P-I NEWS SERVICES
September 12, 2003
If you're thinking about getting a wireless card for your laptop to take advantage of hot spots where computers can connect wirelessly to the Internet, keep in mind not all cards are the same.
There are now several different flavors of Wi-Fi; unfortunately, they are only told apart by the letters that describe the technical standards.
The original Wi-Fi technology is 802.11b, now widely deployed at universities, Starbucks stores and techie homes.
The equipment for "b" is the cheapest, with a laptop card costing maybe $50. Most of the laptops that come with built-in Wi-Fi use "b."
However, you might want to consider spending another $20 or so to get a card that does 802.11g, the up-and-coming standard. (Some manufacturers are trying to give it less geeky names. Apple calls it AirPort Extreme; Linksys calls it Wireless-G.)
802.11g is about four times as fast as "b," and connects to the older hot spots, albeit at the slower speed.
You may not see much of an advantage from a "g" card at first, since most hot spots still use "b." Also, the speed of wireless Web surfing is usually not limited by the wireless connection but by the speed of the connection between the hot spot's base station and the Internet.
But 802.11g looks set to become the new standard. Equipment for it has sold strongly since it was introduced earlier this year, and analyst Greg Collins at Dell'Oro Group, which tracks sales of networking equipment, sees it surpassing 802.11b in consumer sales by the end of the year.
You'll want to stay away from cards that only do 802.11a.
They won't connect to "b" or "g" hot spots. 802.11a is an older technology that is as fast as "g," but it hasn't caught on widely since it doesn't work with "b."
There are more expensive cards that do both "b," "g" and "a," which can be useful if your hot spot does "a." Dell'Oro said multimode devices were about 3 percent of Wi-Fi sales in the second quarter.
The advantages of 802.11a are that it can support more users and is not susceptible to interference from 2.4 gigahertz cordless phones, which can make hot spots using the other standards unusable. 802.11a uses the less crowded 5-gigahertz band.
Another letter is set to drop into the Wi-Fi alphabet soup late this year or early next year. 802.11i will be a new standard aimed at making the wireless network more secure from eavesdropping and unwelcome guests.
Many corporations have delayed deploying Wi-Fi because of its well-publicized security flaws - it's not too hard for a hacker to access a poorly set up company wireless network from outside the building, for instance.
802.11i aims to remedy that with encryption technology.
The bad news is that it will most likely require new equipment.
If you're really concerned about security, you may want to wait for that.
(C) 2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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