Wireless comes of age

Back in the 20th century, networking, almost by definition, meant running cables from computer to computer.

But that was then and this is now. Today it’s perfectly possible to create a network without cluttering up your home with new wires — by equipping your computers with adapters that transmit data wirelessly or send it through the telephone or AC wiring already in your walls.

Henry Norr, Chronicle Staff Writer

The equipment required is not as inexpensive as the wired-Ethernet gear I talked about last week, the resulting network won’t be as fast (in terms of maximum throughput) and you’re more likely to run into some setup challenges and occasional glitches.

But the penalties, in dollars and hassle, for using these newer technologies are shrinking by the month, and the performance they all deliver is more than good enough to meet the main need of most consumers interested in home networking: to share the benefits of a high-speed Internet connection.

Altogether, in my estimation, these technologies have already matured to the point where they make sense for anyone — even a nontechnical consumer — who wants to take full advantage of the mobility a notebook computer allows, or simply to share broadband access between two computers in distant rooms.

Among the no-new-wires technologies, wireless has emerged as the most popular by far, accounting for 38 percent of home-networking sales in the first half of this year, according to the market research firm In-Stat/MDR.

Phoneline and powerline gear together represented only 2 percent, though proponents of the latter note that gear based on HomePlug, the new powerline standard, appeared on the market last spring. (As noted last week, wired Ethernet accounts for 60 percent of home-networking sales.)

Although several wireless-networking technologies exist, virtually all new home networks are based on an industry standard known as Wi-Fi or 802.11. (The dominant version of the standard is 802.11b, but a new flavor called 802.11a has recently reached the market. I’ll discuss their relative merits in a future column.)

Various vendors of networking gear have their own marketing names for the technology — Apple, which first popularized it, calls its version AirPort. But all of them get the key components of their wireless products from the same two or three big suppliers, they all adhere to the standard, and it’s usually easy to mix and match gear from different companies on the same network.

It’s important to understand that Wi-Fi was designed for local-area networking. Think of it as the computer equivalent of a cordless phone system, as opposed to cellular phones: practically speaking, an ordinary Wi-Fi LAN covers a radius of 100 feet or so, unless you extend it by installing extra equipment.

And just as you still (ordinarily) need phone wires coming into your home to connect your cordless system to the worldwide phone grid, you need some other technology — normally cable or DSL, but in some cases satellite or even old-fashioned dial-up — to link your Wi-Fi LAN to the Internet.

Wi-Fi is really wireless Ethernet, and the layout of a typical wireless LAN is similar to what I described last week — except without the cables. You still need an adapter for each computer you want to connect and some hardware at the center of the network: a router plus a wireless "access point" or "base station," a device that functions as the hub of the wireless LAN and the bridge connecting it to your wired gear, your broadband modem and ultimately the Internet. If you want to connect any computers to your LAN by wire — say, a desktop PC that sits near your broadband modem, you’ll also need a switch or hub.

Fortunately, hardware manufacturers have managed to squeeze all these functions into one compact combo device. All the major consumer-oriented networking companies — Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, SMC and many more — make "wireless routers," which combine a router (with firewall and connection- sharing features), switch and Wi-Fi capabilities. Online retailers generally sell these devices for between $100 and $150, and if you hunt, you can find even better deals.

If you already have a wired router and hub or switch, you can get a plain wireless access point, without the extra capabilities, and just connect it by cable to your hub or switch. But nowadays you’ll hardly save any money by doing so, so it probably makes sense to get a wireless router instead — that way, you can get rid of your old networking hardware and free up a little space and a socket or two on your power strip.

As for the adapters, discounters now offer wireless PC Cards for notebooks for $50 to $75 (less after rebates). If you want to network a desktop PC without wires, you can get a PCI wireless card, or a PCI adapter that will take a wireless PC Card, but the easiest solution is an external USB wireless adapter ($60-$80).

For Mac users, the hardware picture is a bit different, because Apple builds a special internal slot and antenna for AirPort cards into every Mac, desktop or laptop.

That’s a nice solution, but for one thing: The cards are available only from Apple, at $99. When Apple set that price three years ago, it was a bold breakthrough; now, it’s almost twice the going rate.

The same is true for Apple’s AirPort Base Station, which has kept its $299 price since 1999. It does include a 56-Kbps modem, which is an essential feature for those who rely on dial-up Internet access, but it’s irrelevant for most broadband users. The good news is that Macs work fine with most of the less expensive wireless routers and access points; a few require a PC for setup, but most can be configured from the Mac with a Web browser.

Those who get Internet access through America Online also have special considerations to deal with. In the past, AOL allowed only one user per account to be online simultaneously. But with the release last month of AOL 8. 0, the company unveiled a feature called Multiple Simultaneous Login for subscribers to AOL Broadband.

But because AOL uses special proprietary protocols, ordinary Internet routers, wired or wireless, can’t handle the new feature. You need hardware made by select AOL partners, including ActionTec, Linksys and Netgear, available now through AOL’s Shop Direct store and soon coming to retail outlets.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/11/04/BU101976.DTL&type=business

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Is Wi-Fi in your Internet future?

By Miguel Helft Mercury News

Take a stroll through any major airport these days and you’re bound to see them: the haggard business travelers hogging pay phones, laptops propped on a knee, frantically trying to download or send a few e-mails before boarding.

It’s a sight that could soon become a thing of the past. A technology being deployed at a growing number of airports would allow scores of PC users to download their e-mails at far faster speeds, while lounging comfortably in their seats.

The technology, dubbed Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, enables high-speed, low-cost access to the Internet. It has sparked a flurry of innovation and investment and has become one of the few bright spots in the battered telecommunications industry.

Wi-Fi is not just about airports and business travelers. It could unleash a new spurt of Internet growth, vastly expanding the availability of cheap, high-speed connections, while drastically reducing the need to dig up trenches and wire buildings.

But Wi-Fi also faces threats that could significantly undermine its potential.

Wi-Fi works a bit like a cordless phone. First you hook up a Wi-Fi broadcast station, whose prices are well below $200, to an existing high-speed Internet connection. Anyone within about 300 feet of the station with a PC or handheld device equipped with an inexpensive Wi-Fi antenna can use that Internet connection.

This year, consumers are expected to buy some 6 million Wi-Fi devices, according to recent studies. By 2006, the number could be 33 million. It’s the kind of growth not seen since the Internet boom. Tech giants Intel, Microsoft and others have thrown their weight behind Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi access points are being deployed in hotels and college campuses, coffee houses and urban downtowns. They are being used to connect poor rural areas and Indian reservations. A few companies are building nationwide networks of access points, and business models are proliferating.

Many Wi-Fi providers require users to pay, protecting their services with log-ins and passwords. But some activists see Wi-Fi as a way to offer free Internet access to anyone: They are beaming their DSL or cable modem connections into open areas. Today, you can surf the Web for free from park benches in New York and Seattle.

For others, a single Wi-Fi access point is the way to connect an entire condo complex. Still others offer free connections to those who return the favor.

It’s Wi-Fi’s ability to spread access so broadly that’s making some people uneasy.

Some major Internet service providers, afraid of losing potential customers, have threatened legal action against subscribers who share their connections with others. Other ISPs promote the fact that they allow customers to share connections as a competitive advantage.

For ISPs, to allow sharing is purely a business decision — whether the advantage of unrestricted access outweighs the costs of heavier usage. For consumers, choice between competing Wi-Fi business models is good, which only heightens the need to uphold regulations that encourage competition between ISPs over the telephone and cable lines that serve as gateways to Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi could also be threatened by fears about interference in the small, unlicensed portions of the airwaves where it is allowed to operate. Industry representatives are currently negotiating with the Defense Department over concerns about interference between Wi-Fi and military radars. But others, including ham-radio operators and licensed wireless carriers using nearby portions of the airwaves, have complained about Wi-Fi interference. As former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt wrote in a recent paper: “Such spectrum battles are chronic at the FCC. Each of them will give the government a choice: to promote Wi-Fi or to restrain it.”

To grow to its full potential, what Wi-Fi, and a handful of follow-on technologies already in the works, will need the most is sufficient space in the airwaves. That, too, could cause battles at the FCC, as established companies that pay for portions of the airwaves complain that free, unlicensed spectrum is tantamount to a subsidy. But the unlicensed spectrum has long been a hotbed of innovation that deserves support.

For years, companies and pundits have talked about “anytime, anywhere” Internet access. Wi-Fi could go a long way toward delivering on that promise — as long as regulators allow it to.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4439709.htm