Re: Re(2): [67ATTENDEES] IETF 67 Network goes down at 12:00

On Nov 13, 2006, at 2:14 PM, Peter Lovell wrote:

I also had excellent results all week. This was with 802.11a, which is

built-in on recent Macs. I'm not sure how far back it goes, perhaps all

Intel-based MacBook/MacBook Pro's.

Glad you had a good experience!

Alas, this seems to have been a short-lived win. Indeed all the Core Duo MacBooks and MacBook Pros have an Atheros A/B/G card, but the OS doesn't support selecting A over B/G, unless you have A only (or B/G only) SSIDs. This is why we had the ietf67a and ietf67b SSIDs for the specific technologies.

Unfortunately, with the release of the new Core 2 Duo based units, Apple switched from A/B/G to B/G/pre-N. This makes sense, since that keeps all their technologies at 2.4G (one antenna), and fits with Steve's clearly stated belief that 802.11a isn't relevant. The bummer is that 802.11a is much more suited to high density, high demand/performance "enterprise" networks like the IETF.

Kudos to the network crew.

Many thanks!

- Jim