Anal Old Men Make One Small Step Toward 802.11n

Good news for 802.11n fans. The IEEE committee has just finished resolving the 12,000 comments—a.k.a. things companies didn't like—about the 802.11n protocol. Draft 2.0 has been advanced with a 100-0 vote with 5 abstentions (you can probably guess how those 5 were going to vote), which means it's now going out for a letter ballot.

If those nerdy, stodgy dudes decide they don't have a problem with the draft, draft 802.11n should become final 802.11n within a few months. Yippee? – Jason Chen

802.11 Task Group N goes back to letter ballot [MatthewGast via WifiNetNews via DSLReports]

4:30 PM on Fri Jan 19 2007
By Jason Chen
1,833 views
9 comments

Comments

daftrok at 04:43 PM on 01/19/07
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Why in the hell is this taking so long? And does it really matter? I mean, I can use the Belkin 802.11n notebook wireless card with the Belkin router, can't I?
thistle.john at 04:50 PM on 01/19/07
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Rather than having more and more revisions of a 'draft', thus making companys constantly having to modify and re-adjust their products, would it not be better to settle on a final product, and then in another few years have somthing else?
ibelli at 05:43 PM on 01/19/07
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The guy on the right is about to kick the guy on the left's ass. I mean, I would. Look at him. All smug and shit. -- Asking for it.
HDC at 06:46 PM on 01/19/07
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Every standard ratification out of the IEEE takes this long. It's how the process there works. Read more than you could ever care to know about it here. http://standards.ieee.org/resources/index.html.
HDC at 06:47 PM on 01/19/07
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Here I mean. Take of that period.
http://standards.ieee.org/resources/index.html
MegaZone at 11:24 PM on 01/19/07
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daftrok - Sure, but then you go over a friend's house and they have Netgear. And the cafe has Linksys. And the hotel has D-Link...

Without an agreed upon spec, and interoperability testing, you lose a lot of the benefits of WiFi - being able to use devices untethered out and about.

Plus the Pre-N gear you buy today may not be able to be upgraded to the final 11n spec. So you buy something today, then you buy a new machine next year - and it can't talk to the Pre-N router you own at 11n speeds. Because it only does the real 11n, and the router doesn't.

No one should buy the Pre-N gear out today, it just isn't worth it and the final spec is finally looking to be out reasonably soon.
transmogrify at 11:52 PM on 01/19/07
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*insert goatse comment here*
Brian Sexton at 05:54 AM on 01/20/07
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I used to work for an Internet service provider that did a lot of Web hosting and the words "Anal Old Men" dredged up a rather disturbing memory of a particular support call I once received. It wasn't merely for a porn site. It wasn't merely for a gay site. It wasn't merely for a geriatric site. No, no, no. Any one of those topics would have been preferable to the reality of the site for which I had to provide technical support: it was a geriatric gay porn site.

No, I am not kidding.

Porn, fine. Gay, fine. Gay porn . . . OK, if necessary. But *OLD* gay porn? That was just crossing a line that I did not previously know existed.
Worf at 01:24 PM on 01/22/07
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Actually, one of the reasons it takes so long is because they want to do it right.

Think about it - 802.11b/g is made possible by the fact that the original 802.11 spec (1-2Mbps) allowed for higher speeds in the future. Sure there are bad parts, but they're inevitable and serve to keep all wireless device talking to each other rather than interfering.

After all, there are a few Pre-N devices that will basically wipe out the entire 2.4Ghz spectrum for everyone else...