Air Time: Airgo's True MIMO Gen3: Breaking New Ground in Wireless Performance: Page 2 of 2

Alas, this is far from nirvana. Although Airgo deserves credit for making its
products backward compatible with existing 802.11 standards, the system's
proprietary design requires Airgo interfaces on both ends of the connection to
achieve significant benefits. In addition, the 240-megabit link rate is only
achievable when two 802.11 channels are bonded together, though Airgo's
channel-bonding technology allows for coexistence with Wi-Fi networks
operating on another non-overlapping channel.

For enterprise users, the writing is on the wall: MIMO is the future. That's a
conclusion that may lead some to reconsider large-scale 11g or 11a
deployment plans. We don't expect to see much interest in Gen3 amongst
enterprise network managers, whose architectural decisions are increasingly
driven by open standards. However, Airgo's latest moves will put tremendous
pressure on the 802.11n committee to approve a new high-speed WLAN
standard. We'll forgive Airgo for asserting that Gen3 surpasses wired network
speeds, but it will be a long time before gigabit wireless is a reality. Still, it does
make the wireless enterprise a more intriguing long-term possibility.