Approval nears for 802.11n wireless standard

Although already seeing widespread use, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced this week that the IEEE 802.11n standard will finally be ready for a ratification vote this September, making the high-speed wireless LAN technology official after several years of refinement. The more than 600 products that have been certified to the 2.0 draft version of 802.11n will be backwards and forwards compatible with the final version.




The technology promises a much higher theoretical peak speed of 300Mbps – significantly up from the 54Mbps offered by 802.11g – and supports MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) antennas to improve range and throughput. In real-world conditions, though, speeds are typically between 80Mbps and 100Mbps.

The 802.11 committee, meanwhile, has reportedly already begun work on the next standard, 802.11ac, which hopes to push wireless speeds into gigabit territory.