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WFA Certified AP and clients, is it worth it for consumers?

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saturation

Regular Contributor
Looking for thoughts on this.

Many WFA certified products are not trouble free installs nor at times work as expected.

One can look to Apple's Airport and competing Linksys-Cisco products, 2 companies that have most of their products WFA certified, yet differ in end user usability.

I've already explored Engenius/Senao, and recently even products by Tenda, although as company's they have products in their line that are WFA certified, many are not. It seems for consumers you can get better bang for buck without WFA certification because in the end, what matters is usability and performance, and a consumer will find out soon enough how good it is regardless of this symbol:

logo_wfa_certified_150.png
 
Don't put it interoperability problems all on the WFA's testing /certification process. There are plenty of opportunities in the 11n spec for differences in interpretation that can lead to interoperability and other problems. The certification process also won't catch all code and driver bugs.

Before the 11n spec was released, I considered WFA certification a requirement before I'd review a draft 11n product. The technology was so new and the spec in flux, such that I wanted some assurance that products met at least some common set of requirements so that I wouldn't end up wasting my time chasing bugs.

Now that 11n is released, I've relaxed my requirement and am testing some products that don't have Certification. However, I've found that the EnGenius ESR9850 did not comply with the out-of-the-box 20 MHz bandwidth mode requirement. That would have been caught in the WFA certification.

Bottom line is that I believe that Wi-Fi product manufacturers should submit their products for WiFi Certification. Those that don't, usually cite the added cost of certification, which I think is false economy. But certification by no means indicates a trouble-free product.
 
I agree fully but since one of WFA certification's core missions is:

http://www.wi-fi.org/certified_products.php

"
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED is a trusted brand that offers interoperability, standards-based security, easy installation, and reliability. ...."Do not buy any equipment that isn't Wi-Fi CERTIFIED -- you will end up tossing it." -- Michael Disbato, Burton Group (IT analyst firm); ....Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ leads to improved user-experience, higher customer satisfaction rates .."

Yet we have business grade devices, as examples:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000H97UC0/?tag=snbforums-20

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124082

WFA Certificate: WFA6370

It reduces to either the WFA is faced with an enormous task that escapes control or its testing method is inadequate. How does a product with such a poor user rating ever get certified and enter the marketplace, if one can also have products like Apple's WFA certified Airport live up to WFA user experience ideal or one without certification like the Engenius 7750 or the Trendware 671 best it without their certification?

Given the performance improvement with 3rd party firmware of products like WRT54GS, it suggests to me the testing by WFA is firmware independent, and really doesn't represent the final performance towards end user products. Thus, the testing is too abstract to be geared towards consumers.

While the 9850 would fail the 20 Mhz requirement, it could be problematic in a crowded spectrum or interfere with the whole network on 2 GHz, but does it really? In the EnGenius defaults, auto switch to 20 from 40 happens if needed. Regardless, WFA lets more rate limiting issues go through regarding user experience, that the 20/40 issue is tiny by comparison.

http://www.wi-fi.org/knowledge_center_overview.php?type=3

Maybe WFA certification are what sand bags are to a homeowner in an overflowing river [water being the fluidic chaos in the industry], better to get wet and soaked, than drown.



There are plenty of opportunities in the 11n spec for differences in interpretation that can lead to interoperability and other problems. The certification process also won't catch all code and driver bugs.

..I've found that the EnGenius ESR9850 did not comply with the out-of-the-box 20 MHz bandwidth mode requirement. That would have been caught in the WFA certification.

Bottom line is that I believe that Wi-Fi product manufacturers should submit their products for WiFi Certification. Those that don't, usually cite the added cost of certification, which I think is false economy. But certification by no means indicates a trouble-free product.
 
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