802.11n To Be Ratified in 2010

Although the Wi-Fi Alliance started certifying “Draft-N” products based on draft 2.0 of 802.11n back in June of 2007, the standard isn’t expected to be ratified for another year or so: the IEEE’s 802.11n Task Group anticipates publication in November of 2009, with final ratification to follow in January of 2010. Still, with the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification program already flourishing, that final ratification may not make much of an actual difference in the marketplace.

Frost & Sullivan analyst James Brehm points out that, thanks to the certification program, there’s no shortage of Draft-N equipment already deployed. “In the consumer world, when you go to the stores, you find no b, you find very little g, and all you find is n,” he says. “And in the enterprise world, n deployments are happening as well: people are not waiting around for the ratification to happen.”

Wi-Fi Alliance marketing director Kelly Davis-Felner says the decision to certify to draft 2.0 back in 2007 was a relatively straightforward one. “We were seeing a fair amount of maturity in the draft, our member companies were shipping products, and there seemed to be enough momentum in the marketplace around a baseline set of features… that it seemed like it made sense for us to go ahead with a draft-based certification program,” she says.

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-ken