Faster WLAN kit pre-empts 802.11g

There is no guarantee that new 54Mbit/s 2.4GHz wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment that will ship to UK buyers next month will be compatible with the upcoming 802.11g standard, which will not be finalised until late next year.

The official IEEE 802.11g standard is not likely to be ratified before the third quarter of 2003 at the earliest, and arguments about the exact specification are still raging. The situation means vendors such as NetGear and D-Link will ship products that might not be compliant with the final 802.11g standard, according to Michael Wall of analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.

"The products due to ship next month will not actually be ratified devices," said Wall. "The vendors are making a lot of assumptions about what the 802.11g standard will look like, so buyers should [ask for] guarantees that anything they buy now will work with the ratified 802.11g products appearing later."

The principal advantage of 802.11g is that it will transmit data in the same 2.4GHz waveband as 802.11b, meaning both types of hardware can be mixed and matched on the same WLAN. This overcomes the backwards-compatibility problems that affect 54Mbit/s 802.11a hardware, which can only communicate with firms' legacy 802.11b equipment via a dual-mode access point acting as a bridge between the two separate wireless networks.

Though these dual-mode access points are now beginning to appear, there are still legal restrictions governing use of the 5GHz waveband in the UK.

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