Wireless data rates are rarely what they're said to be, and, as wireless moves into the consumer space, the products have to be a lot more straightforward about what they claim to be capable of doing.
The rule of thumb for wireless data-rates is to halve whatever it says on the box.
“If you look at the application layer throughput for 802.11g (WiFi) it’s around 22Mbit/sec, though it’s quoted at 54Mbit/sec”, said Bruce Watkins, president of wireless chip specialist Pulse-Link at a meeting during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
“For UWB (ultrawideband), the application layer throughput is about 200Mbits/sec when it’s quoted at 480Mbits/sec, and 650Mbits/sec when it’s quoted at 1Gbit/sec,” added Watkins.
I look on the box of an 802.11g router and there, in quite large figures, it says 54Mbits/sec.
For an industry with such an aspiration, its boxes should be honest.
Consumers will not be pacified by a spiel about the difference between the physical layer data rate and the application layer data rate.
They only want to know what data rate they're paying their money for.
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