News

First high-speed wireless "hot-spots" may run at 50 megabits - Proxim

Proxim expects to start shipping its "fully European compliant" versions of 802.11a wireless LAN systems next week, into those arenas where they are approved - and expects public "hot-spot" Internet providers to use it.

The company has targeted hot-spot providers in its first creation of a division, under new hiring Kevin Duffy, from Siemens; the new division will focus on service providers and hot-spot providers who are setting up in Europe as well as America as the legal framework relaxes.

All this is part of a major publicity offensive on the faster wireless standard, aimed at IT buyers of networking equipment in the larger corporations. The Harmony product line is particularly suited for this market, because of the lower cost of the access points, with most of the intelligence concentrated in switches called Access Point Controllers - which can control three types of AP - 11a, 11b, and Bluetooth.

Steve Timmerman, VP of product marketing, is doing a European tour at the moment,

persuading analysts and journalists that the IEEE 802.11a standard is unstoppable, and that the European approval fight is all but over. His presentation is, mostly, one which says: "WiFi5 is the way to go, and Proxim is the first out the gate with a proper Corporate-strength 11a standard product" - and that there are no serious rivals.

Some of his target audience, however, have concerns which apparently haven't yet featured in Proxim's own market analysis.

For example, the pitch for "why do you want 50 megabit Harmony access points, rather than 11 megabits of the old WiFi ones?" is answered by "er, well, streaming video." This is pretty doubtful.

In power-point presentations, streaming video may be a neat way of explaining high bandwidth. In the real world, corporate interest in high quality streaming video is not a high priority. Those who install wireless networks are all very much more focused on a really pressing problem; data backup for notebook users.

When this is pointed out to Timmerman and his colleagues, they acknowledge at once that this is a key problem in their own experience.

For wireless network managers; the speed of an 802.11b network shared amongst a dozen people makes it most unlikely that backups get done over the WLAN. The staff inside Proxim, they acknowledge, are obliged to dock their notebooks regularly into the wired LAN for backup, because it's more than just ten times faster. And, they admit sheepishly, most people are not up to date, as a result. The 802.11a launch solves this problem. Proxim does have a special dual-channel version of Harmony which allows up to 100 megabits per second; which probably means that if you have five people sharing, they will get a full 10 meg per second most of the time.

The advantages of 11a are primarily the number of people you can cover, however.

There are more channels - eight - for 11a, so two access points side by side are very easy to configure to use different channels, compared with the three channels you have in 11b, and Fig 1 shows how this allows complex campus coverage.

More to the point, it explains why Proxim isn't keen on dual-mode access points. "A lot of 802.11 a/b access points will be coming out. On the surface, this looks sensible. But this causes a serious problem with optimal coverage for each technology, said Timmerman. "It makes sense to have dual mode on the client side. It's the same as the cellular model - you carry a tri-band phone so you can connect to whatever transmitter is nearest. But an access point that is correctly sited for 11b is going to be in the wrong place for 11a coverage."

Officially, Proxim's attitude is that the product is now approved in the UK, and elsewhere in Europe. What this actually seems to mean is that the Proxim 802.11a wireless is approveable; it meets the requirements for transmit power control and dynamic frequency selection; and it has been given a green light in several of the European countries, and is likely to pass ETSI standards. But it remains the case that you have to license each installation separately, at the moment - something Intel caters for with a pre-completed application form for the Radiocommunications Authority with every 11a device it sells.

There's no doubt that the Harmony 11a product range is impressive. It includes full virtual private networking security as well as all the standard stuff, and the AP controller can centrally define a single IP address, which creates a VPN tunnel to that address alone - from the VPN server. Any packet which doesn't have that address associated with it, gets dropped at the AP.

And until the new Microwave Photonics passive access point technology becomes prevalent, the Proxim design of access point - with the intelligence in the controller, not out in the AP - makes it far easier to mix and match 11a, 11b and Bluetooth APs from the same controller.

Timmerman is also anxious to emphasise the ability this gives, to have a multi-standard network: "This gives inherent support for roaming across sub-nets; we provide some layer 3 functionality in that the access point controller has awareness of access points on other subnets. So you don't need special client software to cope with this. You don't have to worry about which subnet you are plugging the AP into."

It does seem strange, to have all the big players launching products and actively promoting and shipping them, before they are fully approved in the market; but the stakes remain high. The biggest worry is that the official ITU standard for 5 GHz, High Performance LAN II (HiperLAN II) might be revived, making European approval for 802.11a WiFi5 difficult.

Right now, people like Timmerman see 11a as their saviour. While 11b will have to tough it out with competing technologies in the 2.4 GHz range - Bluetooth and Home RF as well as the possibility of 11g - HiperLAN II is the only serious rival at 5GHz; and it provides hugely better coverage in the typical office environment, as well as significantly faster bandwidth per square foot covered.

Nobody is actually building HiperLAN II components. Ericsson was planning to do so, but has cancelled this; and of course, virtually no HiperLAN I products were ever sold. Nonetheless, the vendors of 11a technology are still anxious to get their technology out, in place, in as many locations they can fill, before anybody has a chance to ask whether it is worth waiting and discussing things; and it's quite probable that there will be quite a lot of publicity effort put into the reseller channels by rival 11a suppliers.

Whether this will ever threaten the orthodox UMTS or universal third generation mobile phone networks, remains to be seen. Officially, it won't; 3G networks are going ahead. In reality, if 11a gets deployed widely enough, it may well be that mobile phones will start appearing with 11a radios, so that they can "plug in" to 11a hot-spots and send and receive voice calls over the Internet. Time is what will have to show us ... but meantime, the straws are blowing in the wind.

Probably, the decision of Proxim to launch a special division, specifically aimed at wireless hot-spot providers, may turn out to be more significant in the long term future of European communications, than its early launch of 802.11a technology.