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The state of IEEE standards for 802.11 et al.: Dewayne Hendricks forwarded a post from a Cisco staffer who attended the Ft. Lauderdale meeting of the 802.11, .15, .18, .19, and .20 committee last week. His report is on the status of several existing and new standards. I don't know what all the procedural detail means, like as "will ad hoc." My notes are in square brackets [].
Leaving base camp
High Throughput Study Group Letter Ballot on PAR and Five Criteria
802.11m Maintenance Task Group will start in March
802.11k Radio Resource Measurement may have first draft in July [getting the physical layer of the radio to report accurate details up to the network layers for management purposes]
802.11j 4.9GHz and 5GHz in Japan will have first draft in March [Modifications to get 802.11a working in Japan]
Measure twice, cut once
802.11e MAC QoS received 1173 technical comments, answered 193, will ad hoc in Portland Feb 24-27
802.11i Security received 2000+ comments, will ad hoc in Seattle Feb 19-21
Closing Letter Ballot
802.11g Higher rate 2.45GHz will recirculate LB, and might Sponsor Ballot before March plenary
Peak is in sight
802.11h 5Ghz in Europe resolved all Sponsor Ballot comments received, waiting to recirculate [Europeans modifications for 802.11a]
802.15.2 PAN and LAN coexistance resolved all Sponsor Ballot comments received, but did not convert enough NO voters to YES to recirculate [Standard allows better co-existence with Bluetooth/802.15.1-2002 devices and 2.4 GHz 802.11 devices]
802.11f Inter Access Point Protocol Recommended Practice resolved: all NO comments, and converted all NO voters to YES, will Sponsor Ballot recirculate
802.11 1999 (reaffirm 2003) will Sponsor Ballot recirculate and be complete in March
Other News
Henry Norr tears 802.11g a new one: Sorry for the coarse euphemism, but there's no other way to put it. Norr tries out a variety of 802.11g gear, and finds poor performance and poor interoperability. If someone as tech savvy as him is having these problems with early gear, what can consumers expect? I'd like to see more information about the throughput issues: he was seeing lower throughput on 802.11g than b (using homogeneous equipment), but I wonder if he'd locked them into "g only" mode?
Long, deep comparison of Linksys and Buffalo 802.11g gear: The results aren't surprising, but they're well documented with good methodology. Pure 802.11g equipment can top 20 Mbps, but once you add clients or mix in 802.11b or even other chipsets, you start seeing degradation that's asymmetrical. The article is long, but worth examining closely! [via The Shifted Librarian]
The unique, the visionary, the immortal Dave Hughes: A nice profile of a guy who has fairly selflessly spread a message of community through connectivity. I like his plan for immortality near the end. But, Dave, surely not until the sun burns out -- you can fix entropy, can'tcha?
Why use T-Mobile when in a Starbucks? Competitors abound: This excellent piece of analysis describes the trouble in hegemony: with T-Mobile charging a relatively high rate for access in their 2,000+ locations, how can they compete with free or cheaper from nearby signals to the Starbucks outlets? Starbucks are, practically by definition, found in dense and hip areas which are the same places you'll find Surf and Sip and community networks. The head of Surf and Sip has long played a game of finding locations where he can see several coffee shops and restaurants, not just one partner. [via TechDirt]
See the USA with a Wi-Fi array: I'm trying to hard to fit the jingle to the story, but automotive Wi-Fi may take off, with units in the car talking to mobile components to transfer music, misc. Imagine having a gateway in your car that provides an Car Area Network (CAN). Imagine bridging the CAN to GSM/GPRS as needed. Imagine bridging the CAN to a hot spot location when you're near one. Imagine that you can do that today with...a Macintosh running OS X or a Windows XP box with the right hoo-ha. But in-car, permanent components would be better. [via TechDirt]
WirelessDevNet prepares hot spot directory: The folks at WirelessDevNet have launched a form to submit hot spot information in the hopes of creating a comprehensive directory. There are other directories, but none of them appears to be entirely exhaustive. Hopefully, someone will be smart enough to avoid forms in the future and create an XML DTD + Schema that can be used to prepare uniform hot spot listings which could be downloaded via a regular ping from the WISP sites and then just integrated into directories. Anybody want to launch this very simple effort and then convince the wISPr committee at the Wi-Fi Alliance to take up that uniform listing format idea?
Proxim a/b certification: Proxim pushed out a press release today noting that their a/b card has achieved certification, among the first 802.11a products approved by the Wi-Fi Alliance.