Fast Wi-Fi's Slow Road To Standardization

CWmike contributes this excerpt from Computerworld: "For a technology that's all about being fast, 802.11n Wi-Fi sure took its sweet time to become a standard, writes Steven J. Vaughan Nichols. In fact, until September 2009, it wasn't, officially, even a standard. But that didn't stop vendors from implementing it for several years beforehand, causing confusion and upset when networking gear that used draft standards from different suppliers wouldn't always work at the fastest possible speed when connected. It wasn't supposed to be that way. But, for years, the Wi-Fi hardware big dogs fought over the 802.11n protocol like it was a chew toy. The result: it took five drama-packed years for the standard to come to fruition. The delay was never over the technology. In fact, the technical tricks that give 802.11n its steady connection speeds of 100Mbps to 140Mbps have been well-known for years."

Comments

Not the first time

[causality]

Betamax vs. VHS, HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, now Wi-Fi draft N versus finalized standard draft N.

Open standards are a good thing. They avoid these kinds of problems. They promote interoperability. They also force vendors to compete on the merits of their implementations of those standards instead of competing on the basis of who is better at customer lock-in. It also lessens but does not remove the competition of who is the best at marketing.

If you care about assigning blame, it lies squarely on the people who purchased draft-N hardware. Whether they realized it or not, they were using their wallets to vote for this behavior. Those purchasing decisions reward this kind of behavior and make it profitable. Give companies the choice of agreeing on a standard or making no sales and they will agree on a standard every time.

Re:Not the first time

[daveime]

So I guess you'll not be using any of that "not-yet-finalized" html5 stuff, or any beta software from Google ?

After all, no one should invent anything until it's been discussed in committee for a minimum of 10 years, until the technology it is attempting to standardize has already been superseded by something better !

Thank [deity-of-your-choice] they didnt invent the wheel using open standards. It probably would have had 6 sides, none of which are equal in length, a 100 page operating manual, a concession to Pantone that it should only be made in RGB color 255,147,97, and an alternative implementation involving Microsoft's .innerHTML

Anything that takes longer to describe than it does to make is probably better not describing. Just use the bloody thing and be done with it.

Re:Not the first time

[Bakkster]

So you've been running slow b and g 802.11 while the rest of us have been screaming along on draft n for 4 years. You must feel real kewl.

I don't do anything that requires 802.11n speeds wirelessly, currently. My PC and XBox are wired Cat 5e, and I don't stream HD video to my Droid or eeePC. So I've been saving money using acceptable hardware, I do feel kewl!

Re:Not the first time

[causality]

So I guess you'll not be using any of that "not-yet-finalized" html5 stuff, or any beta software from Google?

Terrible examples. I really don't think you appreciate the difference between open standards and proprietary "standards". That, or you understand it perfectly well but find it inconvenient for your argument, PR-style.

HTML5 is intended to be an open standard, so in this case you're making my point for me. There was a draft standard of HTML5 released January 2008. This too was produced openly. A vendor who produces something based on this draft standard is using the same specifications that are available to all other vendors. The same will be the case with the finalized standard.

That has not been the case with the proprietary draft-N implementations. Each vendor has their own version of draft-N. It's very similar to Microsoft's practice of embrace-and-extend. Interoperability with another vendor's implementation is not guaranteed. If you can't get Vendor X's equipment to operate with Vendor Y's equipment, or suffer reduced performance, neither vendor will file that as a bug and fix it. Instead, both will tell you "we recommend you use our products for all your networking needs". You think this is just like HTML5, that you're really comparing an apple to an apple here?

Most of the beta software that Google has released for download has been open source (Chromium, for example). Open source is no good if you want to implement a proprietary standard. It's great when you want the world to see precisely how something was done so they can interoperate with your software or port it to other platforms. Google obviously understands the value of this. That again serves to reinforce my point.

This is just another example of a phony debate tactic. If there's not a term for this, there should be. The procedure goes like this:

1. Ignore any points that the other person made. This is important. If anything the other guy said contradicts your position, just pretend that you didn't notice. Best foot forward, even at the expense of intellectual honesty. Besides, this way you don't have to waste your time with refutation and can get right down to expressing your predetermined conclusion.
2. Proceed to find anything the other person said that is generally true, and does apply for the specific examples that person gave. Then take the general truth to an absurd extreme.
3. Pretend like this says something about the validity of the general truth. Whatever you do, don't acknowledge that it says anything about your ability to interpret the general truth within a reasonable perspective.
4. Declare that the general truth is inherently absurd. State outright or imply strongly that it must be false in all cases. It was false when you took it to an absurd extreme well beyond its intended scope, so it must be totally useless in all cases. Right?
5. Congratulate yourself for your ability to handle argumentation. For extra points, assume that the other guy was a total idiot, that your trivial objections never occurred to him, and that the existence of such trivial objections could not possibly have indicated that you missed his point.

Re:Not the first time

[causality]

I agree that a five-year wait is a big problem, especially for things that develop at a fast pace like software or networking. But, to me that doesn't mean we should scrap the whole idea of open standards and open protocols. It means we should improve the processes by which those open standards are produced. We should profile them like any algorithm and look for bottlenecks. We should do that with a ruthless willingness to eliminate those bottlenecks.

I bet that there are no technical reasons why it takes 5 years or more to come up with an HTML standard. I bet that there are lots of political reasons for that. I bet that a small team of engineers could do a better job in less time than a bureaucratic committee.

And for sure, even if and when the standard *is* finalized, that won't be before all the big players have bartered with the comittee for concessions on alternative allowable formats

I think you identified the problem right there.

unfortunately we live in the real world where innovators cannot wait 5 years for technology to be debated, formalized, bartered, compromised and generally muddied into yet another worthless piece of documentation that is out of date before it's ever released.

Nothing is stopping them from innovating. They just can't legitimately call their independent innovations "HTML 5". That doesn't bother me. But what we get for that are ubiquitous yet proprietary things like Flash and all of the problems that come with them. I still think it'd be better to fix what's wrong with the processes we use to create open standards.

Wi-fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Between crap home routers and microwaves knocking out my signal I'm just sticking to good ole fashioned cables. Wifi has been nothing but a headache in the years I've used it. Give me a good ethernet cable anyday.

Re:Blueray of Wifi

[h4rr4r]

I have this magic technology called wired networking. Even the copper stuff goes all the way up to 10Gb.

Wireless is 99% of the time more a pain than it is worth.

Lack of Demand

[Isaac-1]

Maybe the problem is lack of demand, how many people need the speed, for that matter how many people need the speed of 802.11G. These days everything seems to be about streaming media, at home people stream media off the internet, or for the more geeky stream it off a media server. So do they really need a wireless connection that is 50 times faster than a typical home broadband connection, particularly when these N routers are over twice the price of their G counterparts.

Ike

Re:Lack of Demand

[Xeno man]

Lots of people have more than 2 or three computers, but hardly anyone sends large files back n forth. Just because you and you Slashdot friends all push gigs of data over your network, doesn't mean everyone does. Most people only use a network so all of their computer can go online, that's it. Some of them will venture into printer sharing and maybe a few for network storage or backup but that is the extent of it. Go hang out in future shop and stand next to the wireless routers and see what regular customers are saying. They are buying N routers because they must be "better" because they are more expensive and they expect the internet to go faster, which it won't. Hardly anyone will say, "I have a media server that I stream from..."

Re:Promoting the progress of science and useful ar

[Anonymous Coward]

an Australian government

and one from the US Constitution: ... Try again, Congress.

Does this not point out a flaw in your logic?

Re:Blueray of Wifi

[BeardedChimp]

I also have a girlfriend who bitches when I place wires all round the house. Doesn't stop me doing it though.

Re:Blueray of Wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

If I hear anyone say nest-building again I will skull fuck them in the nose.