Wireless Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) in Palo Alto

Wireless Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) in Palo Alto

Two Silicon Valley firms, WiFi Metro and Gatespeed Broadband, recently announced the start of a wireless “hot zone” in downtown Palo Alto, where subscribers with 802.11b-equipped computers can connect wirelessly to the Internet at office-network speeds. With a six-block coverage, the HotZone is a step closer to ubiquitous high-speed Internet access. (See for details).

Even though 802.11 (a.k.a. Wi-Fi) was designed as a local area networking technology, with a range of only a few hundred feet, more and more people are convinced it could be the technology that finally makes the Internet accessible anywhere – without wires and without waiting for the cellular carriers to deliver on their promised 3G systems.

Communities are beginning to build free neighborhood networks (NANs). Hotels, airports, coffee shops, and conference centers are also installing access points. Now Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists (as well as Intel and Cisco) are working on hardware that will extend the range and capacity of Wi-Fi installations, and on software that will make it easy to roam from one zone to another.

It is called the “hot spot” strategy. Rather than rely on the phone companies or other large corporations to build out national networks, the idea is that a variety of companies, nonprofits and individuals will install the necessary equipment on a decentralized basis, with the existing wired Internet providing the links among them.

Compared with the model that the wireless carriers are pursuing – building pricey 3G networks designed mainly for phones and handheld computers – the ubiquitous Wi-Fi scenario has a lot of appeal. First of all, it is here now, but on a limited and fragmented basis. For any individual or business, the costs involved are minimal – cards go for about $99 and access points or base stations cost only several hundred dollars.

While the carriers touting 3G expect users to start paying for data access on untested devices with tiny screens and, at best, tiny thumb keyboards, Wi-Fi works on notebook computers, with their ample displays and keyboards. Because Wi-Fi is based on well-established protocols – Ethernet – it is easy to integrate with existing software and hardware. And at 11 megabits per second now, and five times that soon, it is the Internet without compromise – no need to strip out the bells and whistles from Web pages.

However, there are major technological and economic challenges to be overcome before this Wi-Fi vision can be fully realized.

First, the 802.11 industry must solve its security problems. It also has to provide software that will make roaming truly seamless. And the industry needs to manage the transition from the current 802.11b standard to one or both of the much faster alternatives now emerging (802.11a and 802.11g) without splitting into incompatible networks. The likely solution, at least until one of the next generation technologies emerges as a clear winner, is multimode cards and access points. Finally, there is the problem of payment. If we are to have ubiquitous coverage, we are talking about real money – purchasing, installing, and maintaining hundreds of thousands of access points, and paying for all the wired bandwidth that will be needed to connect them as usage increases. Several companies (e.g., Boingo Wireless, are trying to solve this problem by becoming aggregators that will sell subscriptions, bill users, and distribute payments to affiliated network providers.

Wi-Fi NANs should work in downtown areas of major cities, on campuses, in office parks, and across technology corridors such as Silicon Valley. Outside areas such as these, however, the economics are questionable.

The voice carriers, however, already cover most populated areas, and perhaps their networks could pick up where 802.11 leaves off, even though their bandwidth is much lower. With cards supporting both technologies, subscribers could use the faster Wi-Fi where it is available and, where it is not available, fall back on the slower carrier networks.

Such combination hardware is not available yet, but Nokia has introduced a PC Card for the U.S. market that supports both Wi-Fi and GPRS, one of the emerging 2.5G cellular technologies. Sprint is planning cards with radios for both 802.11b and 1xRTT, the early 3G technology the company is rolling out in the summer of 2002. Also, VoiceStream, the voice carrier, endorsed this approach when it bought up the 650 Wi-Fi public access hot spots previously run by the bankrupt MobileStar Network.

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