Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IEEE Developments in Wireless Networking

Posted by Zonk on from the how-to-talk-to-the-eather dept.

JamesAlfaro writes "After much wrangling between opposing interests among the members of the IEEE, a first draft for the Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11n specification received approval in a Thursday meeting. Final ratification of the standard is not expected until next year." Relatedly, judgecorp writes "The IEEE has disbanded its working group on ultrawideband. They are leaving the marketplace to decide between two competing approaches." From the article: "Freescale, first to the market with UWB products, believes its headstart will give it a long-term victory, while WiMedia, with the backing of industry heavyweights including Intel and Microsoft, reckons its punch will eventually win through, even without a formal IEEE standard."

3 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Think of the consumers! by plbland · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think it would be quite nice if they could at least co-operate to some degree with these UWB WiFi technologies. It's easy for the /. crowd to understand these compatibility issues but it can only be hassle for the general consumer who barely understand the current wireless standards/speeds.

  2. Not needed for VoIP by hey · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Its cool and all that they are making a faster standard but the article says:

    This technology in particular is key to enhancing the VoIP user experience.

    I get 54Mbps on WiFi now. That's more than fast enough for VoIP.

  3. Unobtanium, Inc. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That would take a hardware company built from the ground up to use open source. Yes, it is needed, for video cards, audio, wireless, etc. All of the above. I know of some minimal efforts, but nothing really stands out except in obscure embedded. We need a white knight, something like a google/ibm blend to do this. It would be nice if it started from scratch, and had an IPO to get funding to get going. I am not sure if it would work, but with enough pre release advertising it might. Despite Linux being in use by businesses all over, and at the forefront of academic research, it's still the red headed step child when it comes to large corporations and hardware. It's always something like "oh, ya, we took one engineer 2 hours a week on his lunch break and here's his blog and code download area, there ya go Linux d00dz, support!1!!"