Fgfhggggggjh

IEEE 802.11s Mesh Progress
Phil Belanger It’s always a good thing when two separate factions in a standards working group come together and agree on a common approach for moving forward. That iscertainly true of the recent progress made in the IEEE 802.11s working group that is developing a mesh networking extension for Wi-Fi networks. Now that there is only one proposal remaining, the groupcan focus on working out the details to make it into a standard rather than arguing about different approaches. We could see a finished standard in early 2007. The IEEE’s P802.11s™ Extended Service Set(ESS) Mesh Networking standard, will use mesh networking techniques to extend the range of wireless LANs securely and reliably. Mesh networking has received a lot of attention lately because of largeoutdoor wireless mesh networks that are being used to implement city-wide Wi-Fi clouds. Ironically, this standard will have little impact on that market. The biggest impact of 802.11s will be in yourhome.

Minimal Impact on Large Outdoor Wi-Fi Mesh
The 802.11s proposal was developed as a single radio, shared mesh extension for indoor access points. That is a very different application thanlarge outdoor wireless infrastructure used for municipal networks. The big outdoor mesh vendors and some mobile mesh vendors participate in the 802.11s working group because they must. It is marketingsuicide for them to be absent from the only standard that is addressing mesh. They all need to participate in the development of the standard even though it will not be core to their business. Somevendors would prefer that the 802.11s standard never happen. Those vendors who have a mesh routing algorithm as their big differentiator will see that differentiation evaporate as soon as the standard ispublished. The outdoor mesh vendors can adapt their products to support the eventual 802.11s standard and they will. However, do not expect to see interoperability between a Tropos and a Strix box...