Unstrung reports on previously unknown letters of the alphabet: 802.11m (maintenance update) and 802.11n (high throughput) are ones I haven't heard of; "n" isn't yet an official letter. The idea behind high throughput is to increase the percentage of network traffic that carries data instead of overhead like timing and error correction; they also want to radically increase the symbol rate. [via Marcos Lara]
The High Throughput Study Group is the group slated to be named 802.11n as I understand it. This group was formed last year and has had several meetings.
The proposals as I understand it so far, are to increase the maximum modulation rates from 54 Mbps. to 108 Mbps., and to look at promising new antenna technologies.
It remains to be seen what the operating range of such enhanced data rates is. It also remains to be seen if these enhancements will be a significant impact to the overall data throughput at the application layer experienced by the end-user. Previous experience with 802.11 networks has shown that devices operating at distances requiring lower data rates tend to dominate the network and slow the overall throughput significantly. 802.11a touted as 54 Mbps. will slow down in stages to 6 Mbps. as distances increase. Not only does the end-user that is operating at 6 Mbps. suffer, but the rest of the users on the network suffer as the 6 Mbps. device consumes a larger portion of the available bandwidth.
My company, Corporate WaveNet, has developed technology that can use the current 54 Mbps. and the new 108 Mbps. modulation rates of 802.11, when they become available, while offering improved network efficiency and data throughput.
New simulation results are posted on our website showing that our technology, TRUErate, can offer sustained throughput using the existing 54 Mbps. technology that can scale to aggregate gigabit-per-second throughput. An increase to 108 Mbps. will offer a similar increase in the aggregate throughput offered by TRUErate. TRUErate technology solves the data rate vs. throughput problem, which results in reliable sustained increased throughput of more than on order of magnitude. One of the best parts of TRUErate is that it is completely compatible with the 802.11 protocols allowing transparent heterogeneous wireless networks.
More information on TRUErate can be found on our
website.
David Beberman
www.corporatewavenet.com