14 DAY TRIAL // Wireless standards are coming and going at an annual rate, as the 802.11n standard gets some more market acceptance, the "Draft n" of the standard being ratified. Because the new standard comes with a few new features, almost all wireless hardware manufacturers from Intel to the white box vendors are interested in the increased market acceptance of the 802.11n. The fully ratified and stable standard, the 802.11g, is already losing ground in the face of the newly but aggressively promoted 802.11n that is spreading from routers to wireless networking cards and so on.
After the Wi-Fi Alliance officially announced the ratification plan for the Draft 2.0 standard and related hardware components, there are now almost 70 products that were deemed safe to use and compliant with the new draft. So, good news for the end users that were preparing to upgrade from the older 802.11b/g hardware.
The development of the 802.11n wireless standard was very slow as the first technical specifications, the Draft 1.0, appeared more than a year ago, during the spring of 2006, and they were met with more that 12,000 comments sent to the IEEE's Task Group N, that was the responsible with the new wireless standard. After the first draft's technical specifications went public, hardware manufactures started producing and shipping compliant parts during the following summer. During this January, the second draft containing more detailed technical specifications was released and it was sent to the entire IEEE staff for approval. The next step in developing the next complete wireless standard is the third draft that is said to include only minor improvements over the ones already found in the Draft 2.0.
As Draft 2.0 compliant cards and other pieces of hardware will surely work with the third draft as well as the final specifications of the 802.11n standard, there is no problem or risk associated with buying that kind of equipments. Even if some of the technical specifications of the standard will never really be achieved in most situations, the increase in security and range is always welcomed.