This go-round, Atheros is doing the stirring with its Super G feature, which bonds two 802.11g-size channels to reach a raw data rate of 108 Mbits/s. Competitors, of course, are furious. Ironically, though, no company is yelling louder than Broadcom.

Super G is different than pre-g, Broadcom says. Pre-g efforts were all standards-compliant — the only issue was that they were released ahead of the ratified standard.

However, Atheros' Super G mode does not comply with any standard, existing or planned, according to Broadcom. At this juncture, no one can say what 802.11n, the IEEE's infant 100-Mbit/s standard, will look like.

Atheros retorts that Super G hardware doesn't hurt anything. It works with plain-g equipment, and it offers the ability to build a network that reaches beyond "g" performance.

Whomever you believe, it's hard to deny the market's appetite for bigger numbers.

Even Broadcom is quietly satisfying the hunger of its customers with a competitive technique that enables them to stock retail shelves with products boasting three-digit data rates.

Indeed, the tyranny of numbers is alive and well in our industry. Always has been. The bigger the number, the better the product. Simple.

It's why PC graphics suppliers started comparing their wares by the width of the memory bus after they tapped out color depth a dozen years ago. It's also why Creative Labs used to add every feature it could to distinguish its sound cards. I think the company managed to push the number all the way up to 256 — not bad for 24-bit audio on a 16-bit bus.

Communications products used to be immune to such, um, creative accounting. Yes, they ran up the numbers — but they did it together. Don't recall Ethernet turbo? There wasn't one.

Wireless providers, in a mad dash to cull any edge in an overcrowded market, are rewriting the rules. With pre-g, they stretched them. But now, with 100-Mbit/s performance, they are beginning to break them.

Yes, the tyranny of numbers is alive and well. But if suppliers continue to go it alone, the WLAN market may not be.

Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies Inc., a market research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz., that focuses on components for mobile systems. Reach him at mike@techknowledge-group.com.