The Wi-Fi Alliance said it's on track to begin certifying 802.11n Draft 2.0 products in late June. The Wi-Fi Alliance certification is aiming to give some sanity to a WiFi vendor community that no longer waits for standards to come out. The Wi-Fi Alliance also knows that pre-n gear is in demand since it promises to boost both capacity and speed for WiFi users. The Wi-Fi Alliance introduced a consumer logo that goes on 802.11n Draft 2.0 products that have been tested for industry-wide interoperability, the latest security protection and backward compatibility.
The Wi-Fi Alliance said that 802.11n technology holds wide consumer appeal. Its research found that 78 percent of U.S. WiFi users are interested in upgrading their systems in order to gain improved range and/or throughput. And nearly 70 percent of those questioned said that a faster WiFi connection would spur them to use multimedia applications such as video and gaming more frequently.
Meanwhile, in the enterprise market, there are some mixed thoughts about 802.11n. While Meru Networks announced the introduction of what it calls the first enterprise-class wireless LAN products supporting the 802.11n draft standard earlier this month, Aruba Networks released a whitepaper today that outlined why an 802.11n deployment in the enterprise is risky. Its primary argument is that the draft 802.11n standard has no assurances of being compatible with the actual standard that is supposed to come out in the first quarter of 2009.
For more about the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification program:
- read this article from telecoms.com (sub. req.)