Time to cut the cord?

From the title it isn’t very hard to work out what this is all about. Wireless is the future, as a matter of fact, wireless is the present. I currently have a WiFi network in my house at 54MB/s, connected to multiple computers, devices and what have you. As a matter of fact I think all of the UNN reporters have wireless networks in their own houses! I know for a fact that Hamza (11b) and Qasim (54g) do!

There were of course some disadvantages of the wireless connectivity, WiFi.

It always starts with cost, when things start off they are, naturally, expensive. This really applies to just about anything. WiFi is now not only relatively cheap - it can actually be cheaper then wires! I asked an IT teacher why they had WiFi at certain points in the school, and he simply said its cheaper then having someone come and do the wiring, not to mention more efficient for the staff!

Seeing as the costs have dropped, what else could be considered for your average user. Well okay, I walk into the dentist to have a filling. I’m bored in the waiting room so I pull out my pocket pc (rx3715) and guess what, it automatically connects to the wireless network and there I am surfing the net at my leisure, chatting on MSN and even if I wanted to, calling people on Skype! The issue of WiFi security is a relatively big one. There are generally three options on your basic setup: No Security, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)  or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)™. This is at least how it was when I bought my wireless router which seems like a decade ago!  Now that WPA2 has appeared, the stadardised WEP in 1999 is now probably going to be phased out (good thing my router has 128bit WPA). Okay that probably sounds like a load of ‘jargon’ or whatever, so to learn more about wireless security click here.

 Seeing as security seems to have been prettey much enhanced since the begging of WiFi, there is only one major thing left (of course there are more but yeah). So I walk into the garden on a nice sunny day chatting on Skype via my pda. All of a sudden it cuts off and the sound of birds return to my ears. Yeah, range. WiFi has a few standards, 11a was probably the first. This wasn’t so compatible with the latter; 11b and 54g (which are compatible). Basically the number stands for the transfer rate and the letter really stands for the progress of which, so the earliest being a. Okay i’m not the most advanced in the area but basically the range on these things wasn’t very good. They never specified ranges for some reason (selling!!) but since the first wireless standards things have changed and very soon new advances in the technology of wireless networking have meant that not only is the range increased incredibly, it is now another solvable solution to wireless networking.

What is my point? Well you’ve just learnt a little about WiFi and I recommend you have a look on the WiFi Website or Wireless Networking on Wikipedia.

Okay so with all these advances, there is a post on slashdot which explains:

 "eWeek has a cool review of Xirrus’ XS-3900 Wireless LAN Array. The unit consists of 16 Integrated Access Points and a wireless switch….all in one device. According to their website, Xirrus can achieve 800+ Mbps of bandwidth and handle 1000+ users. Finally enough bandwidth for us all to cut the cord?"

 Well 800meg of Bandwidth with 1000+ users sure means that there won’t be wires for much longer, even at $12,000 that is probably a worthy purchase for a company hiring that many people…!

 Thats all from me, learn more about WiFi from one of the links.

Update 20th August;

San Francisco Looks To Wireless Future

It’s no secret that the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, wants wireless. Last year, he said of city plans to install a wireless cloud, "We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service."

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