Introduction
Ratified in 1997, the original
IEEE 802.11 standard provided a new wireless networking protocol. This standard provided data rates of up to 2mbps over either Infrared or
2.4GHz Microwave channels. It would go on to become the foundation for a family of different standards (
802.11b/
a/
g/etc.).
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Issues
Unlike its successors, however, this revision of the standard was extremely broad and allowed a
wide range of variations. This allowed individual vendors a lot of room to provide unique features to differentiate their products. Unfortunately, it also meant that interoperability between offerings provided by different vendors was often limited. This provented its acceptance into the mainstream and limited it to high-end installations.
To address this problem, the
802.11a and
802.11b working groups quickly went to work to provide more rigid drafts of the standard. Coupled with much higher speeds, these standards rapidly suplanted their predecessor. Ratified two years after the original standard,
802.11b pushed
WiFi into the mainstream.
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See Also - 802.11b - Ratified in 1999, was the first standard in the family to become popularized.
- 802.11a - Also ratified in 1999, this 5GHz variant of the standard provided higher throughput but wasn't backwards compatible with it's predecessors.
- 802.11g - A variant of the standard that provides 802.11a speeds but uses the 2.4GHz band and maintains backward compatibility with 802.11b.
- 802.11n - Still in the ratification process, this next generation protocol incorporates new technology to significantly boost throughput and range.
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