Voice Over Wi-Fi To Gain Steam As Alliance Certifies New Products

Solution providers say the real momentum behind Voice over Wireless LAN, or Voice over Wi-Fi, should begin in earnest this fall. That's when the Wi-Fi Alliance is slated to certify products incorporating the new security and Quality of Service (QoS) standards the IEEE is expected to ratify early this summer.

"Just as Wi-Fi took some time to build steam, you're going to see the same thing in Voice over Wi-Fi, which will definitely build steam as the products, and things like Quality of Service and security, improve," said Dan Elliott, general manager of consulting for Dallas-based CompuCom Systems' Northeast region.

The WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard is designed to secure all versions of 802.11 devices, including 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g, multiband and multimode. WPA is a subset of the IEEE's forthcoming 802.11i standard (also known as WPA2) that is expected to be ratified by the end of June.

>> THE WI-FI ALLIANCE TASK FORCE IS ENCOURAGING PRODUCT MANUFACTURERS TO WORK TOGETHER.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has worked with the IEEE over the past year to deliver WPA as an answer to all of the known weaknesses in its predecessor, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), the original security mechanism in the 802.11 standard. About 300 products have received WPA certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance to date.

The biggest change in delivering the final IEEE 802.11i standard is a new core encryption algorithm, or Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), along with other features such as client-to-client interaction, said Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

As for when to adopt and/or upgrade, Hanzlik said that while a hardware upgrade may be needed to deploy the AES portion of WPA2 on WPA-enabled devices, the 802.1X authentication, TKIP encryption and PSK components of WPA make the two specifications compatible.

"The people that have been experimenting or trialing the Voice over Wi-Fi products using some of the more proprietary systems have been very pleasantly, I think, surprised," said Hanzlik.

Hanzlik said the Wi-Fi Alliance recently set up a task force focused exclusively on Voice over Wi-Fi, and it's one of its most active groups. The task force is working to encourage all of the different product manufacturers to work together to understand how to enable the Voice over Wi-Fi market, he said. The QoS piece is a solid step, but there are a variety of applications and education that need to occur if the market is going to really take off, he added.

QoS is the IEEE standard being finalized to enable voice, video and other multiple media applications. By the end of June, the IEEE is expected to approve its 802.11e QoS, which is designed to standardize the way a network gives priority to voice, audio and video signals on a Wi-Fi network.

Another Voice over Wi-Fi technology challenge being considered by a newly formed IEEE task group is a fast roaming standard (802.11r) aimed at allowing mobile users fast and secure roaming between access points without losing a connection.

Technology challenges aside, said CompuCom's Elliott, it's clear from ongoing client discussions that corporations are seriously looking at ways to continue to reduce costs by leveraging existing bandwidths.