Sidebar: 802.11k -- Management Standard Ahead

By Drew Robb

October 20, 2003 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Part of the problem with managing wireless LANs is the lack of standards in this area. To address this shortfall, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Inc. in New York established a committee to develop a new standard, 802.11k -- Radio Resource Management. The standard focuses on the two key WLAN elements: access points (AP) and PC Cards.
According to a committee paper laying out the vision and the architecture, the goal of 802.11k is to make measurements from Layers 1 and 2 of the OSI protocol stack -- the physical and data link layers -- available to the upper layers.
"This means that it is expected that the upper layers can and will make decisions about the radio environment and what can be accomplished in that environment," the paper states.
One feature 802.11k will enable is better traffic distribution. Normally, a wireless device will connect to whatever AP gives it the strongest signal. This can lead to overload on some APs and underload on others, resulting in lowered overall service levels.
The 802.11k standard will allow network management software to detect this situation and redirect some of the users to underutilized APs. Although those APs have weaker signals, they are able to provide greater throughput. This will produce higher speeds for both those on the original AP and the redirected users.
But don't hold your breath waiting for it. According to Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney, the standard won't be finalized for several years.
"They are trying to standardize measurement so we can have more third-party products measure more access points," he says, "but everything is proprietary currently."

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