What's happening with 802.11n?

[starcraft.man]

I've been following the progress of the standard for a while now and of late I haven't seen or heard any news on it. Is it dead/stalled? Is the CSIRO letter of assurance the only hurdle left? If the CSIRO refuses, will that kill the standard? Anyone got more info on this?

I'm anxious because I really would like to replace my aged G network. While the draft are nice, I was kinda aiming on seeing reviews for final release products.

[cmat]

I bought a card and it didn't work well with my set-up. I really think its not doing too great since the stores are putting them on clearance near me (I was buying a PCIMA card for my desktop because 7.10 was being stupid with my USB).

[toupeiro]

Not stalled because of CSIRO so much, but also simply too expensive to adopt at this time for people who already have A/B/G setups. It was probably a marketing mistake to hit the shelves with 802.11n so soon.

If you have freqency problems, its cheaper to get a 6.0Ghz phone (which is now an FCC protected band for digital phones) to fix your interference problems than it is to convert to a 802.11n network. When it becomes de-facto hardware in all laptops and wireless enabled desktops, then you will see it in more homes. Same thing happened with 802.11G when it first hit the consumer market. and, going even further back into history with the US Robotics 56K X2 modems and the Zoom K56-Flex modems. There was an industry standard protocol, and because of pending litigation and the inability to recognize the standard (a.k.a. greedy bastards) there were two solutions.

As I remember, it took about a year for 802.11G hardware to start saturating into the vendors like HP/Dell/Toshiba. IEEE sets the 802.x standards, CSIRO doesn't have to adopt them. CSIRO is kind of notorious for making noise. Their stake in 802.11g technology should not stop the production of 802.11n. If they can prove intellectual rights in 802.11n, so be it. It won't keep manufacturers from using it. (this is obviously just my opinion)

[dasunst3r]

CSIRO seems like nothing more than a patent troll. I know a few wireless industry big wigs, so I'll ask them for a little bit more insight on this. I hope they don't fly into a rage when I say "CSIRO" or something...

As for me, I'm going to wait until a few things:

The standard is totally finalized
ipw4965 works out of the box (or close enough to the point where I can spend a few minutes to get it to work)
My parents' 802.11g router (in its fourth year of service) goes out

[starcraft.man]

Not stalled because of CSIRO so much, but also simply too expensive to adopt at this time for people who already have A/B/G setups. It was probably a marketing mistake to hit the shelves with 802.11n so soon.

I was wondering about that. I do remember quite a few people buying the first draft based off the buzz but it just seems to have dropped off after that.


If you have frequency problems, its cheaper to get a 6.0Ghz phone (which is now an FCC protected band for digital phones) to fix your interference problems than it is to convert to a 802.11n network.

Nah, I don't have any interference issues. It was more me just wanting an overall faster network... I was thinking on getting a NAS sometime soon and I really would like Gigabit/n for the network before I install it. Else moving big files will be a pain.

I guess I will do as I said and wait for final standard + reviews.