New Technology to Facilitate Wireless Networking
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[Knight Ridder Business News]
The Boston Globe via NewsEdge Corporation : Aug. 14--Look in back of any computer and you'll see a bird's nest of tangled wires. There are keyboard, mouse, and printer connections, and probably a link to the corporate network or the Internet.
Take a good look, because in a few years many of those wires will likely be gone. Keyboards and mice will invisibly broadcast their commands to the computer. The computer will communicate with the printer in the same way. In many businesses, the corporate network will be completely wireless. Even Internet service will be broadcast to the computer, at speeds rivaling today's high-speed data wires.
Get ready for a wireless world, where electronic devices of every type -- laptops, palmtops, PCs, even cars -- talk to each other without any sort of physical hookup. New data broadcasting systems already are on drawing boards, or beginning to appear in new products. When all of these new systems are finally in place, a power cord may become the only wire many of us ever need.
Imagine being in a meeting, your laptop on the table in front of you. Suddenly you realize that you forgot to bring a vitally important document. But just as the shock hits you, a message pops up on your computer screen: "Never mind. I brought it."
It's your business partner, seated in front of her laptop, 10 feet away. She saw the look on your face, guessed the reason, and fired off a message to ease your mind.
Of course, she might have typed: "Didn't YOU bring it?" It doesn't matter. The important thing is how two people sitting 10 feet apart can send messages to each other's computers.
It's possible thanks to Bluetooth, a new technology that'll begin appearing in electronic devices later this year. Bluetooth is a short-range radio data networking system that enables devices to talk to each other at speeds approaching 800,000 bits per second over distances of up to 30 feet.
It might seem absurd to design a broadcasting system with such short range. But consider the distance between a keyboard or mouse and a computer, or the distance between the computer and the printer. Bluetooth was designed to link all of these devices to one amother without ever having to plug in a wire.
Says Mike McGuire, a wireless networking analyst at the research firm Dataquest: "It's going to be very cool for a lot of people."
Bluetooth could also allow quick data connections between all kinds of electronic devices. A Bluetooth chip in a car, for instance, could allow the driver to pump gas and drive away; the Bluetooth-equipped pump would "talk" to the car and arrange payment. Add Bluetooth to a palmtop computer or cell phone, and there'd be no need for a credit card. Your chip would just broadcast the data to a chip in the store's cash register.
"If Bluetooth evolves the way we think it will, it'll be a very ubiquitous technology," says Jeff Clark, program director for technology development at IBM Corp.'s Personal Systems Group, based in Raleigh, N.C.
It's hard to exaggerate the tech industry's eagerness to bring Bluetooth to market. Since the technology was first proposed in 1997, more than 1,800 of the world's top hardware and software makers have banded together to create a global standard to ensure that all Bluetooth products will be compatible.
Companies ranging from IBM to a tiny British start-up, Cambridge Silicon Radio, are designing Bluetooth chips and the software to make them work. Wireless titan Motorola has begun making Bluetooth devices that can be plugged into the PC Card slots of existing laptops, or installed in automobiles at the factory. International Data Corp. recently predicted that nearly 450 million devices worldwide will use Bluetooth by 2004.
But Bluetooth won't catch on overnight. As a network technology, it faces the standard chicken-and-egg problem. Bluetooth is of little use until millions of people have it, but those millions won't buy it until other millions already own it.
Meanwhile, the system suffers from a rather ironic technical problem: Bluetooth signals may be scrambled by signals from a more powerful wireless networking system, one that could be used to link all of the computers in an office or home.
Nobody's coined a clever name for this networking system; it's simply called by its technical name, IEEE 802.11. But this technology, which is already widely available, offers ordinary people a simple alternative to costly and confusing wire-based local area networks, or LANs.
By adding 802.11 network transceivers to a group of computers, they can all begin talking to one another at speeds of up to 11 million bits per second. That compares to the 10 million bits per second found in many wired office LANs.
Companies with wired networks have no reason to switch to 802.11, especially since upgraded network hardware now allows transmission speeds of 100 million bits or even 1 billion bits over wired networks. But a company setting up a new office might use 802.11 to create a quick, cheap wireless LAN. And homeowners with no desire to string ethernet wire all over the house might find 802.11 a happy alternative.
Apple Computer Inc. has already staked out the home networking market. The company's AirPort wireless LAN system uses the 802.11 standard to let a houseful of Macintosh computers communicate cordlessly at distances of up to 100 feet. On the PC side, a number of companies, including Boston's Zoom Telephonics Inc., are making add-on 802.11 adapters for home and business use.
It's been a tough sell so far.
"The market did not take off as fast in 1999 and even 2000 as we had anticipated," admits Zoom spokesman Larry Hancock. He blames an upgrade in the 802.11 software standard that boosted its speed but caused potential buyers to wait for the dust to settle.
Hancock now expects surging demand for 802.11 products, based on his company's estimate that more than a quarter of all American homes now have two or more machines and thus an incentive to hook them up.
Unfortunately, 802.11 and Bluetooth don't always get along. Both services use the same general region of the radio spectrum, but 802.11 signals are far more powerful than Bluetooth waves. As a result, 802.11 networks can sometimes disrupt Bluetooth signals.
Engineers are working the problem at both ends, looking for ways to make the two systems play nicely together.
"That's a major design challenge for some of the guys," says Dataquest's McGuire. And one that'll put a damper on the market for either Bluetooth or 802.11 -- or both.
Meanwhile, there's another major wireless technology on the horizon, spurred by demand for high-speed Internet access. Millions of Americans still can't get access to high-speed cable modem or DSL telephone service. So a number of companies are moving to bring them fast Internet service via the airwaves.
Martin Cooper helped invent the cellular phone when he worked for Motorola. Now Cooper is chairman and CEO of ArrayComm Inc., which has designed a cellular-type system called iBurst that can deliver megabits of digital data to mobile computer users or stay-at-home types.
"We don't do voice," says Cooper. "The system is designed specifically for the Internet. ... We're using all of the bandwidth for data."
That's one reason the iBurst system can pump data so much faster than the 9,600 or so bits per second provided by today's cell phone modems.
iBurst divides an area into multiple cells, each with a total data capacity of 40 million bits per second. The amount available to each user varies by the number of users logged on to a cell at any given time. In heavy-demand areas, more cells can be added to boost available bandwidth. And because the system uses the cellular approach, subscribers aren't tied down to a single location.
Cooper said the service isn't intended to be used by someone moving quickly, such as a commuter train passenger. But it would enable a laptop user to go from his home to the public library and instantly get high-speed Web access when he arrives. The system would also enable a new generation of cell phones that could easily download videos or music recordings for later use.
Cooper believes his system could make a profit while charging consumers just $25 a month. But for now, iBurst remains vaporware, confined to ArrayComm's San Jose labs. It'll cost billions to deploy such a system nationwide. But at least one major corporation thinks it can be done. In April, Sony Corp. invested $6 million in ArrayComm. Then, in June, the FCC granted the company a trial license to test its service in San Diego next year. If it works according to plan, Cooper hopes to deploy iBurst in 100 US cities by 2004.
For people who need Internet speed but not mobility, the solution could be MMDS, or multipoint multichannel distribution service. Basically it's broadcast Internet, with high-speed data streams radiated from towers scattered all over a city. Customers install receiver antennas similar to those used by satellite-TV subscribers, and instantly get access to 1 million bits of data per second.
The wireless phone company Sprint is a leading proponent of MMDS, and has deployed the service in Phoenix and Tucson, where consumers pay $40 a month.
Evan Conway, vice president of marketing and product development at Sprint's broadband wireless group, says 5,000 Phoenix residents have signed up since May, even though the company has not advertised the service. Conway credits word of mouth as well as "broadband envy," an ailment that afflicts Internet users who can't get cable modem or DSL service.
WorldCom Inc., Sprint's erstwhile partner in a merger recently blocked by the federal government, is conducting its own MMDS trial in the Boston area. If the system pans out, customers won't need to wait for the phone or cable company to plug them into the Internet. And if they add Bluetooth and an 802.11 wireless LAN, they won't need to plug in much of anything.
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