Draft N Inches Forward

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 14 March 2007

The ongoing saga of the next generation Wi-Fi continues to play out on the global standard setting landscape with the latest iteration of the tortuous 802.11n wireless networking specifications taking yet another baby step forward to becoming an actual standard. The IEEE has said that Draft 2.0 reached a major hurdle gaining the crucial 75 per cent super-majority it required to move the process another step toward completion. In fact the result of the latest vote in support of the draft spec delivered a near 85 per cent acceptance of the draft indicating that the 325 voters broadly agree with the main technical aspects of the specification. Although the draft is still a long way from ratification, the industry plans to invest more than your average amount in the half finished design as this Draft 2 specification is the one the Wi-Fi Alliance has promised to begin interoperability certification on. Although we are unlikely to see final ratification of a high-speed successor to 56Mbps 802.11g WLANs for another 12 months, some consumer/SME network equipment vendors and the chip makers that supply them have been impatient to get the market moving. However, although these vendors, which include Linksys, DLink and NetGear have all continued to push the non-standard Draft N products, enterprise oriented networking vendors such as HP ProCurve and NEC as well as some SME vendors such as NetComm have refused to be tempted by the non-standard products. All three of these vendors have confirmed to mobilised that they do not plan to bring Draft N products to market despite the acceptance of this latest iteration of the standard. From this point it is hoped that the subsequent standard will bear a substantial resemblance to the existing proposal, but there is little guarantee. The latest draft has attracted around 1,40 editorial comments and 1,600 technical comments. This is promising compared to the approximate 6000 editorial and 6000 technical comments thecommittee had to work through to get the Draft 1.1 vote through in Janaury this year., Related news items Major Players To Test WiMAX Interoperability -26/09/2007 New Flash Memeory Card Standard Coming -16/09/2007 Broadcom Enthusisam for 802.11n Wavers -06/09/2007 ASUS A686/696 GPS PDA -23/08/2007 D-Link Ships Half A Million Draft N Devices -14/08/2007 Newer news items D-Link Boosts Draft N Range -30/07/2007 Boingo Goes Flat On Global Roaming -26/06/2007 Wi-Fi Alliance Begins Draft-N Certification -25/06/2007 D-Link Routers To Make Sharing Easy -24/04/2007 Easy VoIP System For Mobile Makers -16/03/2007 Older news items Agere Sells Wireless Patents -02/03/2007 Atheros Reaches 100 Million Chip Landmark -27/02/2007 Linksys Releases Draft-N For SMBs -30/01/2007 Symbol Builds A Bridge Between RFID and WLAN -07/12/2006 Qualcomm Acquires Airgo -04/12/2006 Tag This Now: