Infoworld reports: "The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has approved a new and wireless LANs that will have a true throughput for Internet-type connections of between 10M and 20Mbit/sec., far lower than 54Mbit/sec. raw data rate initially billed for the standard....he lower actual vs. raw data rates for 802.11g arose from the need to assure backward compatibility with millions of existing 802.11b Wi-Fi client devices and access points that operate in the same 2.4-GHz frequency band....even at these data rates the 802.11g devices still outperform 802.11b devices, which have a raw data rate of 11Mbit/sec. but an actual throughput of about half that speed." Apple adopted a preliminary version of the standard for its AirPort Extreme products and touted a 54Mbps througput. A MacNN reader followed up on the article:

"The article is misleading. The 802.11g now provides for 'better' backward compatibility in mixed environments, which will slow transmission (by about 2Mbps) on networks with both 802.11b and 802.11g devices. However, the networks almost never achieve the theoretical transmission maximums--in this case 54Mpbs on an 802.11g-only network; the actual transmission speeds of *both* the older and newly revised 802.11g standard is somewhere between 20-24Mpbs. So the revised standard may slow things a bit in mixed environments, but not as much as the article makes it seem."

by MacNN Staff