IEEE 802.11 Publishes 4th Revision, Adds Greater Throughput

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IEEE has published an update for its 802.11 standard, commonly referred to as WiFi. 802.11-2012 is the fourth major revision of the standard, following 802.11-2007 in 2007 and the initial release of the technology in 1997.

IEEE said that 802.11-2012 integrates defined MAC and PHY modifications for "much higher throughputs up to 600Mb/s", direct-link setup, fast roam, radio resource measurement, support for the 3650 - 3700 MHz band and vehicular environments, mesh networking, security, broadcast/multicast and unicast data delivery, interworking with external networks as well as network management.

The detailed specification is offered for $5 as a download or for $99 as a printed version.

Douglas Perry
Douglas Perry
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ojas
    Looking forward to its release in products. Though i wonder about the health effects of so much high freq EM running around all over the place...
    Reply
  • DRosencraft
    For now it's only excititng if you're moving stuff across a local networki. Few of us around the world, and particularly in the US, even have the capability to use half of the speed and throughput that exists today. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice update and everything, but I fear it will mostly go to waste for the forseeable future.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    DRosencraftFor now it's only excititng if you're moving stuff across a local networki. Few of us around the world, and particularly in the US, even have the capability to use half of the speed and throughput that exists today. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice update and everything, but I fear it will mostly go to waste for the forseeable future.Well, some of us have growing families who stream a lot of content from a central server on the network, and this would help things at time. Wireless N is pretty good, but sometimes just does not cut it.
    Reply
  • willard
    DRosencraftFor now it's only excititng if you're moving stuff across a local networki. Few of us around the world, and particularly in the US, even have the capability to use half of the speed and throughput that exists today. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice update and everything, but I fear it will mostly go to waste for the forseeable future.You underestimate how many people move large amounts of data locally. Wireless company intranet is set to get a huge boost in throughput, as well as more mainstream uses like streaming local media and NAS. I'd guess that the number of people who see no benefit from increased WiFi bandwidth is quite low.
    Reply
  • Parsian
    Intranet is growing and surely this will be beneficial.
    Reply
  • opmopadop
    Lets hope the rollout is a bit more organised than the .N standard. That damn Draft .N cost my company money.
    Reply