Wi-Fi Alliance Takes on Wireless IP Telephony

Tag : IP Card

The Wi-Fi Alliance wants to make voice a part of Wi-Fi networks, and has introduced aprogram to certify products, it announced on Monday.
The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal stamp of approval means aproduct is capable of making or handling good-quality voice callsin the home or a small office environment, according to the Wi-FiAlliance. Access points, wireless routers, handsets (which aregrowing at a steady rate) and laptops can all be tested andcertified.
The push is a way for Wi-Fi Alliance to keep femtocells andupcoming technologies such as WiMax, HSPA (High-Speed PacketAccess) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) -- which lately haveovershadowed Wi-Fi -- out of the home, according to Richard Webb , directing analyst at Infonetics. Webb thinks Wi-Fi, helped by alow cost and a large installed base, will be able to stay dominant.
"Wi-Fi performance has been continually improved, and this isanother step along that road," said Webb.
In a departure from interoperability testing, which has always beenWi-Fi Alliance's bread and butter, it instead looks at performance.To be certified, products have to deliver packet loss of less than1 percent with no burst losses, as well as latency and maximumjitter of less than 50 milliseconds, according to the Wi-FiAlliance.
The first round of certified products include Intel's PRO/Wireless3945ABG Network Connection (an embedded 802.11a, b and g PCIe MiniCard), Cisco Systems' Aironet 1250 and 1200 Series Access Points,and Meru's access point AP200.
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal is only an option for vendors, sousers will need to double check a special Wi-Fi product database to see whether a particular product has passed the testing.
Wi-Fi Alliance also has plans to introduce a program for enterpriseenvironments, called Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Enterprise, early nextyear. It will be based on the Voice-Personal Program, and addsupport for bandwidth management, hand-offs between access points,enterprise-class security, network management and other featuresthat are necessary in larger environments, according to Wi-FiAlliance.
Enterprise adoption of IP (Internet Protocol) telephony over WLANsis growing, and vendors have put a lot of effort to improveperformance, but many companies are still reticent about puttingvoice on it, according to Webb.
"Certification gives it a stamp of approval," he said.