Report: 802.11n Ready For Prime Time As Gigabit Ethernet Replacement

August 29, 2007

ArsTechnica's Eric Bangeman cites a report from the Burton Group that wireless 802.11n just might be fast and efficient enough for corporate IT types to think about starting to put gigabit Ethernet aside.

"The Burton Group answers that question in the affirmative, saying that the increased speeds and other features of 802.11n should be enough for many companies to cut the wires on their WANs in the next two to three years," Eric writes.

Eric cites Burton's counsel that although 802.11n speeds are still quite short of gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n should be fine for most uses now. He notes that in Burton's list of recommendations on when to deploy 802.11n, one of the criteria listed is "when fast Ethernet [100Mbps] throughput is good enough."

Then, Eric gets into the meat of the Burton report. He cites some 8MB download speeds over 802.11g, 802.11n, fast Ethernet, and gigabit Ethernet, as tested by Burton and noted in their report.

"With a 2MB file, the difference will be negligible for everything but 802.11g, which will take 5 seconds. Downloading an 8MB file over 802.11n should take about 4 seconds if there are 10 users on a given access point, compared to less than a second for both fast and gigabit Ethernet," he writes.

"Even with 20 users per AP, the file download times ranged from two to eight seconds—still satisfactory for most users," Eric notes that the report says.