Atheros tweaks Super-G to be a nicer neighbor

Atheros’ announcement is somewhat confusing, since the company has consistently flatly denied Broadcom’s assertions that Super-G is a "bad neighbor" and dismissed the effects that Broadcom pointed to as "common to all 11g products". The specific Super-G technique under fire was its bonding of two channels to achieve high data rate.

This technique was originally used in Atheros’ 802.11a "Turbo" mode, where wider channel spacings didn’t present any interference risk. But a demonstration shown in Broadcom’s private booth at Comdex and CES showed that the closer channel spacings used in 802.11b and 11g WLANs could cause Super-G to significantly interfere with nearby 11b networks when channel-bonding was in use.

Our own testing - described in the Atheros Super-G NeedToKnow Part 1 and 2 - showed that "dynamic" Super-G did adapt to some 11b and 11g-based neighboring wireless networks, quickly dropping the use of channel-bonding when neighboring traffic was detected. But dynamic Super-G was not able to detect networks based on Broadcom’s market-leading "54g" 11g chipset, which lent credence to Broadcom’s claims.

Marketing spin aside, if Atheros has succeeded in getting the bugs out of Super-G and has made it play nicely with all non Super-G WLANs regardless of whose chipset they are based on, they may finally get this whole mess behind them.