802.11n Delayed to 2008

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like we have to wait some more for 802.11n and promised 100 Mbps speeds. IEEE has delayed ratification of the standard until 2008, yet again, due to continuing problems with interoperability and too many comments from chipset manufacturers and other interested parties. Analysts are telling firms not to deploy n until the new standard is ratified."

Comments

Terrible idea...

[evilviper]

Manufacturers aren't waiting... They've been rolling it out for quite a while now, and will surely continue to do so, standard or no.

Delaying the standard for more than a year is only going to ensure that none of these systems will be interoperable, and certainly not forewards compatible.

An imperfect (slightly less backwards-compatible) standard now, would be much better than a perfect standard in 2 years.

Speed is good but ubiquity would be better

[MarkWatson]

I live in the mountains and I get my broadband from a small local provider who has a few inexpensive transmitters around town. A good solution for a small town.

I would really like to see universal coverage, and low bandwidth by throttling socket connections to keep people from abusing the system would be OK. There would still be a huge market for high speed wireless, cable, and fiber, but a backgound universal lower level of service system would be a good infrastructure investment.

Unfortunately, this is very unlikely to happen in the USA given our current political climate that subsidizes corporations and for political reasons needs to inhibit growth and prosperity of the middle class and small local businesses(just pointing out that the middle class is the largest threat to the republican dream of a 1000 year reich: permanent control).

Re:who cares?

[rollercoaster375]

The same reason people use Gigabit Ethernet. The point n is not for extra-network protocols, but inter-network ones (For example: VNC)

Re:who cares?

[smoker2]

I run a media server for all my saved tv and ripped movies. I initially set it up to be wireless, as it would be nice to have it out of the way somewhere. But as it does not run the tv card and software, nor the ripping software, all the saved media had to be transferred over the network. When you are talking a couple of gig a pop, it starts to get tedious, especially when watching a stored movie at the same time, so I went back to wired (for the time being).

Not all wireless apps are for use in the mobile market. The intended final incarnation of my media server will see remote wireless nano-PCs attached to tvs all around the house, to access all content through the server. When 2 or more devices are running concurrently, 22 Mbps gets saturated and you get the *buffering* that we all hate.

Roll on 1 Gbps wireless !

Re:honestly, folks

[setirw]

What do you think of gigabit ethernet, then? As with any networking protocl, 802.11x has more uses than merely connecting to the Internet.

Re:honestly, folks

[owlstead]

In the netherlands, you can get 22 Mb/s from certain cable internet providers (e.g. multikabel). That's a solid throughput of 2/3 MB/s. And even then you presume that WiFi can only be used for internet. Note that 11n is meant for home/office use. Maybe you could broaden your views a bit?

Re:honestly, folks

[timeOday]

See, we all know it's useful for us. But we slashdotters are too savvy to think about our own needs and preferences, so instead we discuss everything in terms of some mythical "average joe" or "joe sixpack." Joe's life consists solely of beer and football, so almost evey new technology is worthless to him. But suffering others' foolishness is the burden of our genius, so we defer all our opinions to Joe.

In Soviet Russia

[davidwr]

In Soviet Russia, standards delay YOU.

Oh wait. Dammit.