Dean Davidson walks out into the sun at the Thompson Center at lunchtime on a balmy weekday and finds a comfortable place to sit. He pulls out his laptop and begins to check e-mail and investigate places on the Web to go for the weekend.
Davidson’s not trailing a large spool of wire behind him or racking up minutes on his cell phone modem. He connects to the Internet, for free, via a nearby wireless network.
These wireless networks are popping up all over the Chicago area and across the country, yet many people don’t know how, or where, to access them. “I like wireless networks because they don’t use phone lines, so you’re not tethered to a single location,” Davidson says. “I like taking my computer to friends’ houses and connecting to the Internet.”
Many of these networks are private and require passwords for access. However, dozens of networks across the Chicago area are open, and anyone with the proper equipment can log on.
Wireless access points also are popping up in hotels, coffee bars and in offices.
Davidson and other laptop owners are using a popular wireless network that goes by the cryptic name of 802.11b. All that is needed to tap into these networks is a wireless access card, about $120, installed in a laptop.
The 802.11b wireless networks can be used with any device that can use a laptop/PC card or Apple AirPort card. Laptops are the preferred method of accessing the networks because of their portability and because the wireless cards were made for them.
Hand-held computers that can use PC cards, such as Compaq’s iPAQ, Hewlett-Packard’s Jornada 700 series and Handspring Visors (which requires a special module), also can connect.
The 802.11b network cannot be accessed with personal digital assistants such as the Palm or with cell phones that have Internet capabilities. Palm and other PDA users have other options for wireless access, such as Ricochet, Minstrel and OmniSky modems. These devices operate on a different frequency than 802.11b, so they are not compatible. They use cell and radio frequencies.
The 802.11b network signal is not dependent on the receiver being within line-of-sight of the transmitter, like microwave and satellite technology, so it can transmit through concrete walls and floors. It uses the 2.4 gigahertz frequency, the same used by high-end cordless phones.
Mark Notarus, a network engineer in the suburbs, is on a committee that determines standards for their 802.11b network implementation and security at his company.
Notarus says that wireless networks provide “ease of action in any kind of situation.” In his job, Notarus is regularly paged to take care of problems. Wireless network access and his laptop allow him to do his work anywhere on the company’s campus and have made meetings more productive for him.
“When you’re in a conference room and have 30 people in the room, you don’t want to run cables everywhere,” he said. “If you’re in the middle of a meeting and you get a page, you can pull out your laptop and take care of the problem without disrupting the meeting.”
Also, “if you have 10 people in a conference room, there usually aren’t 10 jacks in a room,” Notarus said. “If you all have wireless Ethernet cards, you can get on the network simultaneously.”
Internet access during corporate meetings can increase the efficiency of the time spent in the conference room. People can check vendor price quotes or reference important e-mails during their discussions. This reduces the need to check on a piece of information and then having to schedule another meeting once the information is obtained.
Notarus cautions that the first thing a company should consider when installing a wireless network is security. He recommends that companies require their users to authenticate via a virtual private network before being able to access the network. VPNs provide encryption and user authentication.
“You might as well publish all your data on the Internet if you don’t have a wall like a firewall or some kind of authentication. WEP [wired equivalent privacy or using a password to access the network] is a pretty good first step toward security.”
802.11b is a revision of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.11 standard. The original 802.11 wireless networking equipment, released a few years ago, had a number of problems that prevented it from becoming popular. It ran at 2 megabits per second compared with 11 mbps for today’s 802.11b. The old standard also had a very limited transmission range, and the equipment was more expensive.
As a result of falling hardware prices, the revised 802.11b specifications and Apple’s promotional efforts for its AirPort equipment, wireless networking is taking off.
The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance has successfully promoted a certification of compatibility between 802.11b products called Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi products are guaranteed to interoperate. WECA reports that at the beginning of 2000, retail sales of wireless equipment were less than 5,000 per month. By the end of 2000, wireless units were selling at 30,000 per month. In April, 70,000 units were sold.
The next generation of 802.11 equipment will come out in 2002 and increase wireless speeds to 54 mbps, so sales are expected to continue to increase.
The flexibility that these wireless networks allow and the ease of installation have prompted some shops and hotels to install them in hopes of attracting more business.
In May, Starbucks announced that, in conjunction with Compaq and Microsoft, it would install wireless access points in 70 percent of its 2,700 company-owned locations across the country (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Cyberpixie, a Chicago-based company, has installed a wireless network in the Swissotel, 323 E. Wacker Drive.
Other Chicago-area hotels with wireless networks include several suburban Hiltons and the Hilton Chicago on Michigan Avenue, Summerfield Suites, Sutton Place and Hotel Allegro.
These hotel networks require that you pay a fee for their use–generally $10 per day–but are usually accessible from benches outside the hotel as well. The service is available to anyone with a laptop and a wireless access card, even if they’re not a hotel guest.
Still, some users prefer the freedom of tapping into a wireless network for free and from anywhere. Davidson, for one, doesn’t use cybercafes “because I don’t like being charged per minute. I would rather have a flat fee structure. They’re not in convenient locations and they have the same problem with being tethered.”
Cyberpixie is in talks with the City of Chicago to provide wireless access points around the city. Hiroko Osaka, vice president of strategy and marketing at Cyberpixie, says it appears the city is committed to the idea of installing public wireless access points.
If that happens, Web surfing outside could be as easy as getting a tan.
A laptop and a card
Users looking to tap into a existing wireless network need just two things: A laptop or appropriate hand-held computer and a 802.11b wireless local area network card.
COMPUTING DEVICES
– PC laptop
– Apple laptop (iBook or Powerbook)
– Handspring Visor
– HP Jornada 700 Series
– Compaq iPAQ hand-held
– Any desktop machine (with a PC to PC card converter for the wireless LA card)
ACCESS CARDS
– Apple AirPort Card (for iBooks only) ($95)
– For Powerbooks, PCs and everything else: Lucent WaveLA Card ($120)
– Other brands of PC card ($100-300)
YOUR OWN NETWORK
A option is to create your own wireless network. To do so, you need to create a access point. Several manufacturers offer them, including:
– Apple AirPort ($300)
– Cisco Aironet ($550)
– Other manufacturers’ access point ($200-$800)
Chicago Tribune.
