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August 11, 2006

802.11n's Next Draft Vote in January

By Glenn Fleishman

Draft 2.0 will likely not be voted on until January: This puts a crimp in the earlier predictions that Draft 1.0 might be adopted (it wasn’t), and that Draft 2.0 of the next-generation wireless data spec could be ready to go by, say, September. Nope. There were 12,000 comments presented, and even after removing duplicates and what sounds like irritating editorial comments, they’re still slogging through the issues. (Atheros’s CTO says that three people submitted comments on the draft ballot for every blank line in the document; there must be an explanation for that, because those sorts of changes are easy to de-duplicate and cope with.)

There’s still no resolution on how to bind two 20 MHz channels into one 40 MHz channel, something that the chipmakers have been pretending is non-issue from a silicon perspective for some time. That is, that whatever approach is taken, they’ll be able to push out firmware updates that will make their Draft N chips still work.

Meanwhile, we will have another six months, at least, of Draft N gear—and even a second generation of Draft N gear based on the same non-existent standard—before there’s a chance for a real stab at what the final standard will be.

Don’t buy Draft N gear, folks. Buy MIMO.

Posted by Glennf at August 11, 2006 8:50 AM

Categories: Draft N, Standards, Task Group N

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