December 6, 1999-San Jose, CA-The newly formed Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) today announced its acceptance of PC Magazine's 1999 Technical Excellence Award for Network Standards. PC Magazine chose WECA from a list of 33 finalists, culled from hundreds of applications. The award honors WECA and the IEEE 802.11b standards committee for their work to promote interoperable wireless LAN solutions based on the IEEE 802.11b standard.
Upon surpassing the 10 Mbps barrier, Wireless LANs are moving from a vertical niche market to a broad based product category and are now ready for prime time. With wider acceptance and increased demand in corporations, small offices, and homes, there is an absolute need for multi-vendor interoperability.
"A critical contributor to this effort is the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA), a new industry organization dedicated to certifying products for interoperability and promoting issues such as security that are important to wireless network developers, manufacturers and users," said PC Magazine.
"We are pleased to have our efforts recognized by such a prestigious publication," said WECA chairman, Phil Belanger. "This award validates the importance of standards- based wireless LANs across all market segments." WECA members, which represent 26 leading technology companies, share a common vision that Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b High Rate) is the best positioned WLAN standard.
About PC Magazine's Technical Excellence Awards
PC Magazine's Awards (http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag) for Technical Excellence seek to recognize purely technical breakthroughs. Editors, senior lab staffers and senior contributors look for new technologies, new concepts and major advances in existing product categories. In some cases, they recognize whole new businesses and ways of working. In others, they see ways to make existing tools work better. For this year's awards, PC Magazine started out with a list of hundreds of companies that shipped this year ending September 30, and then narrowed it to 33 finalists, from which they chose the winners.
About the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance
The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) is a non-profit organization formed in 1999 to certify interoperability of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11High Rate) wireless LAN products and to promote Wi-Fi as the standard for wireless LAN deployments across all market segments.
WECA has defined a test suite against which member products are tested to certify that they are interoperable with other vendor products. An independent test lab, The Silicon Valley Networking Lab Inc., will conduct testing. Products that successfully pass will be granted the Wi-Fi seal of interoperability.
Membership in WECA is open to all companies who support the Wi-Fi standard for 2.4 GHz wireless LAN products including any manufacturer that would like to submit its Wi-Fi based product for interoperability testing. Founding WECA sponsor companies are 3Com, Aironet, Intersil, Lucent Technologies, Nokia, and Symbol Technologies.
Upon surpassing the 10 Mbps barrier, Wireless LANs are moving from a vertical niche market to a broad based product category and are now ready for prime time. With wider acceptance and increased demand in corporations, small offices, and homes, there is an absolute need for multi-vendor interoperability.
"A critical contributor to this effort is the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA), a new industry organization dedicated to certifying products for interoperability and promoting issues such as security that are important to wireless network developers, manufacturers and users," said PC Magazine.
"We are pleased to have our efforts recognized by such a prestigious publication," said WECA chairman, Phil Belanger. "This award validates the importance of standards- based wireless LANs across all market segments." WECA members, which represent 26 leading technology companies, share a common vision that Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b High Rate) is the best positioned WLAN standard.
About PC Magazine's Technical Excellence Awards
PC Magazine's Awards (http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag) for Technical Excellence seek to recognize purely technical breakthroughs. Editors, senior lab staffers and senior contributors look for new technologies, new concepts and major advances in existing product categories. In some cases, they recognize whole new businesses and ways of working. In others, they see ways to make existing tools work better. For this year's awards, PC Magazine started out with a list of hundreds of companies that shipped this year ending September 30, and then narrowed it to 33 finalists, from which they chose the winners.
About the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance
The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) is a non-profit organization formed in 1999 to certify interoperability of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11High Rate) wireless LAN products and to promote Wi-Fi as the standard for wireless LAN deployments across all market segments.
WECA has defined a test suite against which member products are tested to certify that they are interoperable with other vendor products. An independent test lab, The Silicon Valley Networking Lab Inc., will conduct testing. Products that successfully pass will be granted the Wi-Fi seal of interoperability.
Membership in WECA is open to all companies who support the Wi-Fi standard for 2.4 GHz wireless LAN products including any manufacturer that would like to submit its Wi-Fi based product for interoperability testing. Founding WECA sponsor companies are 3Com, Aironet, Intersil, Lucent Technologies, Nokia, and Symbol Technologies.