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News that's changing the Wireless World!

Thursday, July 31, 2003

Wireless LAN products certified

By Jeff Caruso

Many enterprise companies are looking to add wireless LANs to their wired LANs. But confidence in standards compliance with emerging wireless products has been one prominent issue for them.

The Wi-Fi Alliance was formed in part to rectify that through a certification program designed to give companies the peace of mind that products passing the certification tests would be interoperable. Earlier this month, the alliance extended its certification to IEEE 802.11g.

IEEE 802.11g is the successor to 802.11b, and bumps the possible throughput from 11M bit/sec to 54M bit/sec. It works in the same frequency band, 2.4 GHz.

Previous certifications from the alliance included programs for 802.11a (same bandwidth but at a different frequency level), 802.11b, and the Wi-Fi Protected Access security technology. The Wi-Fi Alliance says 795 products from 110 companies have been certified in those programs.

For the new 802.11g, a round of eight products from six companies have been certified; four were access points and four were PC cards.

The alliance rightly points out that interoperability is especially critical if wireless LAN technology is to be extended into hot spots. In those places, there is no telling what wireless equipment is being used by the hot spot provider or in the client devices, so interoperability among equipment is key.

Newly certified are: the Atheros AR5001X+ Universal 802.11a/b/g Wireless Network Adapter, the Broadcom 54g AP Reference Design - BCM94306-GAP, the Intersil Prism Duette PCMCIA Adapter Model ISL39000C, the Intersil Prism Duette Access Point Developer's Kit Model ISL39300A, the Melco AirStation 54M bit/sec Wireless Notebook Adapter-g Model# WLI-CB-G54(A), the Proxim ORiNOCO AP-600b/g, the TI TNET1130 WLAN Cardbus Reference Design and the TI TNETWA622-g10-DP Access Point Reference Design.