My coworker alerted me to this the other day, so I understand that I'm already behind.

Cisco has announced Linksys wireless devices that adhere to the new 802.11n draft standard.  Cisco mentioned 12 times the throughput of 802.11g (54 Mbps).  Wikipedia is stating "These might more accurately be called pre-.11n routers, with speeds in excess of 300 Mbps."  Either way, that's pretty impressive.

The thing I don't understand so far (and I've read a good deal, but certainly not everything) is how 802.11n will be backward compatible with both 802.11b/g (2.4 GHz) and 802.11a (5 GHz), since they are not compatible with each other.  Nothing I've read so far talks about the frequencies that 802.11n will use, and the frequency has a direct correlation to coverage and signal propagation.  Of course, 802.11n promises better range -- Cisco proposes 4 times the range.

That's probably the part that is most exciting to me.  If these devices work as advertised and coverage is increased 4-fold, it would take far fewer private citizens to blanket an area in truly free wireless coverage.  That's when things get interesting.

More coverage: Gizmodo, ExtremeTech, Deviceforge, Intel.

Tags: wireless, 802.11n, WiFi