802.11n APPROVED! Official Notification!
After exactly six years, almost a dozen drafts, and two years of enterprise products available under Wi-Fi Alliance certification, IEEE has today approved the ratification of 802.11n as a final standard.
Here is the official notification!
Editor’s note: We’ll be celebrating next week with another Tweepstakes giving away a laptop of the FUTURE! Stay tuned!
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 11:01 AM
To: STDS-802-11-TGN@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: [STDS-802-11-TGN] Standards Board Decisions today- 11w and 11n approved
— This message came from the IEEE 802.11 Task Group N Technical Reflector —
All,
802.11 had two items under consideration during the Standards Board meetings being held this week.
I’m am very pleased to announce that both P802.11w and P802.11n were approved today.
Although this email vehicle falls far short of expressing the sentiment, Thanks to the hundreds of 802.11members that contributed to these efforts, as well as the 802 EC and the IEEE Staff.
With me here as I write this is Paul Nikolich who wishes to add his congratulations to the group.
I expect to extend the celebration of the success , (while we continue work on the other amendments in process ) when we convene in Hawaii two weeks from now.
Hope to see you there.
Bruce
A router and wireless access pointOn Friday, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ratified the next generation of Wi-Fi Alliance certification known as 802.11n.  The path to ratification began on September 11, 2003 with 11 major drafts of the specification over the course of six years. Even though just approved, wireless devices have been available on the the market for over two years, running on what is known as "draft n" or "pre-N".  

The 802.11n standard operates on both the 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz frequencies.  This will allow it to be backwards compatible with 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g, provided that the base station has dual radios.  The speeds of 802.11n are substantially faster than that of its predecessors with a maximum theoretical throughput of 600Mbit/s.

Very few additions were made to the 802.11n draft standard over the last two years, so most if not all "draft n" hardware available on the market today is expected to be compatible with n-standard devices available in the future.  In a similar process of the upgrade from "pre-G" to 802.11g, it is expected that most manufacturers of wireless hardware will release new firmware to bring all draft devices up to full standard compliance.