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Aug. 29, 2008

The IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has finally completed the 802.11r standard that will allow Wi-Fi devices to roam quickly between access points.

The new IEEE standard will greatly improve the performance of VoIP on enterprise LANs and various other devices.

Overall, the IEEE's family of 802.11 group of standards were originally defined with single access points in mind, but in offices multiple access points are needed in many cases.

Mobile devices can move from one access point to another, but it takes around 100 ms to re-associate, and several seconds to re-establish authenticated connections using the older 802.1x specification standard.

The new 802.11r standard, known as FBSST (Fast Basic Service Set Transition) allows a wireless network to establish a security and QoS (Quality of Service) state for the device at the new access point, before it roams between the two.

That way, the transition can take place in less than 50 ms - the current standard required for voice roaming.

Until now, vendors have either used lower security options on Wi-Fi VoIP (using WEP encryption for example) and put VoIP traffic on separate V-LANs to protect the rest of the network, or simply implemented wireless technology close to the eventual 802.11r standard.

Other vendors, including Meru and Extricom, has built networks where there is no roaming because all the access points are on the same wireless channel.

The IEEE has been working on the 802.11r standard since March 2004, and the concept has been solid a year later, but the standard was formally approved and published by the IEEE only on July 17, 2008.

The IEEE's new 802.11r standard could very well open up a bottle-neck in enterprise Wi-Fi VoIP installations, and should allow VoIP certification to move ahead.

Although the Wi-Fi Alliance delivered a VoIP brand known as Wi-Fi Certified Voice-Personal in June, this has had limited success, and the Alliance is expected to follow up with a Voice-Enterprise brand, including 802.11r sometime early next year.

Roger Hockaday, Aruba's director of marketing said "we primarily address the enterprise market, so we would certainly look for voice-enterprise when it comes out."

Cisco Systems and Meru branded enterprise-grade equipment under the Voice-Personal brand, but other business Wi-Fi companies have shunned it.

Alistair Mutch, global business manager for Wi-Fi switch vendor Trapeze says "we have not submitted to the low end one as we felt it was really not worthit. Overall, Voice-Personal certification is for low range apps and SME equipment."

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Source: The IEEE.