802.11a through z: the latest wireless networking technology

802.11n

At the moment all eyes are on 802.11n, heir apparent to the throne of 802.11g. The most important goals that the IEEE determined for 802.11n are larger roaming range and higher transfer rates. 802.11n should have a net bandwidth of at least 100 Mbit/s which is comparable in speed to conventional wired networks. In practice, however, for the standard to reach 100Mbit/s, it has to offer up to 200 Mbit/s- in other words four times as much as 802.11g, which offers a maximum of 54 Mbit/s.

A few alliances of several manufacturers set to work out the future 802.11n standard. After separate attempts by Motorola, Nokia and Qualcom amongst others did not pass the first voting rounds, two parties remained. On the one hand there is the WWiSE group, which includes but is not limited to Airgo, Broadcom, Connexant, Texas Instruments and later also Motorola. The other party with an 802.11n candidate is TGn Sync and this includes Intel, Cisco, Atheros and Sony.

Although both suggestions have clear differences in implementation, both sides use the so-called MIMO technology to obtain higher speeds and better coverage. Despite having the same base, it seemed that the sides could not reach an agreement. During the last voting round in March of 2005 TGn Sync received 56% of the votes, and WWiSE got 44%. Seeing as the IEEE requires a standard to receive support from 75% of the voting companies, both groups have since then been forced to cooperate to create a single standard.

At the start of 2006 many companies reached an agreement about the 802.11n standard, and many chip manufacturers immediately started producing chips based on the draft version of the standard. By now Linksys and Netgear already sell products based on the Broadcom chips based on the 802.11n standard. During the voting on May 2 2006 the 802.11n proposal received just 46.6% of the votes, falling short of the 75% required. No less than 12,000 remarks and criticisms have been put forward regarding the draft version. The 802.11n standard has thus been sent back to the drawing board once more, with hopes for a resolution before the end of 2006. The IEEE has since indicated that it does not expect a final 802.11n standard before July 2007. The chance that current products based on the draft version of 802.11n will later be compatible with the standard by means of a firmware upgrade diminishes by the day.

The first WLAN-products based on a draft of the 802.11n standard are already available at the time of writing.