You have to admit that the idea of connecting to the Internet and sending or receiving emails without the need for a land-line tether is a time-saving idea, especially if you're traveling and are no where near the requisite phone connection. However, most of us are used to fast connections, especially if we need it for our job. The reality is that most wireless connections are very slow.

Despite a wealth of ambition by wireless providers, the road to 3G deployment is littered with potential stumbling blocks, including tenuous financing schemes, immature handset technology, and a general lack of planned services. Perhaps the biggest hurdle is a lack of demand. Corporate America has not sent a clear signal that it is ready for 3G; many business users are questioning whether high-speed wireless access is worth the wait and the anticipated higher costs. From a consumer's perspective, they don't care if it is a 2.5G deployment or 3G. They want to know how it will make a practical difference in their lives

Recently, an underground movement started to assemble free wireless access zones in metropolitan areas, which could be the solution for faster connections. This free metro wireless data network, has sprung up in cities including Seattle, San Francisco, New York; Aspen, and even London. The group found a way to speed their connections using the 802.11b standard for wireless Ethernet, which works on an unlicensed portion of the wireless spectrum. Instead of the current snails pace of 14.4 kbps, they can get a performance of up to 11 Mbps.

The major goal for these wireless community groups is to build up the 802.11b infrastructure inside the city. If you have a residence that is connected to the Internet, others can use your connection and you can use theirs. A user with a permanent connection to the Internet via a DSL line, for example, would deploy a wireless access point on his or her roof and allow either neighbors or passersby to connect via their PC or server to the Internet for free.

A wireless community consists of one or more persons putting up an 802.11b access point (AP), such as an Apple Airport or an Intel 2011, to cover a small geographic area. The coverage can be up to 1 kilometer in radius if the AP owner is using an omnidirectional antenna. Neighbors participating in the wireless community would use a directional antenna pointed back at the AP.

The access point gives users who have a wireless LAN card in their mobile device, and are within range of any one of these access points a connection to any other device or node on the same LAN. Typically, an access point acts as a central hub, router, bridge to Ethernet, and server for dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) and network address translation (NAT), as well as other functions. The standard home gateways often have a wide-area network (WAN) Ethernet port (to connect to a DSL or cable modem) and one or more local area network (LAN) ports for the local network.

The access point negotiates with wireless computers and other devices, hands out non-Internet-reachable NAT addresses via DHCP, and bridges traffic from the wireless LAN to the wired LAN and, through it, out to the Internet. Home gateways with a WAN port bridge the traffic internally and send it all the broadband router. Once a more or less complete grid of access points are put up around a city, grid participants could connect into the LAN to access numerous services, including a free alternative to fee-based cellular networks.

It isn't all smooth sailing, there are still big obstacles such as the scarcity of low-cost, high-power radios. Most 802.11b radios today are 30 or 100 milliwatts, even though FCC regulations allow them to operate at up to 1 watt. One-watt radios and repeaters would mean greater range and wider coverage. However, the current price is about $1,000.

Another impending challenge for users of 802.11b devices could be significant. The spectrum allotted to 802.11b in the 2.4 GHz range affords only three clear transmission channels. One possible solution is to use the portion of the 5 GHz spectrum set aside for 802.11a. It has room for eight clear channels for indoor applications and has a further allocation set aside for higher power, outdoor applications. This could be good news for dense deployments in corporate, campus, and other public venues.

Wireless LANs designed to provide blanket coverage within institutional buildings such as corporate offices, hospitals, factories, and airport waiting rooms, typically are arranged in a grid of overlapping cells, consisting of access points serving network nodes within about a 65-foot radius. Adjacent cells avoid interference from their neighbors by using different channels within the technology's overall spectrum allocation.

Because 802.11b (Wi-Fi) is limited to three clear channels, deployments of more than three contiguous cells are likely to be subject to some performance degradation (up to as much as 50 percent) due to "co-channel interference" (CCI) between cells operating on a given channel. This is because with Wi-Fi, there's no way to avoid duplication of channel usage more than one cell diameter away. And the closer together the cells, the more interference.

The eight channels available on 802.11a make it a relatively simple matter to arrange a cell grid so that access points using the same channel are at least twice as far apart, and the overall density of cells using any given channel is roughly one fourth as great. This should greatly reduce the effect of CCI, and possibly eliminate it.

The wireless community isn't happening just in metropolitan areas. Some are sprouting up in more unusual situations such as hospitals. The doctors can take their laptops from office to hospital and back and maintain a high-speed wireless link. There are similar networks also designed for the college campus giving students high-speed Internet access. Finally, hotels and country clubs also are considering roaming Internet access on their properties.

Even small businesses that want to employ at-home workers can use the network as a low-cost telecommuter solution. It is hard to predict where these free networks will go, but one thing is certain: They are not going unnoticed by the large wireless network operators. They are aware and some are even considering 802.11b wireless access as well, not in place of currently scheduled rollouts but as an adjunct. Other major infrastructure providers to the wireless rollout in public places, such as at airports and hotels, are also weighing their options for connecting metropolitan areas around the country. The aggregators have designed software that resides in the mobile device and can find any available network and connect the user to it. It identifies all the access points in range and lists the networks found, indicating which are free and which charge a fee.

At the September NetWorld+Interop in Atlanta, Intel announced its Pro/Wireless 5000 line of products that support the IEEE 802.11a specification, which pushes wireless connectivity as fast as 54 Mbps in the 5 GHz radio-frequency band. Intermec Technologies introduced the MobileLAN 2106 Access Point that incorporates support for 802.11a. WLAN systems currently in the market supporting the 802.11b standard are limited to 11 Mbps speeds in the 2.4 GHz band, which is also home to Bluetooth, HomeRF, and cordless phone links. The first generation of 54 Mbps WLAN products will likely be for specialized bandwidth-intensive applications such as engineering CAD designs or streaming video or audio, but eventually 802.11a will see widespread adoption. Some analysts expect 802.11a to take over 802.11b.

Let's back up for a little and look at the current state of 3G. Many providers want everything in place for 3G before they roll it out. It could easily become a commercial failure if operators focus on so-called killer applications such as multimedia, according to consultants at Herschel Shosteck Associates. The report says that operators should focus on delivering the basics. It predicts that initial 3G profits will come not from applications like multimedia but by operators providing fast, low-cost Internet access for existing low-bandwidth applications.

The study claims the infrastructure costs for delivering the type of ubiquitous high bandwidth for applications such as multimedia will be too high for wireless operators. Even if operators pay for such bandwidth, the resulting costs to consumers will be too high for widespread acceptance, the study said.

The problem could be that the wireless infrastructure industry and the Internet industry don't understand each other. For example, the IP world is developing advanced RF applications and services which cannot succeed on early 3G systems.

So, for the immediate needs of wireless users, do freenets pose a threat to ISPs? It's possible that community WLANs could sneak a lot of non-paying users on to their networks and chew up bandwidth without bringing in any additional revenue. But maybe there's also an opportunity here. Most people would be willing to pay for high-speed access, just not as much as the cable and phone companies are asking now. Would it make economic sense for an ISP to connect to a community net backbone node with a big pipe and offer everybody on the net, including occasional mobile users, broadband access at better prices?

Vote in the Poll

Analog Main | Product of the Week | Columns | Editorial | Tech Notes

		Click here to get your listing up.