Earlier this morning, Chris Wallace was showing me that the Palm Treo 700 had just been release. This is the first Windows Mobile 5 device I've heard of to actually hit the US market. My criticism of it requiring an SD card to do WiFi had us looking for other devices. Chris found the HTC KJam, which had built in WiFi. Oddly, it supports 802.11 b/g/e**/i**. Now I've heard of 802.11b (up to 11 Mbps) and 802.11g (up to 54 Mbps). I've even heard of 802.11 a (same speeds as g, but at the 5Ghz frequency range so less interference). What was e and i?
Apparently there are a lot of implemented letters which may or may not be standards:
- a - OFDM in the 5GHz Band (fast with little interference)
- b - High Rate DSSS in the 2.4GHz band (the first wireless standard to gain broad acceptance)
- c - Bridge Operation Procedures (used when building access points)
- d - Global Harmonization (require products from different countries to work in the same frequencies)
- e - MAC Enhancements for QoS (improvements of quality of service for audio and video applications)
- f - Inter Access Point Protocol (interoperability among access points allowing roaming and possibly building toward mesh networks)
- g - Higher Rate Extensions in the 2.4GHz Band (higher speeds)
- h - Spectrum Managed 802.11a (allows compliance with European regulations concerning the 5Ghz frequency range)
- i - MAC Enhancements for Enhanced Security (just what it says - more security for wireless network communications)
I got this info from an old source, written in mid 2002. Who knows what's changed since then, but I pretty much satisfied my curiosity, so I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
-- Matt Ranlett