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Wireless N Protocol

From wsuwiki

1 Overview
2 History
3 Benefits
4 Bibliography

Overview

IEEE 802.11n is a new standard for wireless communications. Built upon the legacy 802.11 a/b/g standards, 802.11n was designed to surpass the previous protocols in performance while overcoming many of the common performance issues.

History

The 802.11 family of protocols are designed for wireless communications between computing devices. Over the years, protocols 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g have been designed to improve on their predecessor. Initial certification of the 802.11n draft-2.0 certification occurred in June 2007. After two years and many drafts of the original document, IEEE (formerly the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), completed its ratification in September 2009 of the 802.11n standard, with the Wi-Fi Alliance releasing its own 802.11n certification program.

Benefits

The new standard promises significant throughput increases while extending the coverage per access point. With an increase up to 144 Mbits/sec ond a theoretical range of 300 ft, the new protocol should be a vast improvement over the previous standards. One of the complications with the new protocol is that in order to fully realize the increase in performance, no legacy equipment should be allowed to connect to the new environment. While this is currently unrealistic, penetration of 802.11n clients has increased and all 802.11 computers now ship with 802.11n compliant components.