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Tue, 01 Jul 2008 WiFi Alliance takes on wireless IP telephony

WiFi Alliance speaks up for voice

Mikael Ricknäs, Jeremy Kirk

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The WiFi Alliance wants to make voice a part of WiFi networks, and has introduced a scheme to certify products, it announced on Monday.

The WiFi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal stamp of approval means a product is capable of making or handling good-quality voice calls in the home or a small office environment, according to the Alliance. Access points, wireless routers, handsets (which are growing at a steady rate) and laptops can all be tested and certified.

The push is a way for WiFi Alliance to keep femtocells and upcoming technologies such as WiMax, HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) - which lately have overshadowed WiFi - out of the home, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics. Webb thinks WiFi, helped by a low cost and a large installed base, will be able to stay dominant.

"WiFi performance has been continually improved, and this is another step along that road," said Webb.

In a departure from interoperability testing, which has always been WiFi Alliance's bread and butter, it instead looks at performance. To be certified, products have to deliver packet loss of less than 1 per cent with no burst losses, as well as latency and maximum jitter of less than 50 milliseconds, according to the WiFi Alliance.

The first round of certified products include Intel's PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (an embedded 802.11a, b and g PCIe Mini Card), Cisco Systems' Aironet 1250 and 1200 Series Access Points, and Meru's access point AP200.

WiFi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal is only an option for vendors, so users will need to double check a special WiFi product database to see whether a particular product has passed the testing.

WiFi Alliance also has plans to introduce a program for enterprise environments, called WiFi CERTIFIED Voice-Enterprise, early next year. It will be based on the Voice-Personal Program, and add support for bandwidth management, hand-offs between access points, enterprise-class security, network management and other features that are necessary in larger environments, according to WiFi Alliance.

Enterprise adoption of IP (Internet Protocol) telephony over WLANs is growing, and vendors have put a lot of effort to improve performance, but many companies are still reticent about putting voice on it, according to Webb.

"Certification gives it a stamp of approval," he said.

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