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Bucky

"Obviously with a 4x4, 2.4Ghz would be out of the question. I'm just worried that we're going to run out of channels to support 4x4."

This is an issue that can be very confusing. With MIMO (for example 2 x 2), we don?t actually transmit the streams mentioned (?2?) on different physical frequencies (for example, Ch 1, Ch 6 and Ch 11). We actually transmit them on the same frequency. This sounds ridiculous at first.

MIMO takes advantage of multipath. The receiver contains some very clever electronics which can ?pick up? the various signals which have travelled via different paths. Not only can it detect that these signals are slightly different, but it can also ?mix and match? them to ?make a final signal that contains the best bits of all the received signals?. It sounds like magic, but actually works.

So, you would be able to set up an AP and transmit on (say) Channel 1 without having to be involved with any other channels. One of the ideas behind 802.11n is that it shouldn?t disrupt the previous methods of channel allocation etc.

There is a thing called ?channel bonding? where we can take a pair of adjacent channels (usually in the 5 GHz band) and ?combine them? to produce a 40 MHz channel, but that is something different.

Dave