at a cost of maximum speed. With a Wi-Fi Certified router, unless you manually change the router's settings, the maximum wireless speed will be half of 802.11n's stated 300Mbit/s throughput.

Congestion of networks is one of the biggest problems with wireless networks and one of the biggest limiters of its speed. The Wi-Fi alliance believes that this is one of the main reasons that more companies are releasing 5GHz products, which suffer from less interference and have more wireless channels than standard 802.11n products.

"We're seeing more uptake with 5GHz products," said Kelly Davis-Felner. "802.11n has catalysed migration to 5GHz."

Readers that have 802.11n products and want to check that they're getting the maximum speed should log on to their router's configuration web page. To get full speed the router needs to be set to 40MHz (270Mbit/s on some routers) mode. Be careful with this setting, though, as we agree with the Wi-Fi Alliance that channel bonding causes a lot of problems, and using a single channel will give you the best reliability.

Author: David Ludlow