Asus promises 802.11n upgrade

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Hardware vendor AsusTek has become the first manufacturer of products based on the still unratified 802.11n standard to guarantee firmware upgradeability to the final version.

Manufacturers of laptops and wireless network products have been flocking to launch products based on .11n over the last few weeks, even though standards body the IEEE says the final standard won't be fully green-lighted until some time in 2008.

So keen have network managers been to benefit from the leap in WLAN performance that .11n looks set to deliver that they have been prepared to buy products on the verbal assurance from vendors that they will be compatible with the final version, perhaps needing only a firmware tweak.

But many analysts have been warning that premature .11n adoption carries the obvious risk that pre-ratification products will only connect at best with each other come 2008.

Now AsusTek says it will swap out hardware on the .11n gateways and adapters it ships this year if they prove to be not in line with fully approved products. The buyer, says the firm, will only be required to pay the shipping costs of returning problematic products.

The offer applies to its WL-500W Super Speed N wireless router and WL-100W Super Speed N wireless adapter.

AsusTek says it is the first wireless vendor to guarantee compatibility with the future 802.11n standard, whether in the form of firmware or hardware updates.

"With the 802.11n upgrade program, the two Asus draft-n products guarantee future 802.11n compatibility and give users peace of mind when purchasing draft-n solutions," said Hektor Tung, director of marketing for AsusTek Wireless.

"Draft-n products are rapidly proliferating into the mainstream market," said Rahul Patel, marketing director for WLAN products with Broadcom, the maker of the .11n chipsets that AsusTek products use.

He says current customer confidence is perfectly justified in any case thanks to the maturity of the current draft-n specification, but lauded Asus for 'going one step further to guarantee future compatibility'.

But wireless market analyst Mike Hijdra of 2Fast4Wireless suspects that much of AsusTek's motivation may be more about gaining attention for its products today than taking any genuine future risk.

"It's all about marketing, and market share, I think," he says. "It's hard to imagine anyone actually ever sending back a product for upgrading. Certainly not if they've got to pay for that. What if you want an upgrade now and don't want to waiting ages for shipping to and from?"

Hijdra argues that the cost of a new chipset will be a pretty negligible part of the problem, in any case, so cheap are components becoming.

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