802.11n Standard Makes Progress in London Meeting

The long-anticipated 1.10 version of the IEEE 802.11n draft standard was approved unanimously in an IEEE task group meeting held in London in mid-January.

According to Atheros CTO Bill McFarland, who attended the meeting, all of the 3,000-plus technical comments to the 11n draft 1.0 were resolved, and that in turn resulted in the successful agreement to draft 1.10.

According to McFarland’s written statement, provided to eWEEK, this is a significant step forward in achieving the next stage of the approval process to an accepted 802.11n draft standard.

Last fall, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced that it would publish an interim standard in March so that companies could begin work on 11n products, while giving customers some reason to believe that those products would continue to work when the standard became finalized.

“Now, the organization will begin a 15-day (short) letter ballot to determine whether a 2.0 version based on the 1.10 draft should be created and submitted for technical review,” McFarland said in his prepared message.

“It appears that the IEEE TGn (Task Group n) will deliver a near-to-final draft in advance of the upcoming Wi-Fi Alliance certification and thus impact the testbed.” McFarland said in his comments. “This will further validate the WFA certification of draft 802.11n products and should assist consumer adoption of the new Wi-Fi technology.”

The Wi-Fi Alliance, in a prepared statement released as its executives were traveling, said that the organization was delighted by the task group’s actions.

Click here to read more about the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification of “pre-standard” 802.11n products.

“This milestone reflects the emerging maturity of the 802.11n technology and a building consensus in the industry regarding its suitability for international standardization,” the statement said.

“The Wi-Fi Alliance is making excellent progress towards fulfilling its own plans to certify the interoperability of pre-standard 802.11n products later this year, and the availability of a new draft after extensive review by the IEEE 802.11 Working Group gives us increased confidence in the stability of the proposed standard, particularly the baseline features that will certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2007,” the Wi-Fi Alliance’s prepared statement said.

Because of the stability of the standard, and the unanimous approval, some participants are saying that many existing pre-standard 11n products will require nothing more than a software update to match the interim standard to be adopted later in 2007.

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