Alliance Formed to Complete Wireless Networking Standard

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A group of 27 technology companies said on Monday they would collaborate on a new, faster Wi-Fi wireless Internet connection standard for computers and other portable devices.

The alliance, dubbed Enhanced Wireless Consortium, joins previously separated camps that were heading towards separate standards for wireless networking

It includes some of the biggest wireless chipmakers such as Broadcom and Intel as well as network equipment maker Cisco and portable computer makers Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba.

The new Wi-Fi standard is known as 802.11n and follows the 802.11a, b and g standards. The n-version is billed to be two to 10 times faster than current Wi-Fi technologies and will enable high-quality wireless video transmission in office and home networks.

View: The Enhanced Wireless Consortuim

News source: USA Today

Spokesmen from Toshiba also underlined the need to offer video content stored on HD DVD media that will not feature any regional restrictions, as happens with current DVDs. Although final decisions about this matter have not yet been announced, it is possibe that the same HD DVD discs will be reproduced by any HD DVD player worldwide.

Apart from the HD DVD, the DVD Forum announced that it has begun the standardization of the DVD-RW DL which it expects to be finalized by the end of 2005. The new DVD-RW DL discs will not be compatible with current DVD players, since their reflectivity value is not within DVD specifications (8%). The provided DVD-RW DL media are expected to allow recording at 2x, featuring a 2.66GB (8cm) as well as an 8.54GB capacity for 12cm discs.

Another interesting announcement is the possible standardization of the 12x DVD-R DL media in early 2006. Lastly, the 6-16x (CAV) recording speed for DVD-RAM (Class 1) will be available under the newly introduced "DVD-RAM2" logo. The reason for introducing a new logo for the 16x DVD-RAM recorders/media is that there is a need to distinguish it from the current DVD-RAM hardware (Class 0). The 5x DVD-RAM media will not be able to be written with current DVD-RAM recorders.

#1 kronik on 14 Oct 2005 - 06:46

this is exciting news, well at least for a telecoms engineer like myself

"The future is wireless"

#2 Ambience on 14 Oct 2005 - 10:19

I always thought 802.11n would merely be a range increase, not a speed increase.

(1 reply) #3 darkpuma on 14 Oct 2005 - 11:52

Any idea when it will be out? Im looking at buying a new laptop, and dont want it to be out of date in a week....

#3.1 matt74441 on 14 Oct 2005 - 12:39

Give it a while.

(2 replies) #4 ~D~ on 14 Oct 2005 - 14:57

"two to 10 times faster than current Wi-Fi technologies"

g+ is 108Mbps so n will be 1Gbps??

#4.1 parithon on 14 Oct 2005 - 17:02

g+ isn't actually 108Mbps... It’s a marketing ploy to make you think it’s that quick. Its still 54Mbps but it uses a complex system which shoots two packets at once effectively giving you the theoretical 108Mbps. The only problem is, the further you are from the AP, packets will get "lost" and your speed will decrease dramatically.

#4.2 ZeroBS on 14 Oct 2005 - 19:32

I read it is going to be 540Mbps

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?si...1247236&tid=193

#5 Shadrack on 14 Oct 2005 - 17:01

Wireless technology is already superb. 802.11g pretty much satisfied my Wireless desires very nicely. I can stream DVD content via 802.11g and not lose any quality, so that is pretty dang good if you ask me. 802.11b works well for file copying, and Internet connectivity.

Not only that, but it is cheap to setup and maintain in commercial settings. Sure, getting a larger range and making it faster would be nice. Just about everywhere I go, there is a hot spot near by (either work, home, university, and coffee shops).

What would be nice a next step for 802.11 is to lower the power requirements. It sucks the life out of laptops and PDAs pretty fast, so better power usage would be a step in the right direction I think.

I would like to see more Cell phones taking advantage of 802.11 as well. The fact that you have to go through your cell phone providers slow as hell "mobile web" at some rate/min is pure crap considering how wide spread 802.11 is. The Internet should be free to cell phone users wherever free wi-fi is available.

(1 reply) #6 Chanser on 14 Oct 2005 - 17:59

They're really faffing about with 802.11n, taking such a long time to confirm spec and release.

#6.1 bigl523 on 14 Oct 2005 - 18:35

measure twice, cut once

#7 King Rilian on 14 Oct 2005 - 20:21

Would I be correct in assuming that the current Pre-N technology is referring to the 802.11n standard? If so, I wonder if the Pre-N stuff will still be able to work with the new 802.11n stuff.

(1 reply) #8 tiwaris on 14 Oct 2005 - 21:16

My assumption is that 802.11n will be backward compatible with 802.11b/g.

#8.1 ZeroBS on 14 Oct 2005 - 21:33

Yes 802.11b/g/n all are compatible with each other, that said the 'pre n' stuff is not the same and unlikely to be upgradeable to 802.11n final standard, it well still run on a 802.11b/g/n AP but wont run at 802.11n speed it may only run at 802.11g speed.

Unlike what happened when 802.11g was coming out where there was a draft standard and all the companies used the same stuff and they had some idea what the final would look like. Here what most companies did was just implement MIMO technology in the 802.11g standard but there is more to 802.11n then that. And that is why they cannot just release a firmware or driver update.

#9 Angel Blue01 on 14 Oct 2005 - 23:54

They were talking about having a wireless standard that would have real use of 100Mb by 2007.

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