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Forum Discussion
Does AX8 fully support the AX specification?
This router may not support all the mandatory features, ratified in Draft 3.0 of IEEE 802.11AX specification.
We now know that the AX spec has been finalised, but this router is out in the market already.
Does this mean a firmware upgrade is required? or how does Netgear plan to get this router up to the latest AX spec?
3 Replies
Well, Draft 4.0 of IEEE 802.11AX is still in the process, as per the IEEE P802.11 - TASK GROUP AX - GROUP INFORMATION UPDATE current timeline:
Current Timeline May 2014 Start of TG November 2014 First draft of the TG SFD approved January 2016 Proposed TG draft March 2016 Draft 0.1 was approved and Comment Collection started November 2016 Issue Draft 1.0 and start WG Letter Ballot — Failed (57.77%)
LB 225: opened Dec. 1st, 2016 and closed Jan. 8th, 2017September 2017 Draft 2.0 and WG Letter Ballot — Failed (62.84%)
LB 230: opened Oct. 5th, 2017 and closed Nov. 4th, 2017May 2018 Draft 3.0 and WG Letter Ballot — Passes (86.5%) Janury 2019 Draft 4.0 and Recirculation Ballot — Passes (92.2%) February 2019 Formation of Sponsor Ballot pool March 2019 Mandatory Draft Review July 2019 Initial Sponsor Ballot January 2020 Final 802.11 Approval March 2020 Conditional EC Approval June 2020 RevCom submittal and publication Best guess is that the participants in this working group and the makers of the Netgear Wi-Fi 6 draft products like Qualcomm (RAX120) Broadcom (RAX80, RAX200), and Intel/Lantiq (RAX40) might have an idea - personally I think it's much to early to get this answered what can be achieved on the draft hardware for the summer of 2020.
I wonder if the chips are designed in such a way that the manufacturers know that all it takes is a firmware update.
It seems that Netgear and the likes know that they could go ahead and release these routers without an issue as the rest of AX hardware specification is known and unlikely to change.
In terms of other aspects of the design, I hope that they are able to accommodate any last minute changes via firmawre upgrade.
It seems odd to have AX routers before AX has been finalised
Gil80 wrote:It seems odd to have AX routers before AX has been finalised
Happened with any earlier 802.11 wireless development before, too - pre-standard hardware is flooded by the mainstream manufacturers - long before the final standard validation. There is zero guarantee and no formal promise that all final standard features can be be implemented by firmware updates.
