Computers and Networking

The 802.11n wireless internet access specification is still in the oven, or even in the mixing bowl still. But the hardware manufacturers such as Linksys, D-Link, et al, had already jumped in the bandwagon. You can see these products in the internet and in the popular electronics stores. They already designed, produced and sold wireless access point boxes carrying the draft recommendations or specifications. Those specifications were ratified by IEEE and was called "Pre-N". But since those standards are based on the draft, there are still bugs present and is still being rectified.

So what is really in this Wireless-N standard?

As I mentioned, the standards are still in the making and being brainstormed by the 802.11n working group. The standards contained in the draft 2.0 includes the following:

• Radio requirements for channel and data rates
• Description of the MIMO technology
• Backward compatibiliy to the existing wi-fi technology (a/b/g)
• throughput of up to 600Mbps
• signal improvement by antenna diversity and phase correction
• access point radio pwer saving schemes

You can imagine, buy putting these standards into place it really takes a lot of thinking. Those written above is only a few of the many aspects of the 802.11n design. There are still a lot of things going on but it is being anticipated that the 802.11n standard be ratified by IEEE by July 2008. By then, the vendors of the early deployed Pre-N boxes should give hardware and software upgrades to make their product comply with the final standards.

On the final thoughts, there no reason not to reap the benefit of having a Pre-N right now. A careful decision must be made though, in selecting the network equipment to not become obsolete once the final standard is released. You should choose the one that give HW and SW upgradeability if that is possible.