WiFi Systems Scottsdale AZ

There is a rising home networking trend that bodes a disturbing if not fearsome response from veteran residential system designers and installers alike. At first glance this trend bodes nothing but trouble for the CEDIA D/I, but upon further investigation, there is a promising new milestone in home networking technology that is poised to empower the next generation of new CE/IT convergent devices with plug-and-play ease of use with the promise of all but ubiquitous connectivity. This new force in home networking connectivity is none other than the WiFi standard based on IEEE's 802.11b specification. Installation of WiFi networks in the SOHO/home segment reached a surprising 61 percent of market share in Q1 2003 up from 49 percent in Q1 2002, according to Synergy Research.1 This kind of growth is not hard to figure out, when considering the adoption of home broadband access-predicted to be in 22.1 million homes by the end of 2003-and noting that the majority of these broadband users want to share Internet access with more than one computer in the home, preferably connecting using "no new wires." But what about that new technology hurdle and the specter of lost revenue?

First some basic definitions: Ethernet is the most pervasive, inexpensive high-speed networking topology (set of rules governing a network) available today. WiFi was created specifically for operating as a wireless Ethernet by creating connections between PCs and networks via a wireless access point (a kind of base station to transmit and receive data packets to and from mobile devices.) When we say "wireless, 802.11(x)" or "WiFi," what we are really talking about is using a wireless transmitter and receiver to provide data connections between devices. Home ethernet networks use a twisted pair or 10/100BaseT cable to share a common communications line between devices-typically a desktop computer with broadband access to a second PC or laptop.

Wireless home networks do the same thing without using cables between devices. This works much like a cordless phone using radio signals instead of cables to connect the handset with the base station. A wireless network (WLAN) uses access points to connect devices back to the wired network, much like the cordless phone's base station is plugged into you phone jack. This type of connectivity, using wireless access points, is typically referred to as "infrastructure mode" because devices are linked through the network infrastructure. Direct device linking is achieved through a connection called "ad hoc mode" and allows a WiFi connection "peer-to-peer" between two devices without going through a structured network. One example of an ad hoc connection would be setting up a direct link with a laptop and a data video projector like the recent HP/Margi wireless projector solution showed at InfoComm 2003.

There are several wireless standards being used or in development, but the most pervasive, by far, is WiFi, which is based on the IEEE 802.11b...

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