Upcoming 802.11v Wireless Standard ‘Greens Up’ WLAN

Trapeze Networks Engineer Tells InterOp New York How

PLEASANTON, Calif., Sept. 19 /PRNewswire/ — The coming IEEE 802.11v standard will introduce new power savings features that will “green up” wireless LANs. This important advance will be explained at the InterOp New York conference by Matthew Gast, Trapeze Networks’ principal engineer, office of the CTO, and the chair of Wi-Fi Alliance Wireless Network Management and Security Technical task groups.

Work on the 802.11v standard began early in 2004 and is expected to be finished in 2010, but enough information about the standard has emerged that Gast will be able to describe some features that will help drive down the energy consumption of wireless networks. These features include:

• Wireless Network Management Sleep Mode, a further extension to base 802.11 power savings that will allow for longer power-off times for 802.11 radios. It will be used in conjunction with new Traffic Filtering Service to enable access points to deliver only specified frame types.
• “Wake on WLAN” capabilities that let network managers “wake up” wireless computers and other appliances.
• Proxy ARP that will let an access point respond to ARP requests enabling stations to power down for longer periods.
• TIM Broadcast that will distribute traffic indication maps so stations do not need to receive every beacon frame.
• Flexible Broadcast / Multicast services that will send broadcast / multicast frames at the highest data rate for the group of receivers thereby reducing power-on time for radio interfaces and allow for higher data rates that improve performance of multicast applications.

The 802.11v standard will include more than power saving features. According to Gast, it will include station management features that will give network managers a much more detailed view of network performance and new location features that will offer more accuracy for services like RFID and emergency services.

Overall, certification programs help create new markets and drive new business models. Gast says, “Developing a certification program to enable the widespread adoption of large-scale management features will strengthen Wi-Fi’s presence in the enterprise, as well as potentially enable new business models for service providers.”

Matthew Gast literally wrote the book on wireless networking. “802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide” (O’Reilly Media), now in its second edition, is the top selling reference work in the field and has been translated into six languages. At Trapeze Networks Gast is leading the evolution of the most significant advancement in networking since the invention of Ethernet.