Comment Articles

Wireless LANs - prepare for confusion

Peter Judge AnchorDesk

Published: 05 Mar 2002 10:01 GMT

Wireless LANs should be so simple. It is now easy to send data at decent rates anywhere in the average house or small office, using cheap, simple kit. Unfortunately radio presents endless possibilities for confusion and the vendors seem to be rising to the occasion yet again.

Let's first reiterate: wireless networking really IS simple. 802.11b is a solid standard, the products work, and what is more they interoperate and are cheap -- see our comparative review for confirmation of that. For the kind of use you are likely to put it to in a small office, the bandwidth (11 megabits per second (mbps) theoretically, in practical terms at least half that) is plenty. It is way higher than the bandwidth of whatever broadband connection you may have. There's no good reason not to be trying it out now.

But let's look at the complications. First of all, existing wireless LANs are not secure enough. There is security but mostly it isn't turned on. And the security that exists is potentially breakable -- if you have anything that is worth breaking in for.

This is a serious objection. There are ways to keep WLANs secure -- if all else fails, using VPNs. This particular complication is something you should think about -- but security is something you should think about in ANY network.

In the longer term, there is another confusion in the offing, which might put some users off. The industry is working on making faster WLANs and has come up with two distinct answers. Both promise speeds up to 54mbps. The question is -- what will come next, 802.11a or 802.11g? Both are descendants of the current 802.11b finalised within the IEEE's 802.11 wireless networking standards group (and yes, these standards guys clearly don't know their abc, or are picking letters at random purely to confuse us).