802.11n STANDARD RATIFIED

By M.S. Welles

The newly ratified standard named WLAN Enhancement for Higher Throughput adds support for video and other rich data streams while offering data rates of up to 600Mbit/sec. The rate is more than 10 times faster than the current wireless standards.

Seven years after work began on the 802.11n standard, the IEEE Standards Association voted to adopt it on September 11, 2009.

Realistically, many IT shops started using the standard which promotes wireless access points and related gear almost two years ago.

Pleased with the standard and its performance, those who have adopted it are already requiring that all new construction include 802.11n-based gear. Additionally, older access points will need to be upgraded to support the 802.11n standard.

Upgrading is expensive though and it's doubtful that while wireless and mobility are the future of IT it's dubious that wired networks will ever be eliminated from an environment,

Wired networks are frequently used for backbones running multiple 10 Gigabyte Ethernet connections that simply cannot be replaced with wireless for reasons of resiliency, bandwidth requirements, reliability and security.