Impatience with the standards process is tempting some companies to market their products before certification, especially in the wireless local area networks arena.
“Recent test data released by the Wi-Fi Alliance indicates that wireless LAN interoperability and performance continue to be an issue for products without Wi-Fi certification,” noted the Wi-Fi Alliance.
This impatience also is afflicting the vendors of products of the short-range protocol ZigBee. The players have failed to arrive at a standard between two competing groups, each claiming to have superior specifications.
Wireless LAN player Broadcom Inc. was quoted recently as opting to ship its pre-standards product, only to issue a statement that it was prepared to abide by the standards.
Sources said Broadcom wanted to square up to one of its competitors, Atheros Inc., in the 802.11n category. Broadcom, according to the sources, chose the path of channel bundling, putting together two 802.11g channels to reach 108 megabits per second speeds, which will equal Atheros’ 802.11n.
According to both Wi-Fi Alliance and WiMax Forum, the certification process is rigorous. Between 25 and 30 percent of companies fail the compliance test and have to gear up for another test, according to Brian Grimm, the Wi-Fi Alliance’s communications director.
The process is so cumbersome that it takes between two and three years, said Margaret LaBrecque, president of the WiMax Forum, which promotes the broadband wireless access technology that competes with DSL and cable.
Both, however, noted that the culprits are usually the smaller companies and others whose enterprise customers can live with proprietary systems. In a world of increasing open standards, enterprises are coming around to the necessity of having open standards in case their suppliers go out of business. Some in-country products can abide in a proprietary market, but things get tricky when it becomes international.
The interoperability problems the Wi-Fi Alliance refers to include failure to interoperate products from one radio layer like g to another layer like b.
“Using g radio may not recognize b network,” remarked Grimm.
Chipmakers already are rolling out solutions that bring the variety of alphabet radios onto one chip, and this necessitates interoperability. The performance issue relates to the inability of the devices to come out of the power-save mode and forces users to suffer intermittent service.
“Sometimes it may not roam from access point to access point,” said Grimm, adding that intermittent services are often the most frustrating.
With the Wi-Fi Alliance, the products are tested in San Jose, Calif.; Taipei, Taiwan; London and Tokyo. Grimm said the busiest Wi-Fi Alliance labs are San Jose, Taipei, Tokyo and London in that order. For the WiMax Forum, the labs will be set up in the fourth quarter of this year, said LeBrecque.
LeBrecque said the most crucial part of the standards process is what is often called plugfest, in which companies test their products against the solutions of others.
“It’s important that the products are in line with the other products for the same tests,” said Grimm. “If the product fails, they have to re-test the entire product until they correct the product.”
Both said it is often more difficult to market a pre-standard product on the consumer side because of the return rate, which tends to be higher in non-certified products.
B was the first radio layer and a followed. G is third. The Wi-Fi Alliance has added the Wi-Fi Protected Access for security. It also has developed the quality of service layer that should be certified in June.
In view of the various radio layers and the need to interoperate them in one system, tests are increasingly difficult to perform, said Grimm. Yet, he said, “as the technology evolves, certification is more important.”
Because this may affect time to market, the standards bodies ensure that the specifications are arrived at about six months ahead of the deadline.
Grimm said Wi-Fi Alliance plans to release WPA2 in July this year and 802.11h between June and July this year, although it targets the European market. H is North America’s a in that it operates on the gigahertz band. It is marked by transmit power control and dynamic frequency selection. Transmit power control allows economizing power use between devices, while the dynamic frequency selection avoids crowded bands and moves to freer ones.
LeBrecque said most of the vendors publish 80 percent of the specs ahead of the testing process, and this makes it easier for WiMax products. She said it requires a lot of consensus building to arrive at a standard.
She said the WiMax Forum is working on 802.16e, which enables better connectivity with both indoor and roaming devices, as well as affording greater power.
The Wi-Fi Alliance said it has certified more than 1,000 products from at least 120 vendors. In addition its products have been deployed in 125 countries, and its membership has jumped to 67 companies from 28 in five months.
