High speed access

Fri Jul 6 14:44:33 UTC 2001

Once upon a time, Andrew Brown <twofsonet at graffiti.com> said:
> symetric 11 Mbps sounds...goofy.  especially if based on 802.11b,
> which utilizes a broadcast mechanism.  besides, i've yet to meet
> *anyone* who got past about 2/3 of the theoretical "bandwidth" of
> 802.11b.  imho, it's the spinal tap of the networking era (it "goes to
> 11", but is actually just a rumor and sort of made up).

802.11b is 11Mbps (at the top end), but that includes signalling
overhead.  There is a lot of overhead involved in the protocol (think
like ATM where you can't get 11Mbps of IP traffic through an 11Mbps ATM
link).

Also, 802.11b is "half-duplex"; only one side can be transmitting at a
time (like plain old Ethernet with either 10Base2 or 10BaseT and a dumb
hub).
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.