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Unwiring the Enterprise: Wireless Lans
ow does one install a computer network in a building that melts every summer? That was the challenge the Ice Hotel located 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle near the village of Jukkasjärvi, Sweden faced. With guest accommodations and a bar made entirely of blocks of sculpted ice and snow, the Ice Hotel starts to melt when temperatures rise in mid-April. By June, all that's left is a puddle. Rather than put the idea on ice, the hotel opted for wireless networks; an ideal thaw for the glacial dilemma. The bar staff now uses handheld computers broadcasting over a microwave-frequency channel to upload point-of-sale information to the hotel's guest billing system. For anyone who didn't know (broadband) wireless Internet is here -- and is now being touted as the future of Wireless. The anywhere, anytime access promised by Wireless Lans (WLANs) is not restricted to the extraordinary; nor is it meant to shock and simultaneously delight with its similitude to science fiction. In coffee shops, hotels and airports around the world, "hotspots" of wireless local-area network Internet connectivity are popping up. Technology buffs are convinced that this will pour high-speed data into offices and home as well as public places like cafes and hotels and has greater potential than any other wireless technology.
Representing a radical departure from the world of wired networks, Wireless Lans are impacting network equipment in a similar way that mobile phones impacted the traditional voice network. The technology, that offers an easy way to extend the reach of local area networks, has fast migrated from the inventive peripheral space to a mainstream, networking option. Anyone with a desktop, notebook or cell phone can create a high-speed wireless link to the Internet or corporate networks. Early adopters have been verticals such as healthcare, retail and manufacturing. Retail, manufacturing, and warehousing activities have actualised gains in productivity through use of notebook PCs and/or handheld devices to transmit and receive information in real time to centralised servers and databases for processing and transactions. In a like manner, medical professionals in hospitals access patient information instantly using wireless enabled notebook PCs and/or handheld devices. The obvious advantages of the new plug and play technology are winning other sectors to aggressively adopt wireless networks. According to IDC, worldwide revenue for WLAN equipment in 2001 climbed $1.45 billion, up 34.2 per cent from 2000, and is expected to grow to $3.72 billion in 2006. Gartner estimates that 20 per cent of large companies currently have Wireless Lans as an adjunct to their wired networks. By 2003, 50 per cent of the largest 1,000 public companies will adopt wireless networks.
Instead of plugging into a wired LAN wall outlet, wireless Lans allow end users to quickly connect to the corporate network through their PC and wireless LAN card for anywhere, anytime access. The system works simply and inexpensively. A web-wired computer is fitted with an antenna that transmits and receives signals to and from laptops, desktops and pocket computers equipped with cards plugged into a computer slot. Where mobility of users is an absolute requirement, wireless LAN is an absolute requirement as well. Imagine you are on a significant sales call, the prospect requests for data that rests on the company server. Rather than lose the client, wireless networks provide an all-time connection to the server and immediate access to the data.
A Cisco funded study titled Wireless LANs: Improving Productivity and Quality of Life, conducted by Sage Research tells the story behind the new breed of technology. The study interviewed 20 businesses with 1,000 or more employees that have been using WLANs and found that the most notable benefits were time and money savings, as well as productivity gains, greater flexibility and accuracy, and improvements in employee's quality of life. Hours saved by WLAN use ranged from one to 15 hours per user, per week, with an average time savings of eight hours per user, per week, according to survey results. The time savings can be easily translated into significant dollar savings for organisations. Businesses surveyed claim they saved from $30 to $750 per user, per week from WLAN use, depending on employee level and pay rate. One utilities company employing 270 WLAN users estimated it saved an average of $50,200 in employee hours each month. In one of the most systematic studies of WLAN benefits, NOP World Technology, a British research outfit owned by United Business Media, concluded that companies implementing WLAN technology can increase the amount of time an enterprise network is available by 70 minutes per day for the average user, boosting his or her productivity by as much as 22 per cent.
Increasing popularity has not prevented Wireless Lans from being a tech breakthrough without birthing pains. Many of the public and corporate Wireless Lans are based on the 802.11 b or Wi-Fi standard, which operates on the 2.4GHz band and offers speeds up to 11 mega bytes per second. Numerous operators are however keen to deploy the faster 802.11a standard that arrived later. The 802.11a standard operates in the 5GHz band and provides speeds up to 54MBPs. But while 802.11a is definitely a faster standard, it is incompatible with its predecessor. In mid-2003 another standard 802.11g will soon be unrolled. The standard runs on three channels in 2.4GHZ spectrum, the same as 802.11b but has the speed of 802.11a and is backward compatible with 802.1b. Most major manufacturers intend to make 802.11g equipment; Cisco for instance is poised to release its version sometime next year. The alphabet soup of Wireless Lan standards is delaying deployment, as it does not make it easy for network executives to develop long-term strategy.
According to Gartner Wireless Lans are still ten times slower that modern switched Ethernet Lans and they cannot deliver the total site capacity of the Wired Net. If your company has not deployed wireless networks in your company, chances are its being held back by WLAN's questionable security. Armed with a notebook computer, a couple of hundred bucks worth of wireless gear, and some free applications downloaded from the Internet, attackers can drive past almost any large office complex and locate multiple wireless connections. The threats to unprotected wireless connections are similar to threats that wired networks began facing a few years ago. Hackers can use "war dialing" to find vulnerable systems by calling blocks of numbers until they find a modem ready to answer at the other end. If the hacker is really lucky, the answering modem will be attached to a networked computer configured to automatically answer calls, for example, the employee who uses that computer can retrieve files from home over the weekend. Once on that system, a hacker can access everything available to that employee, and, given a little time, maybe much more. War-dialing threats continue, and have morphed into what's known as "war driving" on wireless LANs. Wireless data transmissions are as subject to interception as wireless phone calls, and the Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption built into the 802.11b wireless specification has been proven to be easier to crack than it should be.
According to Gartner, Wireless Lans are still ten times slower that modern switched Ethernet Lans and they cannot deliver the total site capacity of the Wired Net. If your company has not deployed wireless networks in your company, chances are its being held back by WLANs questionable security. Armed with a notebook computer, a couple of hundred bucks worth of wireless gear, and some free applications downloaded from the Internet, attackers can drive past almost any large office complex and locate multiple wireless connections. The threats to unprotected wireless connections are similar to threats that wired networks began facing a few years ago. Hackers can use "war dialing" to find vulnerable systems by calling blocks of numbers until they find a modem ready to answer at the other end. If the hacker is really lucky, the answering modem will be attached to a networked computer configured to automatically answer calls, for example, the employee who uses that computer can retrieve files from home over the weekend. Once on that system, a hacker can access everything available to that employee, and, given a little time, maybe much more. War-dialing threats continue, and have morphed into what's known as "war driving" on wireless LANs. Wireless data transmissions are as subject to interception as wireless phone calls, and the Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption built into the 802.11b wireless specification has been proven to be easier to crack than it should be.
Wireless LANs are no longer esoteric but popular adoption will be hampered by security constraints. Analysts such as Gartner expect growth to complement rather than substitute wired systems. Yet the market is large enough. Companies such as Dell and Microsoft are already rolling out handhelds compatible with wireless systems. In the next few years, demand is expected to increase substantially and telecom carriers, hardware manufacturers and chipmakers are busy crafting products and services for the anywhere anytime generation.
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