802.11N: The "N" is for Nice Design

Kudos to Belkin for being first to toss out the 802.11B-is-for-Boring and replace with an 802.11N-is-for Nifty, iNformative, and just plain Nice product design. The display panel on these devices is something that many may soon wish they'd acted upon first. So this time it's too late to be first for DLink, Netgear, Linksys, et al, in the useful and appealing design category.

Now, if we can find an 802.11N device that will be the first to ACTUALLY WORK AS ADVERTISED, then we'll really be in business. After an entire weekend of testing the D-Link DIR-655 with the matching Xtreme N Notebook Adapter PCMCIA card, I'm saddened to report erratic connectivity.

When connected, speed performance was easily 5x greater (keeping distance from AP constant) than the Linksys WRT54GX4 "SRX 400" MIMO router that I hoped to replace; however, we just couldn't get the DIR-655 to stay reliably connected to any of the six following computers: Macbook Pro w/ OS X, IBM Thinkpad w/ XPSP2, Toshiba with XPSP2, Sony w/ Windows 2000, Lenovo w/ FreeBSD 6.2, and Acer w/ XPSP2. Chertoffesque "prophetic gut" theory? Pre-draft N may not have been sufficiently polite to neighbors; but this Wi-Fi Certified Draft N box may be TOO POLITE.

I may put just a couple more days free time into messing around with the amazingly detailed options in the 655's Admin Console; but so far, I've been unable to come close to confirming Tim Higgin's results. I'm not at all questioning Tim's excellent work -- for which I'm very grateful -- and perhaps the neighborhood network density in my location has something to do with current results; so as always, your mileage may vary.

too.late