802.11n draft

By Wi-Fi Planet Staff

January 19, 2007

A major milestone for Wi-Fi land: 802.11n has a new draft. Version 2.0 1.10 (according to Atheros CTO Bill McFarland) was approved by the IEEE 802.11 Working Group in London this week, on a vote of 100 to 0 (5 abstentions). Unanimity easily clears the 75% super-majority needed, obviously. Now comes the letter ballot process for 15 days, which should raise some comments, but probably not the 12,000 the last draft got (3,000 of the comments were technical in nature). If that goes well, 1.10 becomes draft 2.0. Apparently things didn't change much from 1.0 to 1.10/2.0 -- just protection mechanisms for legacy devices during the operation of 40 MHz in the 2.4 band according to Atheros -- so maybe we'll get some firmware upgrades for existing products after all.