IEEE finally ratifies 802.11n WiFi standard

Robert Hallock (Thrax)

September 12, 2009 4:25 AM ET in News, , ,

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, overseers of all things wireless, has given the final 802.11n wireless Ethernet standard its seal of approval.

The 802.11n standard, which promises data rates exceeding 300Mbps, took exactly seven years from its inception, or six years from the completion of its first draft standard.

“More than 400 individuals from equipment and silicon suppliers, service providers, systems integrators, consultant organizations and academic institutions from more than 20 countries participated in a seven-year effort leading to IEEE 802.11n’s ratification,” the IEEE said.

“This was an extraordinarily wide-ranging technical challenge that required the sustained effort and concentration of a terrific variety of participants. When we started in 2002, many of the technologies addressed in 802.11n were university research topics and had not been implemented.”

The IEEE also said that devices based on any one of some dozen interim 802.11n draft specs are compatible with the final standard. This statement puts a long-standing debate about potential interoperability woes for the earliest 802.11n devices to rest.

New products based on the final standard are expected for the new year as the complete document will not be published until mid-October.

20 Comments:

  1. QCH
    12 Sep '09, 12:25 pm

    Sweet god... only took them 5 years to review proposals, set 11 drafts, and finally ratify 802.11n standard.

  2. mtrox
    12 Sep '09, 1:26 pm

    I see that all the "pre N" stuff is compatible. Does "compatible" mean it just works but not as well, or is there a performance compromise in using the "pre N" stuff?

  3. chrisWhite
    13 Sep '09, 2:11 am

    1) Effin' finally!
    2) Thank god.

  4. ardichoke
    13 Sep '09, 2:33 am
    Quoting mtrox

    I see that all the "pre N" stuff is compatible. Does "compatible" mean it just works but not as well, or is there a performance compromise in using the "pre N" stuff?

    IIRC, all the "pre-N" stuff will be firmware upgradeable to be fully N compatible.

  5. =MBG= De Sniper
    13 Sep '09, 3:53 am

    Sweet thats good I would really like my WiFi N card in my laptop to be upgradeable to it, and all my other Wireless N stuff

  6. F Stein
    13 Sep '09, 3:55 am

    This might sound like a stupid question, but does this mean my Wii will play online with a better connection, now? Lmao.

  7. Thrax
    13 Sep '09, 4:19 am

    No, I'm afraid. If I recall correctly, the Wii uses 802.11g which is slower and older than 11n. They're compatible, but you need an 11n router and device to get wireless n speeds.

  8. F Stein
    13 Sep '09, 4:24 am

    Righto. Excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject.

  9. Thrax
    13 Sep '09, 4:28 am

    We're all here to learn something, sir!

  10. Cliff_Forster
    13 Sep '09, 10:43 am

    The biggest improvement most people will see on N today is range. The range and signal resilience against outside interference is top notch vs. G.

    As far as speed goes, for businesses that want to incorporate it I'm sure it will have some immediate impact, for home users though, it will take a few years for your ISP's bandwidth to catch up with the wireless standard. I have the most lavish and expensive broadband connection you can buy in the Baltimore/DC metro area now and I'm still only meeting about half of G's potential. So I'm saying, if your wireless G equipment is in reasonable proximity to your gear, don't expect that swapping to N is going to show you any kind of performance boost, but if your gear is three floors away from your router, wireless N could make a world of difference for you.

  11. ardichoke
    13 Sep '09, 10:36 pm
    Quoting Cliff_Forster

    So I'm saying, if your wireless G equipment is in reasonable proximity to your gear, don't expect that swapping to N is going to show you any kind of performance boost, but if your gear is three floors away from your router, wireless N could make a world of difference for you.

    Unless, of course, you run multiple machines on the same wireless network since they all have to share the wireless bandwidth. If this is the case, you should see a marked improvement in speeds between hosts on your network and an N network should be able to comfortably accommodate more wireless hosts than a G network.

  12. Thrax
    13 Sep '09, 10:47 pm
    Quoting Cliff_Forster

    don't expect that swapping to N is going to show you any kind of performance boost

    Unless you do wireless streaming, then your network just receive the ability to stream 1080P.

  13. Cliff_Forster
    13 Sep '09, 11:50 pm

    True that, G is not the greatest for streaming video.

  14. Buddy J
    14 Sep '09, 3:11 pm

    I wonder if this is good weefee or bad weefee.

  15. chrisWhite
    14 Sep '09, 11:53 pm

    So what are the major devices will see keeping people in comparability mode? The wii and the DS for sure, does the DSi do it? How about the Xbox, PS3, most Windows Media Extenders or an Apple TV? The iPhone doesn't so my network still has to run in g mode. Do G1's?

  16. Thrax
    15 Sep '09, 12:07 am

    Every device you listed is 802.11g, except for the new iTouch which may get N enabled through firmware.

  17. ardichoke
    15 Sep '09, 2:39 am

    N is backwards compatible with a/b/g (or so I've read). Thus even though you have a house full of g devices, you can still run an n network if you so choose.

  18. Thrax
    15 Sep '09, 2:45 am

    Yep, it works fine.

  19. yagga
    16 Sep '09, 12:47 am

    Wow, I almost lost track of if this was a standard. I didn't think it was, but it's been out so long... I like my hidden and non-speaker interference "A" network for now.

  20. mirage
    16 Sep '09, 2:10 pm

    I have a 802.11g network at home with a WRT54GL which connects 7 computers and several devices over Wifi and one file/ssh server + two compute servers over Ethernet. It is able to support 4 computers over wifi playing games together like Halo, Quake 4. The only problem is when I download a large file, like Windows 7 iso from MSDNAA. It is not practical to distribute such large files over the speed of 802.11g. I will wait for Tomato firmware that I have on WRT54GL runs on a 802.11n router until I upgrade.

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