14 DAY TRIAL // The next-generation wireless 802.11n standard could be made official earlier than expected, according to a recent email from Bob Heile, the chairman of the IEEE 802.15 working group on Personal Area Networks. The mail states that the IEEE 802.11n draft standard has been set for approval at the Standards Review Committee, or RevCom. If 802.11n becomes official, this could set the start to an upcoming wave of new routers and chips supporting the wireless connectivity standard. There will also be questions regarding the backwards compatibility of the official 802.11n with the previously released draft version of the 802.11n.
“On other fronts, 802.11 was granted unconditional approval to forward 11n to RevCom,” Heile wrote in the email, as reported in a recent article on PC Magazine. “After a bit of a rocky period on getting acceptable coexistence language included in the draft, I was pleased to support this approval. Congratulations to Bruce for his patience and perseverance in getting this done. This was an extremely complex project.”
The committee meets each quarter, with RevCom now scheduled to meet in Piscataway, New Jersey, from Sept 9 through Sept. 11. By the end of the meeting, we should have details regarding the status of the wireless 802.11n standard, which could finally become official after much struggle.
There are a number of devices today that take advantage of the specifications of 802.11 draft-N, which raises the question whether the official standard will be backward compatible with the current version. The draft-N version was released back in early 2006, which enabled networking manufacturers to launch a series of products supporting the standard.
According to the aforementioned email, the struggle to bring 802.11n to market could come to end by September 11, speeding the process that was previously predicted to be finalized in January 2010.