There's 801.22a, 802.11b, 802.11g, pre-N, 802.11i, MIMO, and more. How can you sort out the mess of Wi-Fi standards? Here's the rundown on what the major standards are, and what you need to know about them, from Brian Hernacki, architect, Symantec Research Labs, Cupertino, Calif.,
802.11- This is the overlying architecture for a series of Wi-Fi standards, all with letters following 802.11 (a, b, etc.). This family of standards was first introduced in 1997, but the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE), the standards body for all things Wi-Fi, didn't approve them until 1999. The 802.11 family of standards provides protocols designed for local area networks and the devices that support them and connect with them.
It's not that wireless networking was unworkable before the introduction of 802.11, according to Hernacki, but any connections before were designed for packets transmitted over a wide variety of radio signals. Due to the wide range of signals in use, wireless networking this way was too cumbersome and, therefore, never enjoyed wide adoption, Hernacki says.
802.11a This was the first of the IEEE standards for wireless LAN. Like the underlying 802.11 architecture, 802.11a was introduced in 1997 and approved in 1999. This enabled commodity-type access points, from Linksys, Netgear, et al.
"It's kind of a footnote in wireless history now," Hernacki says. "It didn't receive much adoption because it operates in the 5 Ghz band, which doesn't penetrate through objects very easily. Therefore, there were problems with absorption of the signal throughout an office. There were products (wireless access points, routers and cards) built for this standard, but I've never seen any of them."
Discover the benefits of scalable backbone and network services for application and cloud providers.
Network automation is gaining momentum. Here's how you can drive this powerful technology to its full potential.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
