802.11n is a-knockin'

It feels like we’ve been talking about the IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi specification forever, but the moment of standardization is now upon us. Does this mean it’s OK to give up our wires?

Work on a faster wireless LAN dates back to the early part of this decade, with the first meeting of the IEEE 802.11n task group taking place six years ago. The companies involved, however, took some time to arrive at agreement on a common approach, so the standards process didn’t really kick in until 2005.

In truth, the actual standardization is a bit anticlimactic, since vendors could not wait for industry agreement while faced with steep demand for faster wireless. They charged ahead with products once Draft 2.0 of the standard was in place in 2007. The Wi-Fi Alliance even announced an interoperability certification program at that time, and as Joanie Wexler notes in her Wireless newsletter, certified Draft 2.0 products won’t require changes to comply with the standard.

We reported a year ago that companies were moving to 11n in numbers that were unprecedented for a specification that was not yet ratified as a standard.

But if you have been waiting for an official seal of approval, you will have it this month. According to Network World tests, 11n products are 10 times faster than the previous generation, with throughputs hitting 250 Mbps per access point.

The question that has always been raised by 11n is whether such high speeds mean we can just replace our access wires with wireless connections. That’s something that more people are doing these days, but 11n brings the possibility to a whole new level.

The nagging concern is security, and the recent cracking of the WPA security standard for Wi-Fi doesn’t help allay that concern. As our article on the attack states, it doesn’t work on the newer WPA 2, but the doubts will linger. Is it always easier to break into a wireless network than to tap a wire?

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.