wireless auto negotiation

[wjal]

When Skyping with my brother, our connection is half duplex. We are both connecting wirelessly. It appears that wired connections auto negotiate in their default configuration and set the connection to half or full duplex according to the results of the negotiation, but how does a wireless connection determine that the connection should be half or full duplex? I see no such settings in the wireless adapter's properties.

TIA

 

[imagoon]

Wireless is always half duplex. It is a simplex / collision detection mechanism by the nature of sharing a single frequency range for transmit and receive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That makes me wonder. If modern N and AC wireless chipsets are MIMO, with multiple antennas, then why don't they dedicate one wireless channel/antenna to broadcast, and one to recieve? I would think that would improve wireless gaming latency issues a lot.

Has no-one considered that as an addendum to the standard?

 

[imagoon]

Well MIMO uses spacial techniques to improve reception so multiple one way channels would defeat that. Also you would need MIMO on both sides. I thought that most of the time that is a router feature? Well except the 2.4 / 5 Ghz device cards since they would have 2 antennas normally.

 

[wjal]

Wireless is always half duplex. It is a simplex / collision detection mechanism by the nature of sharing a single frequency range for transmit and receive.

That's exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you for the clarity.

 

[drebo]

That makes me wonder. If modern N and AC wireless chipsets are MIMO, with multiple antennas, then why don't they dedicate one wireless channel/antenna to broadcast, and one to recieve? I would think that would improve wireless gaming latency issues a lot.

Has no-one considered that as an addendum to the standard?

An antenna can either receive or send. It can't do both at the same time.

MIMO allows an AP to receive or send to multiple people at the same time, but not both directions at the same time.

As such, unless you had two antennas PER USER, you still need collision detection...which means, you guessed it, half duplex.

Note that there are point to point links that are full duplex, by virtue of the fact that they operate on two sets of antennas that work at different frequencies.