WMM-Certified Wi-Fi devices provide QoS for multimedia content

[Gregg Lengling]

Wi-Fi devices will be competing with "wireless FireWire" and Ultra-Wideband devices for consumer-electronics networking. The Wi-Fi Alliance announced it was now certifying "Wi-Fi Multimedia" (WMM) devices with a quality of service (QoS) packet prioritization component from the proposed IEEE 802.11e standard. The QoS gives audio and video data priority over other data.


Wi-Fi Alliance Managing Director Frank Hanzlik said, "The demand for Wi-Fi CE product connectivity is expected to grow significantly and WMM will provide a strong foundation for that growth. In fact, we see this action jumpstarting the coming mainstream adoption of Wi-Fi in the consumer electronics market segment. The Alliance's WMM certification testing will help unleash a new category of wireless products that use the robust connectivity only offered by Wi-Fi certified interoperability. The demand for multimedia support in telephony and other consumer electronic products has skyrocketed in the recent months and is forecasted to grow at an unprecedented rate."


The Wi-Fi Alliance news release Wi-Fi - Reaching Beyond Laptops includes a list of Wi-Fi certified products that have obtained WMM certifications. For more information on the IEEE 802.11e draft standard, see the Stanford University paper Achieving Higher Throughput and QoS in 802.11 Wireless LANs, the IEEE Status of Project IEEE 802.11e status web page and the main IEEE 802.11 web page.