When a standard doesn’t exist yet, make up one of your own—that’s what it sounds like the Wi-Fi Alliance is doing. It announced it would certify pre-standard 802.11n gear today without waiting for the IEEE to ratify a final standard.

The strategy sounds almost antithetical to the alliance’s mission. It’s supposed to enforce compliance to the standard, not encourage its membership to build products outside of it. One of the reasons for the success of Wi-Fi was the Alliance’s rigid approach to certification and its control of the Wi-Fi moniker. If it starts slapping Wi-Fi willy-nilly on any proprietary access point or customer premises equipment, it’s compromised its basic purpose, right?

Well, not exactly. While we’d definitely like to see certification bodies stick to the standards they were created to enforce, the situation surrounding 802.11n is growing ever more chaotic. The IEEE isn’t scheduled to finalize 802.11n until 2008. Meanwhile vendors are releasing commercial gear based on draft versions of the standard, meaning there is little guarantee—and, some would say, little likelihood—they will meet the technical specifications of the final standard and most certainly won’t be interoperable with other vendors’ products.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is trying to establish a some semblance of order in that chaos. Those “pre-N” products are coming out this year and next year whether there’s a final standard or not. And why shouldn’t they? If the technology’s available and people want to use it, they should have access to it. But by creating a certification program for that gear, the alliance can have a role in distinguishing the good from the bad, in educating buyers about the differences between the current generation of products and the next round of standardized ones, and in cracking down on some of the worst cases of abuse of the Wi-Fi logo as they come up. Most importantly, the alliance can provide a blueprint for interoperability instead of letting all of these pre-N devices exist in a vacuum.

Contact me at kfitchard@prismb2b.com.