Summary

Wireless penetration into the home is being driven by the adoption of broadband Internet access, which in turn was driven by trends toward more flexible work arrangements and also the simple desire for speedier access to the Internet. Conversely, people buying wireless LANs probably will upgrade to high-speed Internet access, simply because of the integration of the gateway and access point.

Corporations will, once they are comfortable with the emerging much improved security aspects of WLANs, adopt them rapidly due to the advantages of mobile computing. As this decade progresses, the speeds of wireless LANs will likely approach or exceed 1 Gbps (which sounds fast, until you realize that wired networks will by then be running at 100 Gbps or 1 Tbps). Within this decade, wireless technology will be able to support whole new classes of applications, including delay-sensitive traffic like Voice-over-IP, and bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media, for whom a little jitter is no big deal.

Eventually, wireless LANs will get fast enough that they will become the primary form of connectivity. Our grandchildren will look back at our wired devices the same way they'll look back on our gasoline-powered cars in the rear-view mirrors of their Hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles. Actually, the author doesn't expect that it will take that long for wireless to become the default form of "connectivity" (that term should become increasingly quaint as the years go by!).

The standards that are being written today are laying the foundation for this futuristic-sounding wireless world, and will form the basis of the next generation of network access and applications. The future is definitely wireless.