Product category:
Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: Intersil | Subject: Prism Nitro
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 30 May 2003
Software turbocharges IEEE802.11g
wireless LANs
A new WLAN software solution can improve 802.11g throughput more than threefold.
A new WLAN software solution can improve 802.11g throughput more than threefold Intersil's Prism Nitro technology is fully IEEE802.11g (draft standard 7.1) compliant, and uses new prioritisation algorithms and enhanced protection mechanisms to significantly increase pure 802.11g throughput as well as mixed-mode network performance
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Oct 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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Nitro is the first solution for turbocharging 802.11g systems that is fully compliant with the 802.11 standards.
Prism Nitro provides up to 50% greater throughput performance in homogenous 802.11g networks and also enhances overall system performance by three times when used in mixed mode, ie with both 802.11b and 802.11g clients present.
"We believe in standards-based wireless solutions as opposed to proprietary approaches that only work with a limited set of hardware and which are generally problematic for users and the industry as a whole.
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Our customers can use our latest 54Mbit/s high-speed g products or mix with older b 11Mbit/s products and achieve the highest throughput speeds in the industry while maintaining full standards compliance", said Larry Ciaccia, Vice President and General Manager for Intersil's Wireless Networking Products Group.
Initial testing indicates up to a threefold performance improvement even in worst-case wireless networking systems made up of predominantly 802.11b clients and access points with just a few 802.11g nodes.
In such a mixed-mode environment, and without Prism Nitro technology, the 802.11g clients would suffer a dramatic slowdown in effective datarates.
Some solutions on the market today do not support even the minimum protection mechanisms required by the latest 802.11g draft standard and allow 11b and 11g radios to transmit packets without mutual awareness.
This causes collisions, transmission errors and resultant retries that degrade overall system performance.
This problem is addressed in the current 802.11g draft standard, which incorporates advanced protection mechanisms that effectively regulate the traffic over the network.
Prism Nitro technology from Intersil not only meets the current 802.11g requirements but goes a step further.
By adding prioritisation algorithms to the required protection mechanisms, an entirely new level of network performance is achieved.
The new Prism Nitro technology is applicable to Prism GT and Prism Duette products, which are fully compatible with any 802.11g-compliant products.
"Moving to higher datarates while remaining fully standards compliant, ensuring full backwards compatibility and interoperability with other standards-compliant brands is one of our key priorities", Ciaccia continued.
"With Prism Nitro, our studies show up to a 3x improvement in performance for 802.11g clients operating in mixed-mode wireless networks.
We feel Prism Nitro is an exciting innovation, allowing us to deliver on the high speed promise of 802.11g in real-world environments".
Prism Nitro technology is a firmware upgrade that will become part of Intersil's SingleSource driver suite.
The SingleSource driver is a complete driver package that supports all Intersil WLAN high-rate solutions (Prism GT and Prism Duette client and AP solutions).
Prism Nitro is different from other solutions: it's not proprietary and doesn't require a proprietary clients and access points.
In fact, Prism Nitro is designed to work in conjunction with any 802.11g draft compliant solution and the huge installed base of 802.11b systems.
Prism Nitro's effective datarate increase of up to 5% makes it an ideal solution for high-bandwidth enterprise applications and home networking applications such as multichannel CD-quality audio and DVD-quality video streaming.
The added benefit of increased performance in a mixed-mode environment enables 11b and 11g clients in the same network to inter-operate much more efficiently.
The 11g clients will now have sufficient bandwidth to stream video and take advantage of the higher total speed while 11b clients are present.
Intersil was the first in the industry to deploy WPA and provides the world's most secure wireless link, enabled by WPA, CCX, TLS, TTLS, MD5, Leap and future-proofed support for 802.11i security, 802.11e QoS, and other IEEE enhancements.
Intersil's Prism GT is a fully backward compatible 802.11g solution due to its enhanced protection mechanisms; it is also the clear industry leader in range and throughput.
Prism Duette is the most robust dual-band solution on the market and began shipping in Q1 of this year.
Enhanced Intersil WLAN features are enabled by simple software upgrades due to the level of flexibility and pre-embedded silicon features on the Prism platform.
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