Myth or truth?

Yes, I think.

What if you have 2 Macs with "g" and 1 Mac with "b"? Would the 2 "g" Macs be able to link at 54mbps, or would it be throttled down?

I can't see why it would throttle down. Unless the base station has to operate at one speed only. It might be a situation where the G cards will run full speed if the b card is inactive at the time (ie asleep) I wonder if this is really a problem. It seems like the basestation would just broadcast 54 all the time, and the cards themselves would stop speed when staurated, like pumping ifo into the data pipeline. You might get more RAM speed but it gets slowwed at the Bus, shouldn't affect the Ram speed though.

Originally posted by ftaok
What if you have 2 Macs with "g" and 1 Mac with "b"? Would the 2 "g" Macs be able to link at 54mbps, or would it be throttled down?

Click to expand...

-ftaok

I believe that if you run a 'g' network with all 'g' machines, you will run at 54mbps, but the moment some pesky person links in with 'b', all communication is snapped to 'b' due to the nature of the technology. Since both 'b' and 'g' use the same fequency, they need to have a homogenous protocol within that given frequency, and that will be the weakest link - or as in this scenario, the slowest.

It's a "darn" but at least it's not like 'a' when you'd have to buy all new equipment at twice the cost. Personally, I can live with the "darn".

Originally posted by patrick0brien
-ftaok

I believe that if you run a 'g' network with all 'g' machines, you will run at 54mbps, but the moment some pesky person links in with 'b', all communication is snapped to 'b' due to the nature of the technology. Since both 'b' and 'g' use the same fequency, they need to have a homogenous protocol within that given frequency, and that will be the weakest link - or as in this scenario, the slowest.

It's a "darn" but at least it's not like 'a' when you'd have to buy all new equipment at twice the cost. Personally, I can live with the "darn".

Click to expand...

This came up in the apple discussion forums questioning the wording on a knowledge base article. I believe the conclusion was that computers with airport extreme cards wll continue to run at the higher speed, and the regular airport will run at their normal speed. Basically a mixed environment works fine.

Here's the KB article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article2.html?artnum=107372

and here's a reply from an apple moderator:

I saw that thread and sent a request to have the Tech Specs clarified. I've been assured that the KBase articles are correct.

A little clarification is that 802.11b devices don't necessarily do a continuous sustained 11Mpbs, and 802.11g will also not do a continuous sustained 54Mbps. On a mixed setup, 802.llg devices will not be slowed to 802.11b throughput, but will also not do a continuous sustained 54 Mbps. I can't say I've seen an official published spec for either that states actual sustained throughput.

So the accurate statement is "When you mix 802.11b (AirPort) and 802.11g (AirPort Extreme) clients on an AirPort Extreme network, each type of client receives an appropriate data throughput rate. The 802.11g clients continue to receive data at a higher rate than 802.11b clients. "

Hope that helps ;-)

-strider42

oooOOOooo!

Hey that's great! I was merely tempted before, but now it's getting worse (thanks 😛)

I stand corrected! No 'darn'.

EXCELLENT!😎