802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5
Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.
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802.11 Planet article clarifies Broadcom's 802.11g/54 Mbps offering: 802.11 Planet runs down the Wi-Fi hardware makers who plan to use Broadcom's 802.11g-draft-compliant chipset to offer up to 54 Mbps (raw) in 2.4 GHz. The chipset is designed to be upgradable to the ratified 802.11g specification, and interoperable with other g-draft chipsets. Until the ratified version appears and The Wi-Fi Alliance offers a certification, however, it will be risky to rely on intervendor 802.11g-draft and -ratified systems, which may Balkanize purchases over the next year.
Other News
Fortune mag's take on Wi-Fi in business: A thorough article from Matthew Boyle on how Wi-Fi is already transforming business. The article reflects the kinds of discussions I've had with companies, where they find multiple effects from WLANs: cheaper to install, more flexible to move people around, more productivity in meetings where thngs must happen, more productivity across the day. The other factor they don't mention is that employees may actually have improved happiness: if you can work more effectively during the day, you don't need to work as long (or at least one would hope). That extra 30 minutes of email before you go to bed might be eliminated and replaced with sleep or family time, f'r'instance.
WEP is a no trespassing sign: I had the pleasure of talking to Robert Moskowitz at length last night about security, encryption, and authentication for an upcoming article I'm working on, and he pointed me to his latest Network Computing column. This column offers the sensible advice that WEP, while easily breakable, is a no trespassing sign, and thus has an effect of (and threat of) deterrence beyond its weaknesses. Robert noted in passing to me that only 10,000 packets are required to break a WEP key!
Panel at Comdex concludes wider roaming on the horizon, but not around the corner: Put the head of the CTIA, and representatives of Qualcomm, Boingo, Sony's Vaio division, Cingular, and Nokia in a room, and they all agree that it's moving forward, but slowly, to a single bill, single hardware network solution.