"interference robustness"?

[Doug Lassiter]

The 3.1.1 driver for Airport base stations, released last year, offers a check box for "interference robustness" in Airport Admin Utility. This is advertised as a way of getting around GHz interference from phones and microwave ovens, and near as I can tell from my own experience and that of others is that yes, it works. What is it? More pointedly, what do I lose if I check that box, and why does Apple see the need to give the Airport user an option to choose to have non-robust wifi in the first place? For example, does this option cap the bandwidth? If so, it'd be nice to know.

On the basis of fifteen minutes of googling, it sounds like this is a recurring question, and that Apple has offered little or no info. The most frequent explanation is that "interference robustness" makes your system more robust to interference, which the posters seem to consider an insightful piece of information.

Some thoughtful detective work is reported at

http://www.neato.org/~page/virtmem/archives/000070.html

though the suggestion that reduction of receiver sensitivity makes performance better is slightly non-intuitive.

Ideas? Info? Experiences? My apologies if the forum has discussed this. I wasn't able to find it.