The Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) is a well-recognized body that was founded in 1884. The IEEE is a global technical, professional society serving the public interest and members in electrical, electronics, computer, information, and other technologies. The IEEE, which is based in the United States sponsors more than 300 conferences each year, including technical conferences, workshops, professional/careers/technical policy meetings, and standards working group meetings. In addition, the IEEE is involved in almost 200 "topical interest" meetings, either as consultants to the technical program or as nonfinancial partners . The IEEE standards process consists of more than 30,000 volunteers and a Standards Board. IEEE is responsible for creating standards for the very popular local area networks (LAN) standards, such as 802.3 (also known as Ethernet), IEEE 802.5 (token ring), and 802.11 (wireless LAN). The standards process begins with the submission of a Project Authorization Request (PAR) to the Standards Board. According to IEEE, a PAR is the means by which standards projects are started. PARs define the scope, purpose, and contact points for the new project. If the Standards Board approves the PAR, then the standards process is initiated by the creation of a standards working group. The members of the standards working group are volunteers and may or may not be members of the IEEE. The members of the IEEE working group create a draft standard. This draft is reviewed by a balloting group of IEEE members for review and approval. The constitution of the ballot group consists of standard's developers, potential users and others having general interest. Once this process is completed, the Standards Board conducts a review of the Final Draft Standard for the approval. Standards are typically reviewed once every five years for revision. One of the standards of interest to us is the IEEE 802 family, which is formally referred to as the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee. According to the IEEE, the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee develops local area network standards and metropolitan area network standards. The most widely used standards are for the Ethernet family, token ring, wireless LAN, bridging and virtual bridged LANs. An individual working group provides the focus for each area. IEEE 802 family standards and documents cover layers 1 and 2 of the OSI reference model. Let's review some of the key documents and task groups with respect to the 802 and specifically the 802.11 family:
The task groups e, f, g, h and i are setting the stage for the next generation WLAN. QoS work from 802.11a will provide better usage of the resources and improved user perception of the wireless IP services. 802.11f will allow user roaming from one access point to another, thus potentially can increase offered services and WLAN usage. 802.11g is increasing data rates to 54 Mbps in the most popular and globally available band, i.e. 2.4 GHz. This technology will be beneficial for improved access to fixed network LAN and inter-network infrastructure. It will also enable creation of higher performance ad-hoc networks. 802.11h provides dynamic channel selection (DCS) and transmit power control (TPC) for devices operating in the 5GHz band (802.11a). In this way it avoids interference with the primary user (satellite communications) of 5GHz in Europe. It creates additional mechanisms for indoor vs. outdoor channel selection. It will likely become the successor of 802.11a. 802.11i is actively defining enhancements to the MAC Layer to enhance the security of the data exchanged over the air link. 802.11's optional encryption standard, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), is the existing available security mechanism. This uses static encryption keys and does not have key distribution management. 802.11i will incorporate 802.1x that provides a framework for authenticating and controlling user traffic to a protected network. 802.1x provides dynamically varying encryption keys. It ties a protocol called Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) and provides multiple authentication methods , such as token cards, Kerberos, certificates, and public key authentication. 802.11i will use a stronger encryption algorithm such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). In summary, 802.11 task groups are exploring solutions for providing higher speed access, reduced interference, better quality management, strong security, and user roaming. |