The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE), the group responsible for setting standards in the networking industry, approved a new and final draft standard for 802.11g wireless LANs. The standard was approved by the IEEE on May 15, but will not be made publicly available until members of the IEEE 802.11 working group ratify it next month.

Recent published reports that the final standard for 802.11g will be throttled down to 20Mbit/sec aren't an indication of any actual change to the spec, according to Apple's Vice President of Software, Mike Bell.

Bell said the spec has not been throttled back at all, and explains using the familiar 802.11b specification.

"802.11g is still a 54Mbit/sec standard," Bell told MacCentral. "802.11b is 11Mbit/sec, but your actual throughput is somewhere between 4 and 5-1/2Mbit/sec. The number that's quoted is the data rate that's used between the radios (raw data rate, which includes the protocols etc.)"

Although internal tests have shown slightly higher data rates, the actual data rate for 802.11g will be approximately 20Mbit/sec, which is 4 to 5 times higher than 802.11b. Bell said the data rate has always been around 20Mbit/sec and hasn't changed in the final draft standard.

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