Nitro (wireless networking)

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Nitro from Conexant (originally developed by Intersil) is a proprietary 802.11g performance enhancement technology introduced in 2003 as part of the PRISM chipset. The first implementation was designed to help compensate for the performance loss of higher-speed 802.11g devices when they share a wireless network with slower 802.11b devices.

Later implementations are marketed as Nitro MX Xtreme which adds proprietary frame-bursting, compression and point-to-point side session technology for a claimed 140 Mbit/s throughput transmission speed. The point-to-point side session technology is called DirectLink, which creates a connection between clients or from a client to a media source, such as a media server, and avoids the access point. It does this while staying in 802.11 Infrastructure mode so the client can continue to utilize access point-based security and power-savings.

Nitro is one of several competing proprietary approaches that were developed to increase 802.11g performance in wireless devices, such as 125 High Speed Mode from Broadcom, MIMO-based extensions from Airgo Networks, and Super G from Atheros.