The new format adopted Oct 1, 2006 moves the comments and essays from the daily posts to a more permanent home.
I have tried to organize these by topic – rather than by date. If you are having difficulty locating an article please use the search box at the right sidebar.
Here’s the most recent
Weekly Editorial: SDR News Perspective
by Andy McCaskey
If you take a quick trip to Staples, Best Buy, Frys or any retail store you will find row upon row of 802.11 devices. 802.11b is totally gone, G is waning, and in its place are 802.11-N * .
The n* will point to something called “Draft-N” – a draft version of 802.11N. That would imply that all we are waiting on is some sort of standards body to put the final OK on something that everyone has agreed upon in a draft version – sort of like “patent pending” or just waiting for the title to come back from the Motor Vehicle Bureau while you drive the new car on the registration and bill of sale.
In this case, the Bill of Sale may turn out to be a Bill of Goods. There is absolutely no guarantee that a given manufacturer’s 802.11N will interoperate with anything. Even its own Draft 11N products, much less the Draft 11N of other manufacturers. And all bets are off when, in 2008, the IEEE standard is finally agreed upon.
Better, Faster, Cheaper has always characterized the search for the new. Chasing the New has been the American way for two hundred years. However, chasing the buck has been in the mix as well.
How Does 802.11N stack up ? Does that page load faster ? Does the file upload more quickly? Can you resolve an arbitrary address through the DNS system?
A bit like Vista: The hype and eye candy are fun, but what improvement in your day to day computing experience do you get for your money ?