Pre-N
Well, just when I thought I knew the major new wireless protocols that will be coming to market in the next few years, a direct successor to the current 802.11b and 802.11g somehow got by me. 802.11n is the next in the series and it will apparently have at least many times the speed and range as 802.11g. What that means in absolute terms is rates as high as 500mbps (this is about the equivalent of what firewire or USB 2.0 can communicate as a reference), and a range that might be up to half a mile, perhaps more. Of course, the farther you are from your hotspot, the slower your speed. Then again, since few people have “high-speed” internet connections that are more than 2mbps, it seems unlikely that you would notice anything until you got close to the limit. That’s the other problem. It’s great to have a lot of range, but what good does it do an individual when they aren’t likely to be able to take advantage of it except when they are transferring files from one computer to another over a network (not the Internet itself)?
In any case, Belkin has just come out with what seems to be the first actual implementation of 802.11N, although they are calling it Pre-N because the 802.11n standard hasn’t actually been approved by the IEEE standards body, so it could very well change, making this a dead-end. But then again, if you only buy Belkin’s set of interrelated network products (router and network cards), then you shouldn’t necessarily have to worry, as long as they continue to support it with the appropriate drivers.
Here's a review of the Belkin equipment from PC Magazine