The proposed 802.11n standard provides a huge speed boost for wireless networks, with actual throughput speeds of 100 megabits per second - roughly four times as fast as current wireless networks. The EWC said in a statement, that the draft proposal will support throughput of up to 600 mbps. The standard also facilitates bandwidth intensive services such as voice over IP and streaming video.

According to Bill McFarland, chief technology officer, Atheros Communications, once the proposal is formatted according to IEEE rules, it will go out to a group of engineers across the 802.11 working group who will point out problems - if any, post which the draft will be modified and put to further voting. Finally, an even broader group of IEEE members will vote on final ratification. Industry analysts and 11n task group members say that the process will take about a year, with products hitting the market shortly thereafter.

Apparently Broadcom has already announced the availability of a family of chip sets, which it claims are the first to comply with the draft. The chip sets, called Intensi-fi, include the ones that can be used in routers, notebook PCs, and add-in PC Cards. These are immediately available to manufacturers, in sample quantities.

Source: http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=70805&cat_id=583