"I've seen the future -- and it's wireless" is
what many of digital technology's gurus are saying. The
two types being talked about at the moment are Bluetooth and
WiFi. The idea of wireless connections is that you can link all
the digital devices you have together. That means that
computers, printers, PDAs, CD and DVD players will be able to
talk to each other. So you could send music from your living
room stereo system to your music system in the car outside your
house. You could turn on home appliances, like the thermostat
or the lights, via the Internet. You would no longer have to
have your DVD player near you to watch a movie, you could send
the movie to any television or computer screen in your
building. Bluetooth is touted as ideal for establishing quick networks
in meetings or among members of a workgroup who need to share
applications or exchange files. It's also promising to
replace cables used to connect your PC to PDAs, printers, cell
phones, etc. The biggest current problem with Bluetooth is that
it's still largely on the drawing board -- there
aren't many Bluetooth devices on the market. The other wireless standard is WiFi or IEEE 802.11b which is
also a standard for wireless control of devices. 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
"talk" to each other. We are already connected when it comes to computers. We can
connect them to each other at home, at work, across the state
or across the world. So the visionaries asked "Why not connect
other digital devices also?" and so WiFi came to be. Many of the major manufacturers of digital equipment already
have WiFi products on the market. The list includes Cisco,
Sony, Phillips, and AOL Time Warner. 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 ten times faster than a cable modem.
You'd start with a base station and then your devices
-- DVD player, robot, dishwasher, computer -- would be
fitted with antennas and software so that they could
communicate with the base station. The typical range would be
about 300 feet. One of the biggest obstacles to the spread of WiFi is its
lax security. It's pretty easy to access someone's
wireless network. Another problem is that the standard is still
changing so that something you buy today may not work with a
device you buy next year. Even now, a new version of WiFi is
emerging called 802.11a which is much faster but is not
compatible with the 802.11b type of WiFi. However, despite these and other difficulties, we're
likely to be seeing more and more wireless-ready devices. As
they become cheaper and easier to install, more people will buy
them, providing incentive to manufacturers to build more, so
that more people buy, and so on and so on. To find out more visit: | 
2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education