Dell puts next gen WiFi, 802.11n, into laptops

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 18 July 2006 03:00

Business IT - Technology

Dell has become one of the first laptop makers to offer support for the draft 802.11n wireless networking standard, but because the standard is still only a draft, full performance will only be achieved when used with base stations incorporating matching Broadcom 802.11n chipsets.

Dell has announced an internal wireless mini card claimed to be capable of delivering up to five times the speed (270Mbps) and twice the range of the widely used 802.11g Wi-Fi technology when connected to a wireless network router using Broadcom's Intensi-fi 802.11n chipset.

However in May Broadcom announced  that products build with its Intensi-fi chipset had been demonstrated to interoperate using 802.11n with those using Atheros' 802.11n chipsets. "Tests have verified that the wireless LAN solutions work together at throughput speeds greater than 100 Mbps, using mandatory modes of the IEEE 802.11n specification," the two companies said.

802.11n promises data rates of up to 300Mbps and several leading manufacturers including Linksys and Netgear have produced plug in PCI cards and access points. However progress towards finalisation of the standard has stalled and there are suggestions that none of these products will be software upgradeable to the yet-to-be-determined final specification. 

The Intensi-fi chipset range comprises the BCM4321, claimed to be the world's first draft-802.11n media access controller and baseband processor and interfacing to PCI, CardBus and PCI-Express hosts; and the BCM2055 supporting multiple input multiple output technology and claimed to be "the best-performing 802.11 radio, featuring smaller die size, lower power consumption, and lower phase noise and error vector magnitude than competing products."

Dell also unveiled a new software utility, Dell Network Assistant developed with SingleClick Systems, to help simplify the set-up and management of wireless networks. The application is pre-installed on all new Dell XPS systems, Inspiron notebooks, Dimension desktops and select Dell Precision workstations. It can be downloaded for installation on existing systems from www.dell.com/networkassistant and costs $US39 after a trial period.