The Spirit of Wi-Fi
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Rf: Wi-Fi_Text Dt: 09-Jan-2003 The Spirit of Wi-Fi where it came from where it is today and where it is going by Cees Links Wi-Fi pioneer of the first hour All rights reserved, © 2002, 2003 Cees Links The Spirit of Wi-Fi Table of Contents 0. Preface...................................................................................................................................................1 1. Introduction..........................................................................................................................................4 2. The Roots of Wi-Fi: Wireless LANs...................................................................................................9 2.1 The product and application background: networking ..............................................................9 2.2 The business background: convergence of telecom and computers? ......................................14 2.3 The application background: computers and communications ...............................................21 3. The original idea (1987 – 1991).........................................................................................................26 3.1 The radio legislation in the US .................................................................................................26 3.2 Pioneers .....................................................................................................................................28 3.3 Product definition ......................................................................................................................30 3.4 Early marketing .........................................................................................................................34 3.5 Early sales efforts ......................................................................................................................35 3.6 Security ......................................................................................................................................39 3.7 Health risks ................................................................................................................................41 3.8 Developing new technology in a large organization ................................................................42 3.9 Summarizing the first period (1987 – 1991) .............................................................................45 4 The system and the world market (1991 – 1994).............................................................................47 4.1 An incomplete product ...............................................................................................................47 4.2 The market outside of the US ....................................................................................................50 4.3 Incompleteness at the marketing side .......................................................................................53 4.4 Reaching into the wired world ..................................................................................................56 4.5 OEM marketing .........................................................................................................................59 4.6 Getting the product right ...........................................................................................................62 4.7 Outdoor products .......................................................................................................................64 4.8 Related technologies creating opportunities and confusion ....................................................66 4.9 Summarizing the second period (1991 – 1994) .........................................................................69 5 The initial standardization (1995 – 1998).........................................................................................72 5.1 The early days of IEEE 802.11 .................................................................................................72 5.2 The original IEEE 802.11 MAC standard ................................................................................75 5.3 The standardization process in IEEE 802.11 ...........................................................................79 The Spirit of Wi-Fi 5.4 The original IEEE 802.11 PHY standard .................................................................................82 5.5 The Intellectual Property ownership in standards ...................................................................83 5.6 The forming of IEEE 802.11a and IEEE 802.11b ...................................................................86 5.7 European standardization: HIPERLAN/1 and HIPERLAN/2................................................91 5.8 What about IEEE 802.11g ........................................................................................................95 5.9 Bluetooth ....................................................................................................................................97 5.10 Summarizing the third period (1995 – 1998) ..........................................................................101 6 The breakthrough (1999 – 2000).....................................................................................................103 6.1 Wireless Local Loop ................................................................................................................103 6.2 The Apple Story .......................................................................................................................105 6.3 Others PC vendors following ...................................................................................................113 6.4 Networking companies catching on ........................................................................................115 6.5 WECA ......................................................................................................................................119 7 The hay days and beyond (2001 – 2002).........................................................................................121 7.1 Managing growth ....................................................................................................................121 7.2 New markets: Residential Gateways .......................................................................................123 7.3 New opportunities: hot-spots ...................................................................................................125 7.4 Over the top: trouble looming .................................................................................................128 7.5 The solution .............................................................................................................................129 8 The Future of Networking...............................................................................................................132 8.1 The telecom networking industry today ..................................................................................132 8.2 The consumer networking industry today ...............................................................................138 8.3 POTS versus VoIP ...................................................................................................................144 8.4 The Future of Networking ......................................................................................................147 8.5 Wireless Networking all over ...................................................................................................152 8.6 An additional but different viewpoint: telematics ...................................................................156 9 Epilogue ............................................................................................................................................157 The Spirit of Wi-Fi 0. Preface This book is about Wi-Fi, and where it all of a sudden came from. At least that is the way it looks: that it all of a sudden came up, despite the fact that it existed in the market already in its earlier forms since 1990. But it went by unnoticed until the email culture started to bloom, notebooks came up, and many of the telecom service providers started to launch the concept of wireless mobile Internet. This book is also about the differences between the telecom industry and the PC industry, about their backgrounds, and about the thorough misunderstandings they both had about the other’s market over the last three decades. Because of these misunderstandings billions of dollars (euros) have been wasted over the last few years on acquisitions and divestitures and finally on something that was called 3G. Actually quite a lot of these investments are still on the balance sheets of wireless telecom companies and will have to be written off, sooner or later… This book should be for generalists, not for specialists. About many of the subjects in this book the Internet can provide thorough information, neatly structured. This is a book that runs you through the subjects and events inside out, as I personally have worked them through, and as I have enjoyed them. I have tried to keep the technical content to a minimum, and at the conceptual level, to make this book accessible to a larger audience, that wants to understand the general concepts of new technology development and marketing through the example of wireless LANs. 1 The Spirit of Wi-Fi This book should also provide insight on the wireless Internet, and what can be