Can I avoid the problems of a mixed-mode wireless LAN by setting up separate 11b-only and 11g-only access points?
This technique will minimize, but not entirely eliminate interference between the two flavors of wireless LANs. However, it’s practical only for wireless LANs with only a single access point due to the small number of non-interfering channels available with 11b and 11g. You’ll need to do the following to set this up: – Use only channels 1, 6, or 11 and set the 11b and 11g APs to different channels. – Disable 11b protection on the 11g-only AP (this is frequently called 11g-only mode) – Set each AP to a different SSID (not essential, but helps for troubleshooting purposes) You will still get some potential throughput hit from clients when they transmit Probe Requests on all channels in the process of finding the AP that they want to associate with. But since 11b protection is disabled on the 11g AP, throughput loss will come from re-transmissions due to packet collisions and not speed reduction from the protection mechanism kicking in.
