In an earlier post,  I described how the new 802.11n radio interface can deliver a five-fold increase in raw transmission capacity of a wireless LAN. One question that came up while discussing the potential for mobile unified communications in the Wireless Update session I was conducting at the recent VoiceCon conference dealt with the whether an organization would be wise to proceed in deploying systems based on 802.11n, given that the standard is not yet ratified. Fortunately, that was an easy one to handle, and the answer is a resounding yes. As I didn’t get much of a chance to elaborate at that time, now I can provide the reasoning.

First, we should be clear that the final 802.11n standard has not been ratified by the IEEE 802.11n committee, and probably won’t be until sometime in 2009. Normally we caution enterprise users to steer clear of pre-standards, but the Wi-Fi Alliance has changed the rules of the game.

There are two organizations responsible for the development and certification of wireless LAN interfaces, the IEEE and the Wi-Fi Alliance. The IEEE develops the official standards, however, the standards they produce are too broad and define too many options to make them useful in developing products that will interoperate reliably.

That’s where the Wi-Fi Alliance comes in. The Alliance is a global, non-profit industry association of more than 300 member companies devoted to promoting the growth of wireless Local Area Networks. Besides their promotional role, the Alliance serves a very important technical function. For each major development in the standards, technical committees within the Alliance translate those standards into product specifications. They review the IEEE standards, select options to use, and define the standard product implementation.

The Alliance then develops a certification program to insure compatibility with that standard implementation. Devices are certified in one of 10 Authorized Test Laboratories located around the world. Products are tested for compatibility with other certified products, conformance with the IEEE standards, and performance to insure they will meet user expectations. Products found to be in compliance are issued a certificate and are posted on the Alliance’s web site (www.wi-fi.org). Certified products are not only guaranteed to be interoperable, but backwards compatible so they will not interfere with any certified device that is already in use. The list is sorted by certification and can be viewed by vendor or product type as well as certification.

While vendor groups organized to support various technologies are not new, the Wi-Fi Alliance has taken the process a step further. When the standards process takes too long, or there is pressing market needs, the Wi-Fi Alliance has been known to “jump the gun. One example of that was Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), a short-term fix for the security problems encountered in early wireless LANs.

As the IEEE 802.11n standard was taking so long to produce, the Wi-Fi Alliance took the step of developing a process to certify products built to the Draft 2.0 standard; as of today, 231 products have been certified. As with all Wi-Fi Certifications, the Alliance has guaranteed that Draft 2.0 Certified products will be compatible with the final standard when it is published. If any changes Draft 2.0 Certified products are required, they will be firmware upgrades, so you won’t have to replace any certified equipment.

Standards have been a great boon to our industry.However in the WLAN space, it’s not compatibility with the IEEE standard, but certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance that insures interoperability with other products. Given the Alliance’s track record in getting inter-operable products to the market, this looks to be a case where buying “pre-standard” but “Draft 2.0 Certified” products is a safe bet.

Once you’ve decided to take that step, there a lot more issues you’ll have to consider, but that will be the subject of another piece.