As Precited: The End Of WLAN Standards Has Arrived

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 30 August 2006

Page 1 of 4 The industry just refuses to wait for the IEEE standards process to run its arduous course through the ratification process for next generation wireless networks, so the Wi-Fi Alliance has decided to certify products based on non-standard devices. We hate to say we told you so, but the IEEE Standards process has so far failed to deliver a next generation Wireless LAN standard, so the industry has had to press on without it. With the final 802.11n specification now not likely to be agreed until the beginning of 2008, the standard has become something of a dinosaur before even appearing. The manufacturers, vendors and users around the world have already begun using next generation MIMO WLAN gear based on the Draft 1.0 specification because the process is so riddled with corporate one-upmanship that the standard now lags two or three years behind technical innovation. Acknowledging that devices based on the Draft 2.0 specifications, hopefully agreed on next March, are going to sell in the tens of millions, the Wi-Fi Alliance has stepped in to circumvent the obvious futility of the Standards process and agreed to certify the interoperability of Pre-n Draft 2.0 devices. What's more the ALliance has said that if the IEEE Committee fails to produce and agreed second Draft is will start Certifiying product based on its own interpretation of the standard. The Alliance proposes the actual certification process will be done in two waves - first products based on the 802.11n Draft 2.0 specifications will undergo interoperability testing starting next year some time and then finally if the IEEE 802.11n Standard is ever settled, those devices will be certified separately at a much later date. Exactly where that leaves the significant number of Pre-n Draft 1.0 devices currently hitting the market is unclear. There has already been some level of interoperability testing between vendors making Pre-n 1.0 devices, but this is unofficial and does not count as Wi-Fi Certification. Broadcom, one of the companies pushing the technology hard has already announced it has shipped more than a million chipsets based on those abandoned specifications. All of the major networking specialists, including Linksys, NETGEAR and D-Link, already have products on store shelves based on Draft 1.0 and millions of units are expected to ship in 2007. Next: Certifying Defacto Standards << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>