Clearly, 11n can provide stellar speed and better reliability, and prices for gear will continue to come down. But one caveat to upgrading is the inevitable design issues, including the possibility of bottlenecks on the wired side, inadequate power to access-point components, and difficulties retiring legacy end-user gear. More on those later.
As for security and consistency, problems in the original 802.11 standard were addressed with the introduction of Wi-Fi Protected Access v2--WPA2--based on the 802.11i amendment. The technology does exist to make 802.11 fully secure. And with 11n, users can have the same experience connecting to the network regardless of where they're physically located, key to improving satisfaction and reducing support calls.
The common denominator: standards. InformationWeek has recently been critical of the state of technology standards. But we have to admit that vendors of wireless infrastructure devices, clients, and third-party applications are poster children for compatibility. When we asked the 779 respondents to our survey about their top product evaluation criteria, the ability to integrate wired and wireless networks came in ninth out of 16 choices, 10 points behind low capital costs and just above built-in diagnostic tools.
Credit goes largely to the IEEE and the Wi-Fi Alliance, which we profile in depth in our full report. Manufacturers rarely move faster than the alliance and its certification programs, because if they do, wireless clients--and their feature sets--risk not being compatible with infrastructure devices. The Wi-Fi Alliance promotes the features it thinks need to be made available. Consider the IEEE 802.11r and 802.11k standards, which help define how wireless devices on the move quickly and elegantly transition from one access point to another. Although these amendments to 802.11 were ratified in 2008, they're not yet implemented in vendor products because the alliance spec that addresses 11r and 11k hasn't been finalized. These technologies will be part of the alliance's Voice-Enterprise certification, expected later this year.
The upshot: The technologies that hit the marketplace, and the timing thereof, aren't up to individual vendors. Sure, we sometimes get frustrated with the lack of speedy movement, but you can't argue with the interoperability results.
