New IEEE wireless standard by 2010?

With the word of 802.11n still fresh in the air and letters slowly running out for wireless standards (having to double up letters now with things like 802.11aa, ac, and ad)

One letter actually stands out “V”.

Ignore the smoke and mirrors from vendors promoting things like airtime fairness, single channel Wi-Fi blankets and other obtuse concepts; 802.11v really has the potential of making things much better.

With Wi-Fi the problems are pretty much client related. Dropped connections, crappy performance or just the inability to connect are the root cause of IT staff’s headaches and having to support hundreds of clients whilst trying to troubleshoot these issues and provide a reliable service can be next to impossible.

But wouldn't it be even better if the network could tell the client what to do!

That's effectively what 802.11v does.

In laymen terms 802.11v is a wireless management system that allows configuration of the client whilst connected to 802.11 networks.

Expected for release in mid-2010, the proposed standard takes advantages of your existing infrastructure and Wi-Fi standards to help you understand what sort of devices are connected to the network and where, it promises things like;

• Controlling client roaming to help ease congestion during peak usage times (this allows smooth client transitions between APs, which can minimize congestion during busy times and boost performance of applications such as wireless voice over IP)
• Giving network admin’s the ability to gather network performance data from clients to see how the WLAN is running
• Timing synchronization (useful for when you're streaming multimedia to things like Wi-Fi speakers)
• Improving the battery life of mobile devices and improving the power drain from access points by having clients dynamically reduce and increase their own transmission levels as needed
• Real Time Location Services (RTLS) technology that provides a high-level of wireless client tracking
• Minimizing interference between Wi-Fi stations and APs by arbitrating transmissions

So watch this space, 802.11v represents a major step forward (if and when it comes).  In the meantime, use the hell out of antenna-based beamforming to solve the rest of your Wi-Fi problems. :)