WiFi Update No. 8 (The Big Picture, "Wider-Fi", 802.everything, Manhattan WiFi, etc.)
April 25, 2003
The Big Picture
Where is WiFi headed? I don’t claim to have a crystal ball but I believe the evolution looks very much like what we have seen before with the Internet and the World Wide Web. There was a long list of reasons ten years ago for why the Web would never turn into something serious -- certainly not into something that could be used for secure business transactions. The same list of shortcomings is being attributed to WiFi today – security, scalability, reliability, business model, etc. Just like the Web, WiFi is grass roots, standards based, and very decentralized. Just like with the Web, there is no stopping WiFi from becoming mainstream. The benefits are too compelling.
WiFi
is making the Internet “always on” and extending it to more people
and more devices at more locations. This will result in more people doing more
transactions which in turn will fuel the continued growth of information technology
spending which in turn will provide more productivity to the economy. Many people
are asking where the money in WiFi.
The ultimate beneficiaries are consumers but the information technology industry
will benefit also. Incremental hardware, software and services will be needed
to support incremental growth in e-business. Part of the spending will go into
infrastructure for WiFi
itself and part will go into integration of systems and applications to meet
the rising expectations of people who connect to the Internet.
WiFi will have a
major impact on the telecommunications industry. On a positive note, the increase
in Internet usage made possible by WiFi
will mean more “bits on the wire”; i.e. more traffic and utilization
of the backbones of the Internet which are provided by the telecom industry.
The less obvious impact is that WiFi
chips will soon be in handheld devices of all kinds – including what today
we call cell phones. This will mean that Internet
telephony will emerge as a major application of the Net.
The telecommunications industry needs to start thinking differently about the
Internet. From what I hear and read from a number of the telecom companies,
they still think that the Internet is one of the many services that you can
get via a telecom service. Unfortunately, they have it backwards. Internet telephony
(a voice conversation) is one of the many things you can do with the Internet!
“Voice” is just another Internet application. The evidence is mounting
from the growth in Internet based “PBX’s” and more recently
with the introduction of WiFi
“phones”. One market research firm, TeleGeography,
estimates that Voice over the Internet
(VoIP) accounted for 10 percent of total call minutes worldwide last year.
Experts expect demand to explode. The handwriting is on the wall.
Wider-Fi? (802.everything)
There have been a number
of stories lately suggesting that WiFi is being leapfrogged or replaced
by a newer technology called “wider-fi” or "WiMax". There
is something new here but it won’t replace WiFi
– it will extend it. The technology being discussed is based on a technical
standard called 802.16 (WiFi is based
on 802.11). First a little about what this new technology is and then why I
believe it is quite significant, albeit not a replacement for WiFi.
First I would like to explain what the “802” stuff is all about.
This is a bit boring but I know many people are curious. The Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., popularly known as IEEE
(Eye-triple-E), is a non-profit, technical professional association of more
than 377,000 individual members in 150 countries. (I have been a senior member
of the IEEE nearly ten years). The IEEE
is a leading authority in technical areas ranging from computer engineering,
biomedical technology and telecommunications, to electric power, aerospace and
consumer electronics. Through its technical publishing, conferences and consensus-based
standards activities, the IEEE produces 30
percent of the world's published literature in electrical engineering, computers
and control technology, holds annually more than 300 major conferences and has
nearly 900 active standards with 700 under development.
The IEEE creates standards
in many working group areas
including Aerospace Electronics, Broadcast Technology, Communications, Information
Technology, Instrumentation & Measurement, and Portable Battery Technology
just to name a few. One of the areas under Information Technology develops standards
for Local Area Networks
and Metropolitan Area Networks. Engineers like numbers and so all the areas
have one – this one is called IEEE
802. WiFi is based on 802.11 which is a subset of the 802 standards that
is focused on Wireless Local Area Networks. The 802.16
area is called “Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems".
The keyword here is “fixed”. WiFi allows you to walk into a hotel
or airport and be connected. You can move your laptop around as long as you
are within 300 feet or so depending on the environment and antenna quality.
The 802.16 standard enables transfer at the rate of 70 million bits per second
to another antenna thirty miles away (operating at frequencies between 2 GHz
and 11 GHz).
Suppose XYZ Company gets an attractive deal to lease office space in a building
thirty miles outside of a major metropolitan area. They would really like to
have broadband but neither the cable company nor the local telephone company
have deployed in that area yet because there isn’t a big enough market.
Along comes a startup wireless company which puts up an 802.16 antenna just
outside the city and another one on the roof at XYZ Company. The service delivers
2 megabits of bandwidth to a router in a network closet. Since the building
is old, it doesn’t have Ethernet cabling in the walls, so XYZ Company
buys ThinkPads with WiFi antennas
built into them and they all communicate with a WiFi antenna connected to the
router in the closet. They are 100% wireless.
802.16 extends the WiFi LAN to the Internet. It all works on unlicensed spectrum
– there is no traditional service provider. This will be a boon to companies
and communities that don’t want to wait for cable or DSL service.
Mobile WiFi
Meanwhile, in December 2002, the IEEE Standards Board approved the establishment
of IEEE 802.20, the Mobile
Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) Working Group. The goal is to enable worldwide
deployment of affordable, ubiquitous, always-on and interoperable multi-vendor
mobile broadband wireless access networks that meet the needs of business and
residential end user markets. In other words WiFi while you are on an Amtrak
train or riding in a car. The specification will provide speeds in excess of
1 Mbps. That would be 100+ times faster than what is typically available when
using a cell phone as a modem for your laptop. Even so called “3G”
only delivers 50Kbps at best. (See my latest experience
with Sprint PCS).
WiFi In Lower Manhattan Parks
Lower Manhattan is on a full court press to spread free high-speed wireless Internet access in six parks and public spaces. The Alliance for Downtown New York plans to establish WiFi "hot spots" in City Hall Park, the South Street Seaport area, Bowling Green, Vietnam Veterans Plaza on Water Street north of Broad Street, Liberty Plaza at Broadway and Liberty Street, and in Rector Park in Battery Park City. A PC user with a WiFi-enabled laptop or personal digital assistant will have free, high-speed access to the Internet.The Lower Manhattan project will be one of the largest free wireless networks in the country and it will likely be a model for wireless business districts. NYC Wireless has now mapped more almost 150 hot spots in the New York City area where individuals or companies are making their networks available for public use. What New York is doing is the tip of the iceberg as organizations in a growing number of cities begin rolling out WiFi services. This doesn’t mean that WiFi will or needs to be free. There is room for many different business models just like there was ten years ago for Internet access. Cometa and other companies are focusing on industrial strength enterprise access for "windshield warriors".
Finding Hotspots
Thanks to various people for telling me about web sites where you can find WiFi
hotspot locations.
http://www.hotspot-locations.com
http://wifinder.com/
http://www.makewirelesswork.com/directory.htm
WiFi Security
David Merrill, Manager for Security and Network Management at IBM
Global Services, reminds us that we should utilize the WiFi security measures
that are available. The average person (or company) is buying a WiFi wireless
access point, plugging it into their cable or DSL modem and accepting the default
security option – which is no security. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy),
the security mechanism initially built into all standard 802.11 products, encrypts
data on the wireless network but is flawed in the way it was implemented. However,
it is very much like using the lock on your front door. A criminal can still
kick the door in but locking the door is a good means of controlled unauthorized
access against the "casual thief". There are other protections that
can be taken, such as turning off the broadcast of the wireless access point's
ID. At the corporate level there are much more robust security solutions available.
Using Cisco’s LEAP, for example, is a viable option for good security
within the enterprise. While LEAP and other proprietary approaches to improved
security are not bulletproof, the vulnerabilities at this point are extremely
limited. A significant improvement to security will be available as part of
the 802.11i
standard which is in the final stages.
Subway
Surfing (first patrickWeb WiFi story)
Archive of other
patrickWeb WiFi stories
Other
WiFi links at patrickWeb
Pringles Can (The
Famous)
WiFi Antennas
Wireless
Communities
802.11 Planet
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