Catchall 802.11 label could confuse end users

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iApplianceWeb
(07/12/02, 06:26:44 PM EDT)

PARIS - A move to brand IEEE 802.11 products of all stripes as "Wi-Fi Certified" is making some wireless-LAN vendors nervous. What appears to be a forward-looking attempt to simplify a complex naming structure in the face of emerging dual-band chip sets could have implications ranging from marketplace confusion and consumer dissatisfaction to the eventual marginalization of 5-GHz-only devices, some WLAN vendors maintain.

The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) has decided to designate as "certified" products meeting 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g specs, along with dual- and multimode solutions and those conforming to any other flavors of the IEEE 802.11 standard, which is often called Wi-Fi.

WECA, a nonprofit organization founded by WLAN equipment and chip set vendors to certify interoperability of Wi-Fi products, has yet to go public with an announcement of the certification program. But an internal document obtained by EE Times shows that under a new plan, WECA intends to slap a single, unified logo on both the 5-GHz 802.11a and 2.4-GHz 802.11b products. The group had originally intended to establish separate certifications for the two radio types.

WECA will no longer distinguish between "Wi-Fi" (.11b) and "Wi-Fi5" (.11a), a tactic previously used to indicate inherently uninteroperable products running on the respective 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands. However, in any package displaying the new "Wi-Fi Certified" logo, the group mandates that vendors add a so-called capability label to show which category the product falls into - .11a or .11b - according to the internal document.

WECA chairman Dennis Eaton, a strategic-marketing manager at Intersil Corp., defended the group's decision as "a long-term vision" that might cause some "short-term pain." He said, "Our branding strategy encompasses a broader range of 802.11 products. We need to address not only differences in physical layers but also quality-of-service and security."

Cause for confusion?

While some in the industry praised the move as a noble attempt to simplify the alphabet soup of 802.11 products, others argued that assigning differing products the same logo will add complications.

The strategy "is an attempt to reduce consumer confusion at the retail level," said Clarence Bruckner, president and chief executive officer of Magis Networks Inc. "Unfortunately, the reality is that consumers will end up being more confused. You can imagine a scenario where a consumer buys an 802.11a hub and an 802.11b PC card, installs them, and they don't interoperate. The consumer will simply assume that the products don't work and return them. We've lost that customer."

Bruckner said Magis favors distinct branding for various flavors of .11x products. The company plans to soon field 802.11a-only products based on its proprietary Air5 technology, offering an enhanced media-access controller with support for quality-of-service (QoS). Magis has no plans for an 802.11a/b combo product at this time.

A source at a wireless-LAN chip company working on .11a/b combo solutions, speaking on condition of anonymity, also called a single WECA label a bad idea. The capability label mandated by WECA is "sort of like a nutrition label that nobody really reads," the source said. "Every situation of this kind leads to market confusion and technology dissatisfaction."

Further, he said, "although our company is in full agreement with a comprehensive Wi-Fi logo concept, we believe for the sake of 802.11 consumers and the industry that all Wi-Fi products should be interoperable and backward-compatible with currently deployed [802.11b] Wi-Fi products." That requirement, he said, "is satisfied in all 802.11 configurations except 802.11a-only." The .11b and .11g products, as well as combo a/b and a/g solutions, "satisfy interoperability and backward compatibility," the source pointed out.

Apart from the branding message, some observers fear that system-engineering decisions are at stake in applications that go beyond wireless data by including audio and video features, such as QoS provisioning in upcoming wireless home networking systems. A QoS option is not available yet in current-generation 802.11a MAC products. So to implement full chip sets for both .11a and .11b in one consumer system, OEMs will have to cover a substantial cost increase, said another industry source, who asked for anonymity.

"There is very little cost savings in including both," this source said. "This will be nothing like dual-mode cell phones, where adding the extra capability increases the overall cost by a mere 10 percent."

WECA chairman Eaton acknowledged that the 5-GHz/2.4-GHz dual mode is expected to become the norm in the PC world in the next two to three years but said that 5-GHz-only products might make sense in the consumer electronics world. "For the most part, we think that they are two different marketplaces," he said.

Check box clarity

WECA's decision to exploit a unified logo paired with a capability label for differentiation was driven by the membership, said Amer Hassan, WECA's marketing chairman and a wireless architect at Microsoft Corp. Results of extensive focus group research on the naming of Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi5 showed that most people mistakenly "assumed Wi-Fi5 is automatically backward-compatible with Wi-Fi operating on 2.4 GHz," said Hassan. Further, he said, some focus group participants assumed that Wi-Fi5 was in some way superior to Wi-Fi, which did not please some WECA members.

"Using the single name Wi-Fi in conjunction with a check box indicating which versions are included makes it very clear what compatibility exists," said Rich Redelfs, president and chief executive officer of Atheros Communications Inc. "People in this industry are very used to check boxes showing compatibility with various printers, versions of Windows, etc."

Nor does Redelfs see a single logo as signaling limited prospects for 802.11a-only products. "Those who have .11b [products] will most likely continue to buy .11b-only if they add new devices to the home network," he said. "Those who don't have .11b or want to upgrade will likely want .11a-only, as it's less expensive than combo."

"Most of the successful next-generation products will be the dual-band, whether 802.11b/802.11a or 802.11g/802.11a," said analyst Gemma Paulo at In-Stat. D-Link and Intel already have access points available with embedded 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz radios, she said. Cisco, Agere and Enterasys have rolled out access points supporting 802.11b radios and also are offering support for 5-GHz radios as each vendor releases them this year.

"The dual-band rationale seems to be crucial for the business environment, as businesses want their technology investments to have a relatively long life span," Paulo said.

Navin Sabharwal, director of residential and networking technologies at Allied Business Intelligence Inc. (Oyster Bay, N.Y.), agreed, predicting that "802.11a-only products will be relegated to niche applications" such as "some enterprise access points, home video and markets that have no need for backward compatibility with 802.11b."

Wi-Fi? What's Wi-Fi?

Allen Nogee, senior analyst at In-Stat, speculated that WECA's attempt to call all the 802.11 products "Wi-Fi" may come from "pressure by the 802.11a folks, because they would have the most to gain." But he also questioned the wisdom of trying to promote the Wi-Fi name across the board, when "Wi-Fi has really only gained partial success as a 'type' in the marketplace. Go to Fry's or Comp-USA and look at the packaging," said Nogee, "and I bet the '802.11b' will be [in] much bigger type than 'Wi-Fi.' In fact, many packages I've seen don't even mention Wi-Fi."

According to WECA's internal document, the effective dates for the new logo and labeling start immediately for Wi-Fi Certified 802.11a and dual-band products. The branding program for certified 802.11b products will begin on Jan. 1, 2004.