* WLAN vendor mud-slinging reaches new lows
The ruthless atmosphere in the wireless LAN industry is reminiscent of five years ago, when the fat-vs.-thin access point and centralized architecture wars were peaking. Today, the impetus for WLAN vendors to sling mass quantities of mud at each other, of course, is 802.11n.
The 802.11n carrot is dangling deliciously in front of WLAN veterans and startups alike while enterprises re-evaluate their WLAN plans and vendors in anticipation of over-the-air Ethernet speeds and a forthcoming standard with a decent degree of longevity. And the competitive zeal is spurring some fairly tall tales.
In their fervor to exaggerate the degree to which they trump their rivals, for example, some Wi-Fi vendors are relying on power-over-Ethernet sleight of hand and performance hyperbole based on less-than-objective test methods. And they are bent on selling an “architecture” as the primary purchase criterion.But I tend to agree with wireless guru (and Network World blogger) Craig Mathias, who told me recently, “People don’t buy architectures. They buy products that work.”
In other words, “architecture, schmar-chitecture.”
A provocative architecture might land a vendor on your short list, but there are a lot of variables affecting throughput, range, power consumption, interference and, oh, yeah, cost. Most of the enterprises and universities I’ve interviewed that have bought into pre-standard 802.11n have selected their vendors after exhaustive product testing and to fit their own environmental quirks and budgets.
Bottom line? I find the various creative WLAN architectures that are thriving in a free market fascinating and enjoy learning all about them. But I’m also in Craig’s camp. Try not to get too caught up in whether a solution sports a single channel, channel blanket, multi-channel, adaptive or radio-array architecture. In the end, how a given product or set of products works in your environment and within your budget will be what matters. For that, you need to do your own comparative testing or find an independent test lab that uses simulators to determine performance at scale.
