Fast Wi-Fi's Slow Road To Standardization 140
Posted
by
timothy
from the vested-interests-took-off-gloves dept.
from the vested-interests-took-off-gloves dept.
CWmike contributes this excerpt from Computerworld: "For a technology that's all about being fast, 802.11n Wi-Fi sure took its sweet time to become a standard, writes Steven J. Vaughan Nichols. In fact, until September 2009, it wasn't, officially, even a standard. But that didn't stop vendors from implementing it for several years beforehand, causing confusion and upset when networking gear that used draft standards from different suppliers wouldn't always work at the fastest possible speed when connected. It wasn't supposed to be that way. But, for years, the Wi-Fi hardware big dogs fought over the 802.11n protocol like it was a chew toy. The result: it took five drama-packed years for the standard to come to fruition. The delay was never over the technology. In fact, the technical tricks that give 802.11n its steady connection speeds of 100Mbps to 140Mbps have been well-known for years."
Not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)
Open standards are a good thing. They avoid these kinds of problems. They promote interoperability. They also force vendors to compete on the merits of their implementations of those standards instead of competing on the basis of who is better at customer lock-in. It also lessens but does not remove the competition of who is the best at marketing.
If you care about assigning blame, it lies squarely on the people who purchased draft-N hardware. Whether they realized it or not, they were using their wallets to vote for this behavior. Those purchasing decisions reward this kind of behavior and make it profitable. Give companies the choice of agreeing on a standard or making no sales and they will agree on a standard every time.
Wi-fail (Score:2, Insightful)
Between crap home routers and microwaves knocking out my signal I'm just sticking to good ole fashioned cables. Wifi has been nothing but a headache in the years I've used it. Give me a good ethernet cable anyday.
Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)
So I guess you'll not be using any of that "not-yet-finalized" html5 stuff, or any beta software from Google ?
After all, no one should invent anything until it's been discussed in committee for a minimum of 10 years, until the technology it is attempting to standardize has already been superseded by something better !
Thank [deity-of-your-choice] they didnt invent the wheel using open standards. It probably would have had 6 sides, none of which are equal in length, a 100 page operating manual, a concession to Pantone that it should only be made in RGB color 255,147,97, and an alternative implementation involving Microsoft's .innerHTML
Anything that takes longer to describe than it does to make is probably better not describing. Just use the bloody thing and be done with it.
Re:Blueray of Wifi (Score:4, Insightful)
I have this magic technology called wired networking. Even the copper stuff goes all the way up to 10Gb.
Wireless is 99% of the time more a pain than it is worth.
Lack of Demand (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the problem is lack of demand, how many people need the speed, for that matter how many people need the speed of 802.11G. These days everything seems to be about streaming media, at home people stream media off the internet, or for the more geeky stream it off a media server. So do they really need a wireless connection that is 50 times faster than a typical home broadband connection, particularly when these N routers are over twice the price of their G counterparts.
Ike
Re:Not the first time (Score:3, Insightful)
So you've been running slow b and g 802.11 while the rest of us have been screaming along on draft n for 4 years. You must feel real kewl.
I don't do anything that requires 802.11n speeds wirelessly, currently. My PC and XBox are wired Cat 5e, and I don't stream HD video to my Droid or eeePC. So I've been saving money using acceptable hardware, I do feel kewl!
Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrible examples. I really don't think you appreciate the difference between open standards and proprietary "standards". That, or you understand it perfectly well but find it inconvenient for your argument, PR-style.
HTML5 is intended to be an open standard, so in this case you're making my point for me. There was a draft standard of HTML5 released January 2008. This too was produced openly. A vendor who produces something based on this draft standard is using the same specifications that are available to all other vendors. The same will be the case with the finalized standard.
That has not been the case with the proprietary draft-N implementations. Each vendor has their own version of draft-N. It's very similar to Microsoft's practice of embrace-and-extend. Interoperability with another vendor's implementation is not guaranteed. If you can't get Vendor X's equipment to operate with Vendor Y's equipment, or suffer reduced performance, neither vendor will file that as a bug and fix it. Instead, both will tell you "we recommend you use our products for all your networking needs". You think this is just like HTML5, that you're really comparing an apple to an apple here?
Most of the beta software that Google has released for download has been open source (Chromium, for example). Open source is no good if you want to implement a proprietary standard. It's great when you want the world to see precisely how something was done so they can interoperate with your software or port it to other platforms. Google obviously understands the value of this. That again serves to reinforce my point.
This is just another example of a phony debate tactic. If there's not a term for this, there should be. The procedure goes like this:
Re:Promoting the progress of science and useful ar (Score:1, Insightful)
an Australian government
and one from the US Constitution: ... Try again, Congress.
Does this not point out a flaw in your logic?
Re:Blueray of Wifi (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lack of Demand (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not the first time (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet that there are no technical reasons why it takes 5 years or more to come up with an HTML standard. I bet that there are lots of political reasons for that. I bet that a small team of engineers could do a better job in less time than a bureaucratic committee.
I think you identified the problem right there.
Nothing is stopping them from innovating. They just can't legitimately call their independent innovations "HTML 5". That doesn't bother me. But what we get for that are ubiquitous yet proprietary things like Flash and all of the problems that come with them. I still think it'd be better to fix what's wrong with the processes we use to create open standards.
Re:Blueray of Wifi (Score:1, Insightful)
If I hear anyone say nest-building again I will skull fuck them in the nose.