""FastWireless"" Group To Promote High-Speed SpecBy Todd Spangler

Aiming to coalesce industry support around a single wireless networking standard, a group of vendors next week is expected to announce the creation of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance. The new consortium, to be known as WECA, will promote the IEEE 802.11 High-Rate standard - which the group might christen ""FastWireless"" - and certify interoperability of products based on the standard. WECA founding members include 3Com, Lucent Technologies, Aironet Wireless Communications and Nokia. WECA hopes to pole-vault over one of the main objections to wirelessLANs up until now: They're too slow. The 802.11 High-Rate specification allows data transfer at up to 11 megabits per second - five times faster than the previous generation of wireless LAN equipment, which has a maximum data transfer of 2 megabits per second. Now that there's a standards-based wireless technology that performs on par with wireline Ethernet, industry executives expect wireless LANs to be much easier to sell to a broader market. ""It was always an uphill struggle, but as soon as we broke the 10-megabit-per-second barrier it immediately increased the appeal of wireless LANs,"" said WECA Chairman Phil Belanger, who also is vice President of Strategic Development at Aironet. ""I was absolutely stunned at the difference that it made."" Another important order of business for the group is to find a name for the technology that's sexier than ""802.11 High-Rate,"" Belanger said. WECA officials have considered ""FastWireless"" as one possible name but the official name will not be revealed until the Networld + Interop trade show next month. Belanger acknowledged that the wireless LAN industry also was hamstrung by inter-vendor fighting over technical aspects of the technology - something WECA clearly wishes to avoid. ""We haven't behaved very well in the past,"" he said. ""We've been bickering over these irrelevant details instead of promoting the benefits of wireless networking."" WECA will facilitate a certification process for 802.11 High-Rate products, which will be handled by a yet-to-be-named independent testing lab. In addition, WECA plans to market 802.11 High-Rate as a consumer technology for home networking. WECA has approached the Home Radio Frequency Working Group, which is promoting a 1-Mbps wireless technology, about adopting 802.11 High-Rate as their second-generation standard. David Cohen, product manger in the 3Com wireless LAN group and vice chairman of WECA, said the HomeRF representatives were ""receptive"" to the suggestion. Although prestandard 11-Mbps wireless LAN systems are available today, the first products based on 802.11 High-Rate are expected to ship this fall from Lucent and 3Com.Source: Inter@active Week