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The Wi-Fi Alliance today announced the certification of the first eight products as 802.11g compatible.

Four access points and four PC cards officially conform to the new wireless networking standard.

These products, based on chipsets from four different silicon suppliers, have earned the right to carry the imprimatur Wi-Fi CERTIFIED IEEE 802.11g and to be identified as such on packaging and on the Wi-Fi Alliance Web site.

This is the fourth Wi-Fi product certification developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance since the program began in March of 2000. Previous certification programmes were for products based on IEEE 802.11a and 802.11b (including dual band products) and Wi-Fi Protected Access. To date, over 795 products from 110 companies have received Wi-Fi certification.

"Many companies and market segments have been waiting until products based on the final IEEE 802.11g standard amendment were certified for interoperability by the Wi-Fi Alliance. That day has come," said Frank Hanzlik, Managing Director of the Wi-Fi Alliance. "Until now, interoperability and performance have been uncertain for pre-standard IEEE 802.11g products. As of today, customers can get the interoperability and performance benefits associated with Wi-Fi Alliance product certification."

Wi-Fi certification assures that people who visit locations using Wi-Fi CERTIFIED equipment will be able to get connected whether they use 802.11b, 802.11g or dual band 802.11a/g products.

The 802.11g standard describes WLAN technology with raw transmission rates of up to 54Mbps in the 2.4GHz band. Actual data rates, once network protocol overheads have been taken into account are around 20Mbps or below. Local network congestion may reduce this further, as will the presence of 802.11b nodes.

802.11g uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission modulation techniques whereas 802.11b uses complementary code keying (CCK). The new standard specifies full support for CCK to ensure backward compatibility.

Some manufacturers have their own techniques for improving 802.11g performance. However these approaches are not part of the standard and will generally only work in networks containing 802.11g products from the same vendor.

A Wi-Fi Alliance Q&A on IEEE 802.11g certification is available (in PDF form) here. ®

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