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Good info and I'll take that into consideration when (if) I post another poll.

Joel

I disagree. I think it doesn't sway anything either way when you post your opinions on your own poll. Nobody equates your opinion with what the .11n TG will decide...and nobody will look bad for having an opposing opinion. There are goods and bads to both sides of this topic.

If organizations and users are reluctant to upgrade, then at a certain point in time, they will be forced to upgrade because .11g and .11a chipsets will be obsoleted and no longer manufactured. Does this slow the immediate sale of .11n gear - sure, to some degree...but it would only be a matter of time before that same money goes to those same vendors because .11n is all that's available.

I agree that it would be nice in some instances to be able to decide on backwards compatibility as you mentioned - for maximum flexibility - but I wouldn't want it bad enough to delay the amendment by 1-2 years. The complexity of backwards compatibility is outrageous and time-consuming.

Certainly education of end-users is important. We've seen lights come on it students' eyes hundreds of times while we present protection mechanism problems. I'd like to see the problem avoided ahead of time by not giving this option to users.

Devin,

There is a reason why the editorial page of the newspaper is kept separate from the news page.

As far as 802.11n goes, my view is that reasonable minds can disagree. I have not yet read that 802.11n will be significantly delayed by accomodating legacy devices. If that is true, then that is a decent reason to eliminate backwards compatibility, but in my opinion not a good enough one. Look at how little adoption of 802.11a we have. I would say a pretty good reason for that is lack of backwards compatibility.

I see your point about 802.11a adoption - there's no denying that it was slowed by .11g's backwards compatibility. SOHO pushes Enterprise in this market - which is hideous. SOHO users will freak if MIMO isn't backwards compatible with their .11g stuff...and their .11b stuff...AND stuff that's so old that I dare not talk about it here.

I just hope that in this instance that us "purists" get our way. :-)