Why is N still in draft?

[hitch]

Hi Everyone...ok first off I have to admit that I haven't done much reading on the subject but I am curious and I thought this would make a good topic for discussion. It seems as though wireless N has been around for a while now and it's still in draft. I'm wondering if anyone knows why this is. I'm hearing that this summer is a possible date to have the standard to become offical. I've been wanting to upgrade our home wireless to N but am waiting on the offical standard before doing so.

Any thoughts on why this is taking so long? A/B/G seemed to move relatively fast. My personal opinion is that it has to do with the demand for speed. People have been relatively happy with G for a while now, but I think we will see that change soon.

 

[MHCG]

I believe it's an issue with patents.

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/09/dark-australian-patent-cloud-looms-over-802-11n-spec.ars

 

[PatrickB]

I too will be happy to see final specs approved. The IEEE 802.11 Working Group expects final approval in 2010 in January, March, and June. See the "TGn" (Task Group N" row on the spreadsheet.

http://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm


Wikipedia has a pretty good article and timeline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n

Including this patent information.

In late November 2007, work on the 802.11n standard slowed due to patent issues. The Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) holds the patent to a component of the 802.11n standard. This component is also part of 802.11a and 802.11g. The IEEE requested from the CSIRO a Letter of Assurance (LoA) that no lawsuits would be filed for anyone implementing the standard. In Sep 2007, CSIRO responded that they would not be able to comply with this request since litigation was involved.[8]
In April 2009, it was revealed that CSIRO reached a settlement with 14 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Dell, Toshiba, ASUS, Microsoft and Nintendo, on the condition that CSIRO did not broadcast the resolution.

-- Patrick B.

 

[MHCG]

Apparently there was a recent settlement in the court case about this so perhaps we'll see it finally getting out of draft.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/300310/csiro_settles_wireless_battle

 

[hitch]

cool looks like progress is being made. I'm guessing there was some hefty coin that changed hands on that settlement. Thanks for clearing it up for me. Cheers!