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IEEE Set to Ratify New Standard for Faster WiFi
By ROBERT LIU
TMCnet Wireless and Technology Columnist
The IEEE Task Group assigned to examine the “Standard for Enhancement for Higher Throughput” has agreed upon a joint proposal to boost WiFi throughput rates, ending an internal squabble that jeopardized the entire initiative.
In a press release issued on Thursday, the IEEE Task Group N said it has voted in favor of a specification developed by the Enhanced Wireless Consortium. The proposal has now become the official draft of the 802.11n standard and will proceed through the IEEE ratification process.
While the standard isn’t likely to be formalized until later this year or early 2007, that hasn’t stopped chipset providers from announcing products based on the draft. On Friday, Marvell said it will launch its Marvell 88W836X family of products, which scales to data rates between 300 to 600 megabits per second (Mbps) and Ethernet connectivity from 100 Mbps to one gigabit per second. By comparision, the original WiFi specification (IEEE 802.11b) reached theoretical throughput rates of 11 Mbps.
“Marvell is thrilled that this specification enables our customers to be the first to ship IEEE 802.11n draft compliant WLAN products to the market,” said Weili Dai, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Communications and Consumer Business Group. “We thank the IEEE Task Group "N" for their outstanding work and effort in converging on a draft specification for the IEEE 802.11n standard.”
Broadcom also announced availability of its new family of wireless LAN (WLAN) chipsets that complies with the IEEE 802.11n draft specification. The line, branded “Intensi-fi” incorporates all mandatory elements of the IEEE 802.11n draft specification and is designed to be software upgradable once the standard is finalized. Broadcom, as well as Intel and others, were among the companies first embroiled in the contentious debate over which proposals the 802.11 Task Group should consider.
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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.
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