Political skullduggery
Nevertheless, many in the industry see proprietary MIMO add-ons as
little more than a con. "We are seeing vendors try to cheat the public
by releasing products early," says Gartner's Dulaney. "The
specification needs to be approved, and the products need to go through
the testing process before it's delivered to the market. People really
want interoperability."
Many people will find themselves paying extra for technology they don't need and in many cases won't work properly, Dulaney says. "Few people even use 802.11b to its full extent. A 10Mbpswireless LAN is fine," he says. "But if there's an 802.11a client around, it will drop back to a, and they won't even know it. People don't have spectrum analysers. They'll have the wool pulled over their eyes."
Something similar happened with 802.11g equipment in the home, Dulaney notes — the equipment could be dragged down to a fraction of its intended speed by a neighbours' 802.11b equipment. "In the long term, sure, we always need more bandwidth, but we're telling people not to worry about it for four or five years," Dulaney says.
Complicating matters further is that while the manufacturers are aggressively pushing their proprietary hardware, the standard is looking further and further away.
The IEEE formed the 802.11n Task Group (TGn) in January of 2004, and initially it didn't look as though finding common ground amongst the different proposals would be difficult, since they were all relatively similar. At that stage, the process was expected to be completed in late 2006.
A deadlock developed between the WWiSE (World-Wide Spectrum Efficiency) group, backed by Broadcom and Airgo, and TGn Sync, backed by Intel and Philips. In July the two groups said they'd work together with the third major group, MITMOT, on a joint proposal. The compromise raised hopes that a joint draft could be presented in November, with a final draft set for January.
The skulduggery hasn't stopped there, however, with a group of the biggest WLAN chipmakers — Intel, Broadcom, Atheros and Marvell — reportedly collaborating outside TGn on key interoperability aspects of the specification, which they plan to present to the IEEE by November. Marvell went on record defending the meetings, which have riled some on the official task force — notably Airgo — and even raised antitrust concerns.
Intel and friends upped the ante against Airgo last week when they formed a group called the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC). Led by Intel, Broadcom, Marvell and Atheros, the group is the latest example of a long tradition in tech: The big guys, one way or another, usually end up calling the shots on standards.
The latest developments may be an attempt by the big, established chipmakers to keep Airgo-style spatial multiplexing from being an important part of the final standard, says analyst Solis. The turmoil may mean that a joint proposal won't arrive until January or later, which could push back the finished standard by months, well into 2007.
"It is a highly political game, it is about the positioning of the various vendors," says Gartner analyst Wollen. "Not all the vendors in the standardisation process have an interest in it going too quickly, since it could eat away at their current market."
If the standard arrives in 2007, big enterprise players such as Cisco won't get on board until around 2008, Wollen estimates: "We don't foresee 11n penetrating into the enterprise before 2010."
