As promised, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n test program this week without upsetting the industry's artfully-balanced apple cart. Maintaining 802.11n draft 2.0 requirements as Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n "core technology" made it possible to auto-promote hundreds of previously-tested products, Wi-Fi Alliance executive director Edgar Figueroa told Wi-Fi Planet. As a result, consumers can now rest assured that draft 2.0 investments (including 90% of laptops purchased last year) won't need to be upgraded or replaced with new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n gear.

Of course, the final standard ratified by the IEEE includes many capabilities not fully-baked two years ago when the draft 2.0 snapshot was taken. Since then, draft 2.0 products have included a dizzying number of option permutations, making it hard for consumers to weed through geek-speak to purchase compatible combos.

To simplify that process, the Alliance also announced a new pair of tag lines—"CERTIFIED dual stream n" and "CERTIFIED multi-stream n"—backed by test programs and detailed matrices. Wi-Fi products—including those auto-promoted to "CERTIFIED n"—cannot wear these new tag lines unless and until they pass corresponding interoperability tests, said Figueroa. This strikes a careful (but perhaps not entirely successful) balance between stability and innovation, complexity and clarity.

Get the full story here at WiFiPlanet.com.