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802.11: Left to my own devices

In part two of his series on wireless standards, Craig Keefner, kiosk guru and founder of kiosks.org, tells you about the wireless devices available for kiosks, including some new products.

March 26, 2002

Craig Keefner founded kiosks.org in 1993. The Houston native resides in Minnesota, though he spends much of his time in Kentucky and traveling to kiosk events around the world. He is a sought-after speaker at a variety of kiosk events worldwide.

Kiosks.org founder Craig Keefner

In "802.11 by the numbers," I covered the generalities of the 802.11 wireless standard. In this column I take a closer look at some of the available devices that support 802.11b technology.

I asked some of the kiosks.orgmembers about their wireless projects. I also know the usual suspects (3Com Corp., Intel Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., for example), and I inventoried what they have available.

I also headed down to my local Best Buy electronics retail store (it usually has the best prices) to see what has made its way to the consumer level.

General availability

There were many more options since the last time I had visited Best Buy. D-Link, Linksys and SOHOware were all represented. All offered access points and adapters for PCI, PC card and USB slots.

Generally, access points cost about $250 and support 64 and 128 bit Wireless Encryption Protocol security. Adapters generally cost about $150 (the PCI versions being quite cheap actually, at less than $50). D-Link even had a combination gateway/hub/access point for $50 more.

All the equipment was 802.11b at 11 Mbps. Products generally bragged of a 100-meter range. DSL is big in my area, so maybe that explains the amount of products.

The best news is at least I know what to ask for Christmas now. :-)

Enterprise options

Regarding the major companies everybody looks to for technology, even 802.11x is not as widespread as you might think. Apple, of course, was the first to offer wireless. Compaq seems to have a pretty aggressive stance in this arena.

Toshiba already has begun advertising its new Satellite Pro 4600 and Tecra 8200 noteboooks with built-in wireless LAN.

Many Web sites let you buy 802.11b equipment. Among them are Compaq, 3Com and Cisco. Sometimes you have to dig around before you find the equipment.

Real world deployment

But rumor has it that we have an interest in kiosks, so what about it, folks? Among kiosks.org members, SeePoint Vantage Series kiosks are a real treat. They are currently in operation in wireless applications and are using the Cisco Aironet 340 series client adapters and access points. The Cisco adapters come in PC card, PCI and even ISA versions (someone pinch me, please).

SeePoint designed these units to be installed in wireless networks that span buildings. The machines use Cisco Aironet 340 Series Ethernet bridges. The bridges connect the wireless LANs across buildings and have a range of 3,000 feet.

NetBooth of Las Vegas is best known for its in-room system used in hospitality markets. NetBooth is using Intel wireless products in its installations and loves them so far.

I talked to Symbol Technologies Inc., of course. They probably know as much or more about wireless than anyone else. I asked Tom Mazz with Symbol what's hot there these days.

Tom pointed me to Symbol's Web site where I learned about the LA 4137 CompactFlash adapter. It delivers 802.11b Ethernet speed for mobile devices with CompactFlash slots. The first systems supported will be Pocket PC systems, including Compaq's iPAQ. Eventually Symbol will offer them for the Palm platform. The card costs $249.

Another cool Symbol device is the NetVision Phone. It adds voice communication to Spectrum24 802.11 wireless LANs, allowing simultaneous voice and data support.

Tom Mazz said, "We have a large presence in the enterprise and retail POS markets where we expect many kiosks to be located."

What is really cool about the Symbol technology is that Symbol added the Kerberos authentication protocol to its Spectrum 24s. Kerberos, while providing better security, also allows users to roam securely between access points, something that is not possible now. The drawbacks are that it doesn't ship until July and that there are questions regarding interoperability and client independence.

At NetWorld+Interop 2001 in Las Vegas this May, Texas Instruments vowed to push the per-unit price of 802.11 chips down from $35 to $5 by 2003. These chips would incorporate the speed boost to 22 Mbps using new technology the IEEE standards task force for 802.11g is considering. At that price point, WLAN technology competes with Bluetooth, soon to arrive.

3Com is doing something along the same lines security-wise as Symbol, with new technology it announced at NetWorld+Interop. The 3Com access points deliver fresh 128-bit keys at the start of each session.

Devil in the details?

Finally, jumping out of the 2 GHz band used by 802.11b and Bluetooth, Atheros Communications is committed to delivering 54 Mbps 802.11a chips. 802.11a runs in the 5 GHz frequency band and faces less interference than the 2 GHz band.

Agere Systems and Cisco are also promising 802.11a chips. Agere is releasing servers which support 802.11b and also 802.11a when it comes out later this year. Upgradeable platforms are now becoming more of the "speak" being heard. I anticipate that much like 10BaseT became the defacto baseline for networking, and 100BaseT piggybacked on it, so it will go with 802.11b and the new protocols.