Subject: Re: 45th IETF: Wireless LAN

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 11:03:22 +0100

At 09:21 23/06/99 -0400, John C Klensin wrote:

>From a marketplace standpoint, if one is a lot better in some 
>environments and the other is a lot better in others, I'd expect
>to see:
>
> -- some vendors offering both, with appropriate advertising and 
>    positioning.

FWIW, my take on this, based on DEC literature is:

- Direct Sequence (DS) is faster, giving about 2Mbps.

- Frequency Hopping (FH) is not so fast (at about 1.5Mbps), but is more
robust (noise immune, etc.)

> -- advertising that highlights those differences and advantages

I agree it's not crystal clear.  I'd particularly like to understand how
they compare, performance-wise, under conditions of "moderate interference".

> -- someone working on a dual-mode device

Now that could be nice!

I would also like to know the state of interoperability between different
wireless vendors.  The most recent information I could find (a year or so
old) suggested that MAC/Datalink level interoperability (roughly 802.11, I
think) was quite good, but that higher level protocol interoperability (for
roaming, etc.) was pretty poor.

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
([email-masked])