Specifications

MORE ON THE WEB
Log on to PC Magazine’s home page
at
www.pcmag.com
for more reviews, news, and opinions.
www.pcmag.com SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 PC MAGAZINE
115
P
oll a dozen experts about the future of wireless network-
ing technology and you’ll get at least a dozen answers. But
it’s a safe bet they’ll all agree that wireless networks in the
near future will be based on 802.11 technologies.
802.11 refers to a group of wireless networking standards: 802.11b,
802.11a, and 802.11g (in order of
IEEE ratification). The public began
embracing 802.11b products in 2000, and current estimates show
that over 40 million devices have been deployed worldwide. With
the ratification in June of the higher-speed 802.11g specification, we
have already begun to see products that combine all three
standards. This should allow for universal connectivity and make
wireless networking less confusing and more popular.
Intel, with its massive $300 million Centrino ad campaign and
somewhat dated technology, arrived late to the wireless party.
Despite this, a welcome result of the Centrino hype is an under-
standing that wireless technology for the masses has finally arrived.
Most notebook manufacturers are now including built-in wireless
networking, sometimes even in their lowest-cost models.
A fundamental shift is in store for wireless
LANs in the business
world. “The market is going to move really quickly to embrace full-
blown managed systems from companies like Airespace, Aruba
Wireless Networks, and Trapeze Networks—and away from stand-
alone access points,” says industry analyst Aaron Vance of Syner-
gy Research Group. “Now that ‘g’ is ratified and security has been
addressed, management is going to become the real issue.”
For the home, entertainment industry giants Philips and Sony
are developing ways to stream high-definition video wirelessly
over short distances using 802.11a technology, which should appear
within a year. People could send media from their home
PCs to
their
HDTVs, stream high-definition video from wireless-enabled
sources, and surf the Web from the comfort of their recliners.
Key to this and other uses of wireless technology is the 802.11e
specification to improve quality of service (QoS). This will boost
performance for streaming audio and video and will spur devel-
opment of more Voice over
IP (VoIP) devices. By prioritizing audio
and video packets over regular data, 802.11e will smooth out the
timing and order in which these packets are received, ensuring
fewer glitches when consumers listen to or watch streamed media.
Industry experts expect the 802.11e standard to be ratified in the
second quarter of 2004.
Yet another forthcoming standard, 802.11i, promises improved
security for wireless networks; ratification isn’t likely until early
2004. The 802.11i task group is focused on authentication, encryp-
tion, and message integrity. Meanwhile, the Wi-Fi Alliance has
adopted many of 802.11i’s key elements as an interim security stan-
dard named
WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access), which is available now.
The Wi-Fi Alliance felt that the well-publicized weakness of
WEP
(Wired Equivalent Privacy) was preventing widespread adoption
of wireless networking in corporations.
The final 802.11i standard will add
AES (Advanced Encryption
Standard), which was approved in May 2002 for the federal
government’s use to protect sensitive data. Its long key length will
make it virtually uncrackable, though many legacy products will be
unable to support it.—Craig Ellison
The future looks bright for standards-based
wireless technologies beyond 802.11—like
those based on the 802.16a standard. Ratified
in January 2003, 802.16a covers metropolitan-
area wireless networking in the 2- to 11-
GHz
spectrum. Backing the standard is the
WiMAX
(Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave
Access) trade alliance, composed of industry
leaders (www
. wimaxf orum.or g).
Products based
on 802.16 will be
deployed either
in a point-to-
point bridging
mode for pro-
viding wireless
connections
between
ISPs
or in a point-to-
multipoint mode,
either as an alternative or as a complement to
cable/
DSL for last-mile broadband access.
Don’t look for Ultra Wideband (
UWB) prod-
ucts anytime soon, but in a few years this
protocol could spur development of a whole
new range of short-distance wireless devices
by eliminating multipath interference caused
by 802.11 networks, cell phones,
PCS phones,
cordless phones, and even microwave ovens.
Unlike existing 802.11 technologies, which
transmit in relatively narrow channels,
UWB
devices transmit very short, low-powered
pulses of energy over a broad frequency range.
Since the transmitted pulses are so short,
multipath interference is virtually eliminated.
The military has used
UWB for years for se-
cure data communication. And this year the
FCC
presented a demonstration of potential uses of
UWB technology that included multiple HDTV
streams in the presence of all the above-men-
tioned forms of interference, and it worked.
Fully managed wireless networks and streamed HDTV are not far away.
Wireless
In a few years more
NETWORKING