Tim Higgins
My contact said that the DIR-855 will support dual-band "concurrent"
streams and divulged one other tidbit about the product. The DIR-855 will have an OLED display, similar to that on the DGL-4500.
He wouldn’t confirm whether the DIR-855 and DGL-4500 share the same main board, which can support two radios via its two mini-PCI slots (see for yourself in the slideshow). We’ll just have to wait for the FCC registration, which hasn’t happened yet.
Thanks to everyone who has sent in comments, bug reports and suggestions for the site. I’m slowly working my way ...
In response to reader feedback, we have disabled the article Comments feature. All article discussion has now been moved to the SmallNetBuilder Forums.
The final standard is still over a year in the future and the Wi-Fi certification process for draft 11n products is about 3-5 months away. But companies are continuing to put this Beta-test-in-progress (which you, the consumer, are paying to participate in) into end-products beyond wireless routers and adapters. We've already seen draft 11n integrated into notebooks, and now Apple and D-Link have integrated it into networked media players.
The AppleTV announcement revealed that draft 11n capable hardware (from Atheros, it turns out) had already been integrated into existing Core 2 Duo MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Core 2 Duo iMacs (except the 17-inch, 1.83GHz iMac). All you need to do is run an "enabler" app, buy a new version of the Airport Extreme (in new Mac mini form factor) and voila, you have an interference generator for your 11b/g network. But something that Apple has done right is to put concurrent (or simultaneous) dual-band capability into its draft 11n products. This raises the cost, but also the flexibility since connections in both bands can be made at the same time.
