Personal Area Networking

Local Area Networking

Wide Area Networking

Due to continuous improvements in speed and availability, Wireless Technologies shows up year after year on the AICPA’s Top Technologies list. In 2005, the AICPA published “A CPA’s Guide to Wireless Technology and Networking,” which includes definitions and details on wireless technology and networking.

This article provides an update on the status of wireless networking in these three domains:

1.      Personal Area Networking – BlueTooth.

2.      Local Area Networking – 802.11x access points.

3.      Wide Area Networking – 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd generation cellular networking.

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Personal Area Networking

BlueTooth continues to emerge as the standard platform for enabling low cost, close proximity, multi-point networks. Shipments of BlueTooth-enabled devices doubled in each of the past four years. Much of this success can be attributed to the mobile phone industry; most new phones now include BlueTooth connectivity. Similarly, wireless Bluetooth headsets are becoming a standard accessory. The phones and headsets that embrace the full BlueTooth device feature-set allow calls to be answered and placed from the headset. Some headsets even have Caller ID displays.

What’s next for BlueTooth? Buckle your seatbelt! The market for Bluetooth-enabled entertainment systems, radios, phones, and navigation systems in automobiles and RVs is set to explode. You now can buy a new car that accesses your Bluetooth- capable phone, with built-in microphones and speakers for hands-free use. With increased legislation requiring the use of hands-free mobile phones, BlueTooth is positioned to grow even faster than it has in the last few years.

The BlueTooth Specification continues to grow with Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) products beginning to hit the market. BlueTooth EDR provides greater bandwidth and lower power consumption than initial BlueTooth releases. You can expect BlueTooth to continue to dominate the Personal Area Network domain for at least several years, with no apparent challengers in sight during this timeframe.

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Local Area Networking

During late 2004 and early 2005, the marketplace was just beginning to sort out which WiFi standard would succeed the initial 802.11b specification. Wireless access points were popping up in airports, hotels, coffee shops and fast food joints; even some payphones in major metropolitan areas were sporting new wireless access points.

During 2005, the wireless networking craze came home, with some estimates showing that home wireless networks exceeded home wired networks by a ratio of 5:1. This is not at all surprising considering wireless is so easy to install. In addition, high speed broadband service (DSL and Cable) for home use has grown at a staggering rate.

The only real question was which new fast WiFi standard most people would embrace to add more capacity and speed to their wireless networks. The choice was between 802.11a and 802.11g. Both of these standards supported speeds four to five times faster than the original 11b standard, but the similarities ended there.

802.11a touted its use of the 5.4 GHz frequency spectrum as a more secure way to avoid all the clutter and interference that existed in the 2.4 GHz frequency range of 802.11b and g. However, unless you are an electrical engineer, you may not have known that the shorter wavelength also resulted in slightly shorter distances than 802.11b or g.

The likely reason 802.11g has become the new WiFi standard is because it is backward compatible with 802.11b. During the past few years, wireless access points and interface cards continued to decrease in size, but their capabilities and features have remained fairly constant. Today, new extenders (or repeaters) are being increasingly used as a quick and easy way to increase the speed and range of existing access point infrastructures.

The WiFi world of wireless networking has evolved from simply being a means of connecting portable computers to a network. WiFi is now used as a platform for distributing music, multimedia, video, telephony, and a whole host of other entertainment applications. At home, multimedia PCs are connected to audio and video components in other rooms, allowing a central PC to deliver music and movies to multiple rooms in a house without the cost or clutter of cables.

WiFi has not eluded the home or small business security industry. Smoke, fire, and motion sensors connect to monitoring stations using WiFi, and wireless cameras now sit in homes and businesses “watching” over everything from babysitters to computer rooms. When any motion is detected, an e-mail message is instantly sent with an attached video clip so that the camera owner can see what triggered the camera to record. The same camera can be connected over the Internet (if properly configured) so that the owner can watch in real time what is going on in the room under surveillance. This technology is inexpensive and readily available today.

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Wide Area Networking

The real excitement throughout 2005 and into 2006 is in watching 3G Cellular technology grab hold as predicted. We had been hearing the promise of high-speed wireless access that is available virtually anywhere you can go; now, after being teased with second generation data access over cellular networks (TDMA/GPRS and CDMA/1X-RT) for the past several years, true 3G high speed broadband is finally here.

EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) provides Internet data access speed up to 800 Kbps and operates well from moving cars or trains – effectively passing off the data connection as you move from one cell tower to another.

Users typically connect to the EV-DO data network in one of three ways:

1. An EV-DO network interface card plugged into the PCMCIA slot on a notebook computer.
2. An EV-DO capable phone that connects to the USB port of your computer.
3. An EV-DO capable Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

Beginning in late 2004 and continuing at a rapid pace throughout 2005, Verizon has, without much fanfare until recently, implemented EV-DO across its vast national network. Likewise, beginning in late 2005, Sprint launched a major campaign to implement EV-DO on its network. While Sprint’s efforts are significant, they have a long way to go to offer the coverage Verizon does. The reason Verizon has such a large lead over its competitors is because EV-DO was developed to ride over its existing CDMA 1-X network, making data services available anywhere CDMA voice service is available. Another reason Verizon is well positioned to deliver national broadband access is because in areas without EV-DO, the RT-IX service will be available to EV-DO subscribers although at a slower rate. RT-1X has been available for several years and provides speeds up to 120 Kbps – two to four times faster than conventional telephone dial-up.

What makes EV-DO so great? Similar to DSL, it provides complete IP-based access to the Internet or your business applications. Essentially, for the first time over a cellular network, you can do anything you could do on a computer connected to wired or WiFi networks. This includes connecting to your office through a secure VPN or Citrix servers.

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