Firms may find 802.11n kit too hot to handle

Intel joins the support roster for 802.11n high speed wireless LAN technology

Support for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11n high-speed wireless LAN (WLAN) technology is spreading. Intel has become the latest vendor to endorse the format with the release of its Next-Gen Wireless-N component for Centrino laptops.

IEEE 802.11n, which has yet to be fully ratified, is designed to deliver a fivefold increase in data transfer rates compared to current 802.11g equipment and to double the range.

Vendors such as Asus, Belkin, Buffalo, D-Link and Netgear have all released 802.11n hardware, which should need only a firmware upgrade to be fully compatible when the final specification is ratified. However, 802.11n’s data transfer rates could be too hot to handle for some. A spokesman for WLAN security supplier AirDefense said that although the rates are unlikely to be as high as the 300-400Mbit/s touted by vendors, they could still cause problems for firms with 10/100Mbit/s backbones.

“For companies using ‘thin’ access points – wireless kit with no processing power onboard – data would have to go back to the centralised Wi-Fi switch to check for malware,” he said.

He added that 802.11n access points running 100Mbit/s data streams across a corporate network could create problems for services such as IP telephony.

“Future firmware updates could double or triple the data transfer rates of 802.11n kit, which could increase problems,” he said. AirDefense added that funnelling high-speed wireless data streams directly into corporate network cores could also pose a security risk.