1.3 Wireless Networks

In 1970, the University of Hawaii created a wireless network called ALOHANET. Since then, wireless networking has come a long way. ALOHANET operated in the UHF range, and reached 4.8 Kbps, at which speed it could take half an hour to download a 1 MB file. Today, wireless LANs use frequencies of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and can reach speeds (after accounting for network overhead) of 20 Mbps, transferring that 1 MB file in a fraction of a second.