Wi-Fi Alliance Begins Wi-Fi Certification of 5 GHz IEEE 802.11a Products

Availability of Multiple IEEE 802.11a Chipsets Allows Interoperability Testing to Begin

Mountain View, CA, October 9, 2002 — The Wi-Fi Alliance today announced that Wi-Fi interoperability certification testing will begin on November 29th for 5 GHz IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.11a based products. Testing will be conducted at the organization’s San Jose, California interoperability testing laboratory. The laboratory will begin accepting products into the testing queue on October 18, 2002.

The Wi-Fi Alliance began interoperability testing of IEEE 802.11b based products in March of 2000. There are currently over 450 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED products in a broad range of platforms and applications on the market today.

The 802.11a interoperability testing has been initiated because a basic requirement of the Wi-Fi Alliance has been met – the availability of multiple products based on a second IEEE 802.11a chipset. The announcement of a second chipset was made in mid-April of this year and products were available for testing two months later.

The availability of products allowed the Wi-Fi Alliance to develop the interoperability “benchmark” test bed, which is the reference that all products are tested against. There are currently four access points and five station cards from seven different manufacturers based on three different chipsets in the “benchmark” test bed. Products that pass the certification will be granted the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED seal of interoperability.

“We are glad to see the initiation of interoperability testing for IEEE 802.11a, 5 GHz products,” said Sarosh Vesuna, Wi-Fi Alliance Technical Committee Chairman. “This is an important step in the development of a broad range of future products, and provides the foundation for the dual band (IEEE 802.11a and 802.11b) product interoperability testing,” continued Vesuna.

See Wi-Fi at WPCExpo Wi-Fi based wireless LANs will be on display at WPCExpo (Booth E4502), October 16-19, in Tokyo, Japan.

See Wi-Fi at COMDEX Wi-Fi based wireless LANs will be on display at COMDEX (Booth 2954), November 18-22, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

About the Wi-Fi Alliance The Wi-Fi Alliance (formerly WECA) is a nonprofit organization formed in 1999 to certify interoperability of IEEE 802.11 products and to promote them as the global, wireless LAN standard across all market segments.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has instituted a test suite that defines how member products are tested to certify that they are interoperable with other Wi-Fi CERTIFIED products. These tests are conducted at an independent laboratory.

Membership in the Wi-Fi Alliance is open to all companies that support the 802.11 family of standards. The Wi-Fi Alliance now comprises over 170 members from the world’s leading companies. These companies offer over 450 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED products. For more information, please visit www.wi-fi.org.