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Certification Shelved for Voice QoS over Wireless: Page 4 of 4

All is not lost for supporting high-density voice on wireless LANs. The Wi-Fi Alliance is implementing the admission-control portion of the 802.11e standard, which will make easier to support a high number of voice calls. In 802.11e,

admission control ensures that the AP can allocate the resources to handle more latency-sensitive applications. Some of the large vendors, such as Cisco Systems, already support some type of admission control, though these implementations are still proprietary.

Besides admission control, vendors have tried to proactively manage the impact of interference using automated tools to manage the radio frequency environment. Unfortunately, all standards-based Wi-Fi solutions in the foreseeable future will remain "best effort," and won't replace what HCCA was meant to deliver.

Jonn Martell is president of Martell Consulting. He has 20 years of experience in networking and it. He also teaches wireless, networking and security courses at the University of British Columbia. Write to him at [email protected].