With the help of cordless phones, pagers, voice-only cellular phones, Internet-enabled cellular phones, 2-way pagers and wireless e-mail devices, wireless technology has demonstrated its versatility and prowess in delivering a wide array of communications. To further expand the portfolio of wireless communications, wireless local area networks (LANs) are now gaining momentum in many different settings, from warehousing all the way to residential.

Originally, wireless LANs were thought to only be of use in the facilitation of tracking orders and keeping track of inventory in business settings. However, they have recently branched out into the enterprise setting, and finally the residential setting, where they are poised for the most significant growth.

The Connected Home

For some time now, there have been households that have accessed the Internet from multiple computers. However, due to the slow connection speeds of dial-up access, there has not been a significant demand to connect one computer within the home to another, as there was limited bandwidth to take advantage of. With the rise in popularity of residential broadband connections, there has been much more interest in establishing a "home network," so that all of the computers within the household could reap the advantages of this additional bandwidth without establishing a separate connection for each computer.

Such a network allows the household to use a single broadband connection, regardless of its nature (cable modem, DSL, fixed wireless or two-way satellite) and share it among any number of computers within the home. The only problem with this plan is that most houses do not have adequate wiring, commonly cat5 cable, to connect each device at a sufficient speed to take advantage of the broadband connection. This would require the installation of new wiring within the house; and many homeowners, and even more landlords, would be hesitant to start punching holes in walls when not it is completely necessary. The solution to this dilemma is wireless.

No New Wires

One of the biggest attractions of wireless LANs is the fact that they do not require the time consuming and potentially unattractive installation of new wiring within the house. This allows the consumer to connect the wireless LAN's access point (AP) to the broadband connection coming into the house, and then distribute that bandwidth to any device in the house that has been equipped with a compatible adapter card.

The one caveat in this situation is that wireless signals tend to be somewhat fickle. As any user of a cordless or cellular phone can attest, reception is not always perfect. However, in the case of a wireless LAN user, this will be much less of a problem. The first reason is that no one uses a computer - especially a desktop PC - the way they use a phone. Even a laptop user is not constantly on the move while using the computer, and so would not be affected as much by sources of potential interference.

The second reason is that even when there is interference, its effects are basically transparent to the user. The reason for this is that the presence of interference does not cause an interruption of the connection, rather the connection speed will be slightly diminished based on the strength of the interference. Although the user would probably notice a severe fluctuation in throughput, this would most likely be a temporary blip.

Standards

When it comes to residential wireless LANs, there are currently two options - HomeRF and 802.11b. Both standards were born out of the original IEEE 802.11 specification, but they each use different variations on the technology.

HomeRF has been marketed exclusively to the residential market, hence the name. 802.11b, on the other hand, has become popular in the enterprise market and has gained a foothold in the residential market as well. This segmentation has many in the industry predicting the not-so-distant demise of the HomeRF platform for several reasons.

One advantage that 802.11b has over HomeRF is that it allows people to work at home with the same notebook that they use at work. There are many businessmen who either take work home with them on a semi-regular basis, or simply work from home several days a week and need connectivity in both locations. It is much easier to have one laptop computer with one adapter card that can access either network without any significant hassle.

Another advantage of 802.11b, which holds true even if the above scenario does not pan out, is that since it has a much greater potential audience, it can achieve economies of scale much faster than HomeRF. This will help 802.11b further increase its subscriber base, especially into the residential arena where cost is more of a concern.

802.11b Offspring

To illustrate how 802.11b is driving the wireless LAN industry, 802.11b has already produced two offshoots - 802.11a and 802.11g - that will help further accelerate the adoption of wireless LAN products.

802.11g is still a work in progress, but is promising more than twice the throughput that 802.11b can deliver, without making the 11b standard, and all the equipment that was used with it, obsolete. The company that is most involved in the 802.11g development is Intersil, which is trying to have its orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology incorporated as a standard. This has met with a fair amount of resistance, partly because of the detrimental effects it could have on other technologies in that frequency range.

Regardless of whether OFDM is ratified as an 802.11g standard, it will not affect the long-term development of the industry, which will lead to widespread adoption of 802.11a within the next few years.

The downside to 802.11a is that it operates in a different frequency band, 5.7 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz for 802.11b and 802.11g. However, considering that wireless LAN deployments are still limited, this might not be such a problem, especially considering the upside of five times the throughput of 11b.

Widespread Adoption

Ultimately, if wireless LANs are going to achieve widespread deployment, they will need a strong residential push. Although wireless LANs will be popular in many different areas of the business world, the driving force will come from consumer demand. This will take several different forms. The first reason will be connecting the many different computing devices within the home. But more importantly, consumers will want to use the 11a option because of its higher bandwidth capacity.

The migration toward 802.11a will be coming largely from the residential side and the need for additional bandwidth to support many media rich music and video applications. Once consumers begin to purchase 11a equipment in large numbers, they will begin to push for it in their office environments as well. Once this begins to happen, network managers will see that there are in fact many reasons for them to set up wireless networks, and more specifically 802.11a.

Additionally, some in the industry are picturing home adoption of wireless LANs as an extension of the enterprise. As mobile workers become more commonplace, these users will also be looking to connect to their office networks while maintaining the same portability within their homes that they enjoy in the office. This will lead to a wide network of connectivity with wireless LANs at the very center of it all.