The new wireless LAN standard 802.11n features a number of technical developments that provide up to five-times the wireless-LAN performance in the 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz frequency bands. The changes have not yet been officially approved by the IEEE, but the foreseeable technological leap is so enticing that the industry is already bringing updated WLAN devices to market before the standards have been adopted. Current discussions are embodied by what is known as "draft 2.0", which is the basis for devices currently available on the market.
Some of the improvements refer to the physical layer (PHY), which describes the transmission of individual bits over the physical medium—in this case the air represents the physical medium. Other additions are concerned with the MAC (medium access control) that among other things governs access to the transmission medium. The two areas are treated separately below.