802.11n Progresses With Certification Plan

All but three products in the Wi-Fi Alliance's 802.11n Draft 2.0 test bed are reference designs, but that's not at all unusual as OEMs and leading WLAN vendors print their own boards and tweak their own software. Already before the announcement Wednesday, one of the leading enterprise Wi-Fi vendors hinted that they would be participating in the first round of tests to be held in the latter half of June. Karen Hanley, Wi-Fi Alliance spokesperson, confirmed that there is a great deal of interest in this certification and that their 11 test labs in 7 countries will all be geared up to handle the demand. Although certified products from enterprise Wi-Fi vendors may be in customers' hands before the end of the summer, it remains to be seen if these products can play nicely with legacy clients or if 802.11n works better as an overlay build, with organizations transitioning users to the new standard as they phase out older clients and buy new 802.11n gear. The Wi-Fi Alliance plans to perform some backward compatibility testing, but certification labs are no real-world deployment, and as enterprises did with the introduction of 802.11g, we're sure to find significant problems that require driver and firmware upgrades.

Frank Bulk
NWC Contributing Editor
NWC Contributing Editor Frank Bulk has been talking with vendors and closely tracking 802.11n rollout plans and architectural decisions. Get the scoop on Frank's take on 802.11n's future, based on a series of interviews with key vendors in the NWC Blog.