Ars Technica posted an interesting story regarding the release of 802.11n Draft 2.0. No we're not going to see 200-300mbit access points tomorrow, but this does ensure compatibility with devices released today with the final spec of 802.11n which is a huge step. Even better, the IEEE is certifying devices against the draft spec TODAY.

The IEEE standards body has released a draft for 802.16m which specifies 1GBit over the air WiMAX and 100MBit in "high mobility" mode. It is also apparently backwards compatible with 802.16e. We won't see any hardware with this draft specification for at least a year or two, but it looks promising.

The high datarates are achieved by utilizing MIMO technology, the same wizardry responsible for the higher throughput in 802.11n.

More information on things to come over at Daily Tech.

You can also find a draft of the specification on the IEEE Website.

Microsoft just couldn't keep their hands out of the cookie jar. It appears they've been so impressed with all the great work going on in the wireless world to create a wireless Meshing standard that they went out and created their own proprietary standard for it.

They go into all kinds of warm fuzzy musings about how great mesh networking is beause it grows organically and the grass roots nature of it. I have a hard time envisioning anything Microsoft does as grass roots or "organic".

More details can be found on the Microsoft Research home page.

For those that follow wireless and wimax, Intel and Clearwire made a very interesting announcement today.

Intel is looking to expand mobile WiMAX into Centrino Mobile Technology and invested $600 million in Clearwire to promote WiMAX availability across North America. Motorola has announced they are acquireing Clearwire subsidiary NextNet Wireless (also closely tied to Covad) and will provide equipment for Clearwire's global networks.

You can find the details here.