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Wireless Standards: The Future Wireless Network
Although the 802.11g products we've reviewed here are pretty speedy, tasks like simultaneously streaming several different video signals over a wireless connection require more bandwidth than current products offer. 802.11n is a forthcoming standard that will expand bandwidth and increase the range of wireless networks. The standard is still being discussed, but one version would provide more than 250 mbps of bandwidth, over four times that of existing 802.11g products. It would do this by compressing data more efficiently and using antennas that would allow it to transmit more than one signal at a time (a technique called MIMO, for Multiple In, Multiple Out). The final standard is not likely to emerge until 2006.
If you can't wait until then, this may be good news: Some vendors (such as Belkin) have released what they call Pre-N devices, which use their proposed version of the standard. Belkin claims that its products will be upgradable to the final 802.11n standard when it is released.
Wireless Traffic Control
Meanwhile, two other new standards coming soon are designed to enhance existing 802.11g networks. 802.11e allows for different traffic priorities, so time-critical data (such as a video stream or a VoIP phone call) is transmitted before less important stuff (such as e-mail or Web pages). A subset of this standard called WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia) will start appearing in consumer products late this year.
802.11i increases the security of a network by adding more encryption and access controls; a subset of this standard called WPA2 (Wireless Protected Access 2) will appear in products by year-end. Most existing routers will be upgradable to the new standard: several vendors told us that they are planning to offer WPA2 upgrades to their older 802.11g products soon. The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced that it will be testing products for WMM and WPA2 compatibility to certify that they will work properly together, in the same way it currently evaluates and certifies 802.11g products for interoperability.
Richard Baguley
Becky Waring is a freelance writer. Richard Baguley is a senior associate editor for PC World. Andrew Brandt is a senior associate editor for PC World and coauthor of How to Do Everything with Windows XP Home Networking (McGraw-Hill, 2004). Testing for this story was conducted by Elliott Kirschling of the PC World Test Center.
