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To: 49thMIMOMander who wrote (8711)	1/8/2001 9:58:51 PM
From: S100	Respond to of 34857

bluetooth glue unglued? snip equipped his kids' Apple laptops with wireless antennas called the AirPort. The doodads allow the McCollister siblings to connect to the Internet without a direct phone line. Instead, they receive their Internet link through the air, via a small radio transmitter connected to a phone. The setup ended arguments "about one or the other hogging the phone line," says Dr. McCollister. But the wireless link kept blinking out, and Dr. McCollister couldn't figure out what was wrong. He upgraded the software and pored over online discussion groups without any luck. Finally, a friend who is an Apple dealer asked if he had a cordless phone that transmits its calls at 2.4 gigahertz and Dr. McCollister had his breakthrough. Two months earlier, he had bought two of the phones for his kids. It turned out they were creating interference that scotched the computer connection. Confirming the problem, he found a document on Apple's Web site that lists things ranging from 2.4 gigahertz phones to microwave ovens as potential sources of interference. Brace for mid-air collisions. The high-tech industry is hyping a raft of new technologies that use the airwaves to link personal computers, Palm hand-held devices and other gadgets to the Internet and corporate networks, as well as to each other. Executives say such wireless connections herald a new era of anywhere, anytime computing. But these technologies communicate in the increasingly crowded 2.4 gigahertz band of the radio spectrum, potentially clogging the airwaves like planes over LaGuardia. Developed to liberate people from their desks and the linguine knots of cables emerging from their computers, some wireless technologies could create airborne entanglements that increase the complexity of computing, instead of reducing it. snip snip The wireless technologies come in several flavors. One is called Wi-Fi, which also goes by the technical name 802.11b, and is used by Apple. It is aimed at allowing machines inside houses to communicate at high speeds and share Internet connections. A similar technology used by other companies is dubbed HomeRF. Lastly, there's a nascent technology called Bluetooth that is intended to allow hand-held computers, cellphones, pagers, laptops and computer peripherals such as printers to communicate with each other at distances of up to 30 feet. That way, for instance, you could zap a phone number from your cellphone to a friend's Palm. snip snip Yet the Federal Communications Commission knew such interference was the likely outcome when it set aside the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum for such uses. Unlike most areas of the radio spectrum, which are licensed for specific applications such as TV signals or cellphones, the 2.4 gigahertz band was designed as a sort of innovation zone, where technology companies and cash-strapped entrepreneurs could test new wireless devices without first seeking a costly government license. The band has been swamped in recent years by communications companies using it for data networking, resulting in a free-for-all of radio signals. Yet the FCC considers such interference to be the price of doing business in the band. Engineers must build wireless systems robust enough to coexist with such "noise." "Every one of these devices has a label on it that says they can cause interference and must accept interference," says Julius Knapp, chief of the policy division in the FCC's engineering office. He says most products should work fine. But, he adds, "If you really require high reliability, that's really not what this band was set up for." snip snip Anticipating interference, most newer wireless systems use "spread spectrum" technologies, in which the signal hops within a small band of frequencies at lightening speeds, or changes the pattern of transmissions, to reduce the impact of warring signals. Spread spectrum technology, originally conceived during World War II by actress Hedy Lamarr to thwart eavesdropping, essentially prevents the kind of accidental snooping of the past snip snip Most users are more concerned about garden-variety interference involving the new wireless networks. The most problematic collisions will occur when, say, two Bluetooth devices are communicating near a laptop that is connected to a somewhat distant Wi-Fi transmitter. Under this scenario, the Bluetooth devices could cause problems for the laptop as it tries to communicate with the wireless network. "Then the performance degradation is almost catastrophic," says Manpreet Khaira, founder and chief executive of wireless start-up Mobilian Corp. He says customer-service centers of companies that sell these devices "are going to be overloaded" with complaints. snip