USRobotics Delays Supersonic Wireless Gear

One Wi-Fi equipment vendor Monday unveiled a new product based on the draft 802.11n specification, which promises faster network speeds and greater range, while another announced it would wait before delivering such equipment.

Netgear claimed that it was the first vendor to deliver a DSL modem/router that uses the draft 802.11n spec. It said that its ADSL2+ device provided faster speeds and greater range than similar equipment based on the 802.11g Wi-Fi standard, although it made no specific claims. Netgear is the latest vendor to announce equipment based on the draft specification -- Linksys, D-Link and Belkin are among the others.

However, one Wi-Fi gear vendor, USRobotics, said it was in no rush to release equipment based on the draft specification, a move that received the support of one industry analyst. USRobotics said it is designing products based on the draft spec, but won't release them until at least the fourth quarter of this year when, presumably, the final shape of the standard will be better known.

"Products developed with pre-standards technology, or even rushed to market with standards based implementations, put customers at risk of incompatibility," the company said in a statement released Monday.

The 802.11n standard is expected to eventually provide actual throughput of 100 Mbps or more and have a range significantly greater than current 802.11g wireless networking products. While the working group developing the standard approved a draft of the 802.11n standard earlier this year, more recently a new draft specification failed to be adopted.