Just at the point when most of us were getting used to saying 802.11g rather than 802.11b, we’re already starting to look ahead to 802.11n, which should have a minimum speed of at least 100Mbps. The 802.11n standard won’t be properly ratified by the IEEE (the body which handles such things) until 2005 at the earliest, but just to make things even more complicated, Broadcom says that they’re going to push ahead and will have 802.11n chipsets ready by the second half of next year. This means that if you buy a pre-standard 802.11n access point or wireless card using Broadcom’s chips there’s a good chance it won’t be compatible with other 802.1n products. As you might recall, manufacturers did something similar before the 802.11g standard was ratified, and it required a lot of people who didn’t want to wait to have to upgrade their wireless gear to make it compliant with the ratified standard.
