Preface

From airport lounges and hotel meeting rooms to coffee shops and restaurants across the globe, a wireless world is being built for mobile professionals to stay connected.

IEEE Institute Magazine, July 2001

One of the most exciting developments amidst many exciting occurrences in the wireless world is the actual deployment of wireless personal area networks (WPANs), public access locations (PALs), and hotspot services. This book will focus on the pragmatic issues related to the deployment of inexpensive hotspot services, not the infinitude of Post Telephone and Telegraph wireless architectural alternatives and “chart-ware designs” offered by pre-telecom crash administrations and carriers. According to a Wall Street Journal article of July 26, 2002, “European mobile-phone companies are retreating from their investments in third-generation (3G) wireless technology . . . After spending more than $150 billion on 3G licenses and infrastructure, European operators have grown much less optimistic about potential returns of offering 3G services . . . Some of those . . . are likely to pull out or drastically reduce rollout costs to minimize their losses . . .”. Frankly, the alphabet soup for the near-infinitude of 2G, 2.5G, 2.75G, 2.82G, . . . 3G, 4G, 00 G variants and the 100 or so books on this topic, are, in our opinion, a deafening cacophany. We look at standards, technology, performance, security, the Internet and other forms of service delivery, end-to-end networking, and, of course, engineering and deployment. In addition, we will necessarily touch on some integration efforts such as broadband services, 2.5G/3G concepts, and Voice over IP (VoIP) over wireless. This book has been written with carriers, service providers, and enterprise environments in mind, where generating a positive bottom-line is of interest.

Chapter 1, “Introduction to Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs), Public Access Locations (PALs), and Hotspot Services,” maps WPAN, wireless local area network (WLAN), and wireless wide area network (WWAN) technologies to the market potential for these services. Chapter 2, “Standards for Hotspots,” discusses key standards applicable to hotspot services. Chapter 3, “Technologies for Hotspots,” covers each contributing technology in greater technical depth. Chapter 4, “Security Considerations for Hotspot Services,” addresses the critical issue of security, particularly given that there has been early negative press about the first-generation security systems in place. Chapter 5, “IEEE 802.11,” discusses in some detail the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard, while Chapter 6, “IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11a,” covers IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11a.

In Chapter 7, “Wireless Application Protocol (WAP),” we’ll consider the WAP protocol, a de facto standard that has been around for several years. Chapter 8, “Designing Nomadic and Hotspot Networks,” covers major considerations for designing networks, and Chapter 9, “Migrating to 3G WWANs,” concludes with a look at future directions in the short term.

Although hotspot technologies are neither unfamiliar nor exotic, I hope readers will find inspiration in the promise of these networks and new ways to think “outside the box.”

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Mr. Roy Daniel Rosner, CEO and founder of Global Nautical Networks, for his seminal help and assistance.

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for making direct and/or indirect contributions to this book:

D. Molta provided materials on security. His assistance is appreciated.

T. B. Zahariadis, K. G. Vaxevanakis, C. P. Tsantilas, and N. A. Zervos provided materials on 3G. Their assistance is also appreciated.

Ms. K. Getgen of RSA Security provided an insightful section of the issue of security in Chapter 4. Her assistance is much appreciated.

The author also wishes to thank Mr. Raymond Taluy, Cisco Systems, for his insightful help on a number of WLAN technology-related matters. The author also thanks Cisco Systems for inputs regarding the technology, particularly for Chapter 8.