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WIRELESS HOME About ten million American households have home networks and many of those are, at least in part, wireless. It's expected that the number of home networks will jump to 20 million by the year 2006. Home networks do everything from sending e-mail to controlling stereos and lights. Networks are so popular because they allow you to share information with those inside and outside your home. A network allows you to
Wireless Standards To be able to make intelligent decisions about your home network, you need to know a little about the wireless standards in use today. Bluetooth Bluetooth is intended to be used with individual devices like notebooks, PDAs, printers, cell phones, etc. This standard is ideal for establishing quick networks in meetings or among members of a workgroup who need to share applications or exchange files. WiFi The other wireless standard is WiFi (wireless fidelity)which is used to build networks or parts of networks so that a wireless device like a notebook or PDA can access the network. Like Bluetooth, it's a way of building devices so that even if the devices are from different manufacturers, they can work together. It's sort of similar to the outlets in your home -- you can plug any appliance into any outlet. Similarly, WiFi-enabled devices can connect to each other. There are three types of WiFi. The most common one is called IEEE 802.11b, although it's no longer considered fast enough for today's needs. A new type of WiFi, IEEE 802.11a, was introduced to address the speed issue, but while it's faster, it's not compatible with IEEE 802.11b so that to use it you have to change all your devices. The newest type of WiFi is IEEE 802.11g which works with the "b" type 802.11b but not with the "a." Many of the major manufacturers of digital equipment already have WiFi products on the market. The list includes Cisco, NetGear, Phillips, and LinkSys. Microsoft is also lending its support and has designed Windows XP to accommodate wireless networking easily. Bill Gates has even said that WiFi technology is one of the most important advances in the last five years and will be "explosive in its impact." WiFi uses the same radio frequency as some cordless phones, but can carry information 50 times faster than a cable modem. You'd start with a base station and then your devices - DVD player, tablet PC, robot, dishwasher, computer - would be fitted with antennas and software so that they could communicate with the base station. The typical range would be up to about 300 feet. To find out more about wireless devices, networks, and standards visit the following sites: |