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IEEE 802 Standards Committee Turns 30: Page 2 of 2

Finally, Nikolich points out that "participation has grown internationally as well. We are starting to see increasing participation from countries like China, India, and South Korea and countries with developing economies." The expansion outside of North America and Europe shows that the standards work of 802 has global application and impact.

Of course, not all of the work 802 did fits the three criteria. Networking coalesced around Ethernet, but there were other networking standards active in the IEEE in the 80's and 90's. The 802.5 Token Ring, which competed with Ethernet was moved to hibernation status in 2000, but 802.5z, Gigabit Token Ring was approved at the standards board. No products were released that we are aware of. Similarly, 802.4, Token Bus, was disbanded due to lack of interest. And there were some glaring mistakes such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) that came out of the 802.11, which didn't provide the equivalent privacy of a wired network to a wireless one. However, WEP was quickly broken and wireless vendors developed proprietary methods to address WEP's weaknesses, which were primarily key management. The 802.11 Task Groups created 802.11i to address wireless security in a standards based way.

The next 30 years appear as full of change as the first 30. Nikolich considers the 802.4l working group to be revolutionary in pre-dating wireless LAN. We asked which standards work he sees as potentially revolutionary in the next 30 years, he pointed to the Wireless Personal Area Network Visible Light Communications (VLC) task group (802.15.7) as one such group. The task-group's PAR states that they are developing standards for using visible light sufficient to carrying audio and video multi-media services. In addition, work on power reduction and increasing networking speeds will continue.

The work coming out of the 802 Standards Committee hasn't always been perfect, but the successes far outweigh the mistakes. Whether the future holds faster speeds, more ubiquitous networking, or new communications methods that we can't know today, but the work of standards bodies and adherence to standards are critical for the future.