Arik Hesseldahl has a cogent explanation of the various WiFi’s out there now and coming down the pipe in Forbes:
- Finally, down the road, Wi-Fi will likely have to speed up again–as there will come a day when 54 megabits per second simply isn’t fast enough. A new IEEE group is studying ways to speed up data transmission, or high throughput. Speeds proposed range from 108 megabits per second–about twice the current limit–to more than 300 megabits per second. It doesn’t have an official IEEE designation yet, though it’s being referred to tentatively as 802.11n. But there will be plenty of time for that, as it’s not expected to be finalized until at least 2005, if not later. Given three years, we may look back on Wi-Fi circa 2003 and consider it quaint.
Fast wireless would seem to solve a lot of problems: see these stories for much more on the wireless Internet revolution.