I remember actually testing that stuff out when it came out. I was working as an intern at Philips Semiconductors in their Wi-Fi chip division. Speaking of time

I remember actually testing that stuff out when it came out. I was working as an intern at Philips Semiconductors in their Wi-Fi chip division. Speaking of time has no meaning... :) I think there were a couple of consumer products that got released - Linksys and netgear perhaps? They consisted of a USB Hub + Dongle. They actually worked ok, but the speed would drop off quickly with distance. Across the room, and you'd be at 50% of the rated speed, at best. The technology was interesting. Basically they were transmitting over a whole slew of spectrum simultaneously (from like 2.5GHz to 5.5GHz), but they kept the transmit power low enough that it didn't exceed some FCC threshold.