Has Networking Lost Its Mojo?

[geo]

The state of 802.11n, particulary dual-band, has nearly sucked the joy out of wireless networking for me. First, I put off by a year a notebook upgrade to wait for Intel's Santa Rosa platform because a notebook is a 3-4 year investment for me, and I didn't want to have to use an external usb stick or something for a NIC. I wanted 802.11n built in. So lost a year there, finally getting my Lenovo T61p around late August 2007, having had to wait a couple months from when I first ordered it.

Then, the performance and reliability of dual-band 802.11n routers quite frankly is downright scandalous. Fine, say "its still only draft, its your own fault", but its been draft for how long now? Almost three YEARS? Give me a break.

And has that long delay at least been rewarded with excellent products? Umm, no, not hardly. Dropped connections, lousy 5GHz range (tho perhaps this should have been expected), mixed-mode operation that is nearly to cry over, and firmware update schedules that'd make the printer driver people point and laugh, let alone the graphics card driver teams.

Is there any evidence at all that 2009 is going to turn a corner? I'd like to think so, but I certainly haven't seen any evidence yet. Will CES 2009 bring some wunderkind announcements? And, if it did, could we rely on them anyway given the CES 2007 announcement of DIR-855 that got many of us all hot 'n bothered and it was. . .umm, almost two years now and DIR-855 has nearly achieved bad joke status as the "Duke Nukem Forever" of soho networking devices.

*sigh*

 

[mhand]

I'd say we're currently in a mojo lull. I came here looking for inspiration. Here's my short list for anyone else looking for inspiration:

- usb webcam security using routers (software including motion, palantir and kmotion)
- ps3/360 compatible upnp media streaming from the nas itself (was twonky, now mediatomb)
- antennas. Cantenna, drain pipe, etc
- mesh networking with 802.11g client mode. and then securing the mesh network. not so relevant anymore with 802.11n
- xlink kai tunneling. shame it's not as popular these days
- multiple wireless audio outputs. airport express does this so well it's hard to beat with an esound solution
- actuator (ie servo) control with phidget and arduino.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to use the ps3 as an access point. Seems a psp (registered with remote play) can access the internet via the ps3 wireless network configured for remote play (without choosing remote play) - but not with any other devices (ie macbook).

But yeah... home networks are kinda dull right now. Hope it picks up soon.