Mobile and wireless Internet systems have brought in several advantages. People in business are benefited by Wi-Fi as they travel around for their business purposes. Furthermore, even if you do not have your laptop with you, your mobile would connect you to Wi-Fi and you would never miss your important emails as they drop into your email inbox. Wi-Fi also helps you to set up wireless internet connectivity at home. If there is more than one user, Wi-Fi connects all your computers to the Internet, and sets up computer to computer connectivity as well. Wireless network brings in sheer mobility, and it also provides rigidity, and helps you to reach out to distant places.
With the progress of technology and availability of bandwidth, Wi-Fi connectivity prices have dropped to a level where all the modern devices such as, mobile phones, laptops, personal digital assistants, iPhones, iPods etc. can now all access the Internet without any hassle. Wireless and mobile network provide the user with a better security than a satellite network, since, the signal as in a satellite network, does not travel as it is in the process of transfer. In case of wireless network the signal travels straight to the recipient. Wireless networking has made faster downloads possible, and as far as applications are concerned, such as, games, audio-video programs, chats, multimember chats, video-conference calls, navigation has become easier, making your computer more efficient.
When you set up a wireless network, you would be able to access Internet within a radius of 100 feet. This allows you the mobility, where you can move about in your office and access the Internet or your emails from either your laptop or WAP enabled mobile phone. Your personal computers, laptops are all already installed with wireless chipsets which allow you to connect to the Internet automatically. The Bluetooth in your mobile works on wireless connectivity, making your life easier with a wide range of new and advanced wireless gadgets, such as, wireless microphones, wireless headsets, wireless stereo speakers, computer peripherals, televisions.
Architecture:
With the advent of wireless connectivity, it has become an important tool in business and profession, making wireless networking a valuable asset for the modern world. WAN, which is the term used for Wireless local area networking, is a radio technology which provides super speed, unlike the cellular technology. The state-of-art technology standard, IEEE 802.11b offers a maximum speed of up to 11 Mbps. However, for a single user the technology provides a maximum through-put of 11 Mbps, in an average of 6.5 Mbps, while General Packet Radio (GPRS) provides a data rate of 172 kbps, typically 42 kbps, and the third-generation terminal offering to 2 Mbps, typically 144 kbps.
The wireless network and the Internet have started to converge globally. Worldwide Internet users have grown from 200 million to over 3 billion by the year 2008, and it is expected that during the same time wireless network users would grow by leaps and bounds from 300 million to over 2 billion. The market dynamics is now driving the business industries in the world towards packet based IP technology, which provides a new one-of-its-kind opportunity to the operators in providing variety of new customised services to mobile cellular subscribers.
The next generation will see the wireless packet based networking, which will be flexible in architecture, open, and standard based. The next generation of wireless network will facilitate easy migration from the present hierarchical circuit-switched technology to peer-to-peer packet-switched network. In the very near future wireless network would be able to take the true advantage of peer-to-peer networks and provide better facilities to the service providers.
Wi-Fi – IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN:
All the members of 802.11 family use over-the-air modulation that utilises the same basic protocol. Amongst the protocols, the ones defined by the 802.11b and 802.11g protocols are most popular, and these definitions are the ones which have been formed by changes made in the original ones. Though 802.11 was the first ever standard for wireless network, the protocol 802.11b was the first one which has been widely accepted. This acceptance is followed by the ones defined by 802.11g and 802.11n, where 802.11n is the new multi-streaming protocol and is still under a draft form.
The WLAN standard, IEEE 802.11, has a wide acceptance for several different environments existing today. The simplicity and rigidness of this technology are the two main characteristics which prove to be fail-proof due the distributed approach. IEEE 802.11 uses ISM band at 2.4 GHz, and it produces a data rate which can go upto 11 Mbps at wireless medium.
A higher data rate is achieved by the new version IEEE 802.11a with a through-put of 54 Mbps at the wireless medium by using the ODFM modulation technique. Quite recently the group, looking after IEEE 802.11, has managed to enhance the current 802.11 MAC protocol which supports applications with QoS (quality of Service) requirements. Efforts are on to standardise the enhancement of QoS functionality of WANs, which could bring about several opportunities for new multimedia applications in mobile and other portable devices.
