Wireless standardization ever going to happen?

Hi all,

It seems to me that wireless technology is today where sound cards used to be: A chaotic mess of cards each requiring a different driver. Then came the AC97 standard which I gather (I could be wrong) set things right.

My question is though, when are wireless cards going to be standardized too? So long as we are forced to get drivers from the manufacturers alternative OSes other than perhaps Linux will be hamstrung-- prevented from supporting what is arguably the most important feature a computer can have nowadays: wireless connectivity.

Thoughts?

Reply to
Qyz
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Many vendors are including the hardware as a standard feature, not an option; for example, all Macs now sold, and for a while now, have had built-in wireless client hardware.

There are standards (or at least drafts) for the radio side (802.11a/b/g/n).

I don't expect vendors to get interested in supporting alternative OSes until they become a much larger fraction of the market than they now have.

Steve

Reply to
Steve Fenwick

Well, sorta. Via introduced the AC'97 driver when it integrated the sound function into various glue chips. Here's a partial list:

Despite the buzz and noise that this introduced, the conglomeration did produce a substantial drop in price. That attracted the bottom of the line system integrators. The rest is history.

To do the same with a wireless chipset would require a much higher level of integration. Bluegoof and Wi-Fi integration is a no-brainer. WiMax, GPS, AM/FM, TV, HDTV, Wireless USB, cellular modems, IrDA, and whatever else I forgot, will need to be conglomerated into a single chip in order to do the same thing that Via did with the AC'97. This is already happening in space cramped devices such as PDA's and cell phones. You may get you wish, but I suspect there will be more than one nightmares attached.

Probably when some company buys out all the dot.com survivors and declares themselves dictator of computers. It's difficult to build an interface standard, without first building a functionality standard.

Standards come in two flavors, de facto (in practice) and de jure (in principle). The AC'97 driver is a de facto standard because in practice, it's used in a rather large number of systems. It was never endorsed by any standards organization. 802.11 is a standard in principle because an organized mob of experts, inscribed a document to that affect, and it's members and supported adopted it with minimal butchery and protest. However, they missed one obscure patent, which is now causing extreme grief:

The inability of getting this horde all going in the same direction was demonstrated by the protracted and often absurd battle over

802.11n (MIMO). If you want an interface standard, it will need to come from the various wi-fi chipset vendors, few of which are even on speaking terms. By 2011, the industry expects to ship about 1 billion wi-fi chipsets. Good luck changing the direction of that avalanche.

The same chipset vendors are often unwilling to share chipset internals. Some, such as Atheros are fairly liberal with information. Others, such as Broadcom are utterly secretive and paranoid. I had to sign NDA's in order to get an accurate data sheet and programming info. If you feel the need, please do try to organize this herd of cats. Otherwise, pick your favorite chipset vendor, and stay with them.

None come to mind. Thinking is a luxury. These days, I just react.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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Probably about the same time we will get uniform or standard drivers for the rest of the hardware, such as printers, Ethernet and video cards. The manufacturers feel that their designs are superior to all others and see no need to share such trade secrets with other manufacturers, much less software authors. You may recall when US Robotics developed the "Winmodem" as a means of reducing the high cost of their modems. They didn't share with the rest of industry, much less the other operating system software authors (there still is no "free" driver for the USR loosemodem family). The other manufacturers saw how profitable this was, and developed their own versions (continuing to eat USR's lunch by remaining much cheaper). Have you noticed how many different loosemodems have "free" drivers? Have a look at the Hardware and Modem HOWTOs:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 gferg ldp 1078686 May 23 2007 Hardware-HOWTO

-rw-rw-r-- 1 gferg ldp 338097 Jan 17 2007 Modem-HOWTO

This compatibility problem is no worse than elsewhere. How many parts on your car are compatible/interchangable with parts from other car manufacturers?

Old guy

Reply to
Moe Trin

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