CYBERSPACE — Although companies including Netgear are releasing wireless LAN equipment in anticipation of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) draft 802.11n specifications — buyers may want to hold off on making any infrastructure investments until the standards are actually ratified.Anxious industry insiders had hoped that users of Wi-fi kits that exceed the current 802.11a/b/g hardware speeds would be able to upgrade soon, but the latest delay in approving a new standard has set the date back at least another week.

Although a preliminary proposal was accepted in January of this year, the anticipated autumn agreement upon a standard did not materialize. Instead, after the chipset manufacturers had weighed in on the issue, the draft date was extended in order to provide enough time to read the sizable number of opinions on the matter that have been submitted.

Rolf Devegt, senior director of business development at Airgo Networks believes that Draft 2.0 of 802.11n will be provide the reliability needed to move to final ratification sometime within the first six months of 2008. He also spoke in support of breaking from tradition by immediately beginning 801.11n interoperability testing by the Wi-Fi Alliance in order to run even farther behind.

According to Devegt, once the new standard has been approved, “What customers will be looking at is actual throughput rates of 100Mbit/s.” Additionally, coverage quality should improve and the IEEE hopes to improve WLAN security by defining the 802.11w specification, which not only encrypt data frames, but also management, with the goal of securing authentication, and preventing both denial-of-service assaults and information leakage.