WIRELESS NEWS: The Road Ahead For 802.11n

By Daily Wireless Updates, Power by Cogni360

Daily Wireless News & Updates.- Initially, many within the 802.11n task group estimated that it would take just over a year to move from Draft 1.0 to ratification. The IEEE, however, has since agreed that a more reasonable timeline is 18 months and now estimates ratification of the standard to be in September 2007. This builds in time for the 500-member IEEE 802.11n task group to review the draft for errors and omissions, inconsistencies with other 802.11 standards, possible improvements in performance and interoperability and better voice and multimedia application support. The first round of IEEE group corrections and improvements will be incorporated into a Draft 2.0 in May or July 2006, and the IEEE anticipates that a last draft will be ratified approximately one year later.

This schedule update by the IEEE indicates that a lot work still needs to be done, and that the first draft will undergo several rounds of review and revisions before it is stable enough to guarantee firmware upgradeability or interoperability to the final ratified standard. More importantly, until there is a stable and mature draft of the IEEE 802.11n standard, the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) cannot begin the testing and certification program, which it expects to begin in March 2007. Until this certification testing is in place, device manufacturers-and consumers-cannot be assured of interoperability between different vendors' 802.11n products. For more telecom news go to: Telecommunicate and Daily WiFi News.


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