Draft-802.11n gear: now with 50%less "draft"

You've probably heard this ancient Zen koan before: If draft-802.11n gear gets certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, can it still be called "draft"? Well folks, that ancient question is about to be answered--The Wi-Fi Alliance, those lovable rascals who brought you certified 802.11a/b/g products, will start offering up their newest certification for "802.11n Draft 2.0" gear in June. The new products will carry a "Wi-Fi Draft N certified" designation on their packaging, making it easier for consumers to determine which products are inter-operable. The certification process for the draft-n products will consist of a series of interoperability tests using chips from Atheros, Broadcom, Cisco, Intel, Marvell and Ralink, to ensure that the gear in question works with other draft-n gear, the final 802.11n spec and legacy a/b/g devices. I must say, given the long and painful process that the road to a 802.11n spec has been, it almost seems like a joke that after all this time all we're getting is pre-spec certification. However, with the final spec probably still delayed until 2009, this is probably the closest we're going to get for the time being.

For more on the forthcoming certified products:
- see this Ars Technica article