I have a wireless video sender, and it will pick up interference from the 360, the 360 has to be unplugged for the video senders signal to be watchable. The video sender operates on the 2.4 bandwidth and no matter what channel i put the video sender on it still picks up the 360.
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This article seems to forget something,
802.11n is not standardized yet. If Microsoft released hardware (over a year ago) that met FCC & IEEE standards - why is the article seemingly trying to place blame on the Xbox 360 hardware?
Yes, it creates static. So what? If it meets standards, we really should be looking at the University & their implementation of non-standard hardware across their entire campus.
This article seems to forget something,
802.11n is not standardized yet. If Microsoft released hardware (over a year ago) that met FCC & IEEE standards - why is the article seemingly trying to place blame on the Xbox 360 hardware?
Yes, it creates static. So what? If it meets standards, we really should be looking at the University & their implementation of non-standard hardware across their entire campus.
Placing blame?
John W. Cox
senior editor
Network World
This second article simply reports what can fairly be described as Microsoft's "non-responsive" answer to our query over a month ago.
Neither this story nor the original "blames" the Xbox or Microsoft for anything. It seems that the Xbox is producing what is (at least in most Wi-Fi nets today) a strange signal that possibly interfering with nearby Bluetooth wireless connections, and possibly (in some cases) could affect the Wi-Fi infrastructure or client connections.
As both stories explicitly declared, there is currently no Wi-Fi interference. Yet.
My request to Microsoft was to intended to share with them what (to me) was an interesting case, and ask for help in exploring some of the technical issues that the college IT department might consider in assessing this signal. Microsoft obviously decided not to do so.
The college's wireless LAN is different in key respects from a typical corporate WLAN. The deployment of the 11n gear DOES come before final ratification of the IEEE standard. But the equipment coming to market is being certified interoperable by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
At Morrisville State, it seems to be the case that it's not the infrastructure (the Meru 11n access points) that is the source of, or affecting, this signal. It's a type of wireless client device over which the college has little control. I'm not sure any institutions have taken the step of banning wireless gaming controllers on campus.
The story is of interest, in my opinion, because it illustrates an increasing crowded, increasingly diverse client radio environment, where enterprise control over those clients may be limited or non-existent. That's a very different network than the traditional wired desktops used only by employees.
It could be anything....
BUT, it sort of reminds me of the early days of the motherboard issue that resulted in a huge number of early production XBox units going back for, in some cases extended, warranty repair.
It sort of reminds me of the original Pentium snafu at Intel, who at first did the 'plausible denial' thing until they relented and spent a fortune replacing just about all of the 60 & 66MHz units (remember when that was fast?)
It makes me think, admittedly anecdotally, that my home WLAN worked much better while my son's XBox was off getting fixed, and that the WLAN seems to work much better when he isn't using the XBox. Placebo effect? Perhaps, but...
It gives me pause to wonder if it might be better for Microsoft to be a bit less (non-)reactive and a bit more pro-active in addressing issues such as this. If it is a REAL problem, better to fix it and look good rather than to try and hide it and hope folks won't notice. I for one am much more willing to forgive a vendor that acknowledges a problem and then works to fix it, or even does a little work to debunk an unfavorable urban legend in the making, which Microsoft could clearly afford to do in either case.
An approach based on: "yeah, but the evidence is so far kind of spotty and you'll have to catch us in the act and prove it" won't be of much long-term value. Didn't Presidents Nixon and Clinton teach us that?
I bet it is a way to keep
I bet it is a way to keep interference away from the xbox controllers and allow more accurate gaming. I always found it incredible as to how accurate the wireless are.
Any RF engineers or ham radio operators about?
This could be resolved in 30 minutes by someone with a 2.4GHz spectrum analyzer, such that an RF engineer or a ham radio operator would own.
There are spectrum analyzers in the WLAN space that work on the physical RF regardless of protocol. Has NW or anyone at the school thought about using one or retaining an engineer?
Evidence that Skynet is becoming
self-aware.