Wi-Fi group to update WLAN spec
Thursday, 6 May 2004 23:49 EST
The Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) is so confident that the IEEE will at long last ratify the 802.11e specification as a standard that it has already come up with a marketing name for the technology. The standard will be branded the Wireless Media Extensions (WME), and the organisation will start certifying WLAN products' ability to interoperate with other 802.11e products in September. WME adds quality of service provisions to Wi-Fi. Essentially it priorities traffic according to the type of data being carried. Network packets carrying video data are sent in preference to those carrying web pages or email in order to ensure the more-time sensitive information gets the bandwidth it needs.
The result should be video that doesn't lose picture quality, for example. It might even make Voice over IP (VoIP) commonplace.
The 802.11e specification also includes technology the WFA is calling Wi-Fi Scheduled Media (WSM), which dedicates bandwidth segments to specific data types. However, since WSM is going to be less of a necessity for home users, the WFA is focusing its attention on WME.
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