U.S. Robotics says it is introducing new turbo products that can deliver 100 Mbps to 125 Mbps throughput: The company achieves those speeds by using chips from Texas Instruments and packet aggregation and frame bursting technology. The gear will work with standard 802.11g and 802.11b products.
U.S. Robotics joins a crowd of other manufacturers delivering proprietary upgrades for faster data rates. Such upgrades may contribute to the 22 percent failure rate of products that are submitted to the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification program. A slew of publications picked up on comments made by the alliance at CeBit about that failure rate, though it's not news. In January, the alliance said that a quarter of products fail certification and plenty of outlets covered the story.
The alliance has said it will certify products that have proprietary modes as long as the products are shipped in a mode that is certifiable. Vendors are coming up with proprietary upgrades to try to differentiate themselves and because a standard doesn't exist that delivers the higher speeds. Proprietary modes fracture the market because they only work when the access point and client device come from the same manufacturer, thus requiring users to buy certain gear if they want the faster speed. But, you can't blame the manufacturers for introducing improved products in the absence of a higher-throughput standard.