The IT staff at Morrisville State College, where the first large-scale Draft 802.11n wireless LAN is being designed, says the prototype gear exceeds expectations. The New York college, near the state"s rural center, is in the final stage of building a pervasive campuswide WLAN based initially on Meru Networks" existing 802.11a/b/g access points. Those will start to be replaced this month and next with the newest Meru access points, which have a chipset that supports 11n. The first ten of these were shipped to the college last week.
With 11n, users can expect to see throughput of 100M to 300Mbps, depending on how the access point and client adapter are configured. That compares with 20M to 25Mbps today for 11a and 11g WLANs. In addition, users can expect to see high throughput sustained over longer distances from 11n access points. In tests that began in June, Morrisville network administrators are finding that 11n is delivering on its promise.