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Wi-Fi alliance renames 802.11b sensibly... 19 years later
October 03rd, 2018
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I have been in many, many, many arguments over the years over
which is faster: 802.11b, or 802.11a... Folks make this really
lame assumption that an increment of the Wi-Fi letter (A > B)
means that 802.11b is better than 802.11a just because the
letter is higher... Couldn't be further from the truth!
Barring attenuation issues, 802.11a has some serious advantages
over 802.11b; including (in some countries) higher transmit
power, more available free channels, higher speed (12, 18, 24,
36, 48, 54 stream data rates vs B's max of 11), less channel
bandwidth (20 MHz vs 22 MHz), and most 802.11a hardware is made
better than 802.11b hardware...

That being said, I am glad that the Wi-Fi alliance has finally
decided to retcon some older versions of Wi-Fi (and even current
versions) into some names that are much more indicative of which
is better:

Wi-Fi 1 == 802.11b
Wi-Fi 2 == 802.11a
Wi-Fi 3 == 802.11g
Wi-Fi 4 == 802.11n
Wi-Fi 5 == 802.11ac

So after a year or two after these names catch on, and someone
wants to argue with me about it, I'm going to use their lack of
reasoning against them: "WTF do you mean Wi-Fi 1 is better than
Wi-Fi 2?, the number is lower!"


Hahaha >:)

=> The Verge 2018/10/3 Wi-Fi now has version numbers, and Wi-Fi 6 URL: | comes out next year

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