On the growth highway

Higher awareness, and lower prices ensure widespread wireless adoption. But
QoS and security concerns still remain

It's boom time for wireless in India as more and more enterprises get
hooked to it, provide notebooks to their employees and enable WLAN to ensure
better productivity and efficiency.

Restricted to certain vertical markets until recently, there is now rapid
adoption among the hospitality, manufacturing, banking and financial
institu-tions, large corporates and the SMB/SOHO segments. And the technology
isn't limited to business-use only; it is finding traction among the
home-networking segment as well. Business Development Mana-ger for Enterprise
with Cisco Systems, India and SAARC, Suprabhat Chatterjee says,
"Enterprises have their LAN in place and have to only invest in access
points to expand into a wireless network. Since the initial set-up cost is
minimal, there is quicker adoption of this technology."

A very important growth driver is the reduction in notebook prices in the
Indian market, says Paramjit Singh Puri, Pronto Network's head for APAC and
India. "The note-book is not viewed as an exclu-sive product anymore and
has made its entry into the sales and marketing segment in enterprises. There is
higher notebooks penetration at affo-rdable costs, and notebooks being shipped
are also Wi-Fi enabled, providing complete mobility to users. Availability of
public hotspots and the reduction in bandwidth costs are definite growth
drivers. In India, bandwidth costs are very high, and this is preventing mass
penetration. Once the prices come down, there will be a greater rate of
adoption."

Numerous other gadgets like handhelds, PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras,
all-in-ones, MP3 players, video-on-demand etc, will be Wi-Fi enabled and the
adoption of these devices will act as a growth driver for the younger
generation.

For Wi-Fi to succeed in an enterprise environment, two things are required-one,
the ability of the technology to handle multiple and complex applications and
two, availabi-lity of speeds akin to a wired network. All standards comple-ment
each other. Therefore, enterprises need to adopt a standard that best suits its
needs and the requirements of the users.

"Enterprise users are still much on 802.11b because to upgrade to
802.11g, significant upfront hardware costs need to be considered. Think about
the access points that need to be upgraded to enjoy the 802.11g speeds. The key
drivers will be improved-speed, coverage and security, in the next generation
WLAN products," says Louis Lye, Territory Manager, Asia Pacific, Belkin
Corporation.

QoS challenge

Quality of Service (QoS) issues abound since QoS technologies provide the
building blocks for business multimedia and voice applica-tions used in campus,
WAN, and service provider networks and also allows network mana-gers to
establish service-level agreements (SLAs) with their network users. One of the
limi-tations is that the frequency for 802.11b and 802.11g is highly prone to
interference. The sec-ond limitation would be when notebooks are configured with
a default setting and the user may have to change settings each time to connect
to a public hotspot.

Many organizations have been reluctant to deploy exten-sive WLANs because
manage-ment tools were weak or none-xistent, and WLAN manage-ment was labor
intensive. Although the capital cost of a wireless network is low, without
proper management framework, operational costs of large WLANs, in terms of
man-hours required, can get very high.

Additionally, enterprise networks also need other QoS features to separate
and control data, voice, and video traffic, such that the network can prioritize
and queue packets based on the need," Chatterjee explains.

Threat perception

No less a challenge is secu-rity, especially for network administrators and
informa-tion security administrators. Unlike the relative simplicity of wired
Ethernet deployments, 802.11-based wireless LANs broadcast radio-frequency (RF)
data for the client stations. This presents new and complex security issues that
involve augmenting the 802.11 stan-dard, says Chatterjee.

To help address this gap in WLANs, the IEEE 802.11 Working Group instituted
'Task Group I' to produce a security upgrade for the 802.11 standard.
"802.11i is building the standard aro-und 802.1X port-based authentication
for user and device authentication. The 802.11i standard, which isn't expected
to be completed until later this year, includes two main developments: Wi-Fi
Protected Access (WPA) and Robust Security Network (RSN). The IP Sec uses
encryption technology to provide data confidentiality, integrity, and
authenticity between users in a private network. These tools are used to protect
confidential data that is transferred when users either upload or down-load
information through WLAN," Puri explains.

Constant end user education through IT publications and newsletters are
required to handle fears regarding security. Real life scenario displays on how
easy it is to tap onto an unsecured wireless network on the vendors' websites
would be beneficial as well. This is because that is the first place potential
end users will visit when they want to find out more about a certain brand of
wireless networking gear.

Mix and Match?

Now that the IEEE 802.11b standard is popular, many vendors are offering
products based on this. But are vendors offering WLANs that combine different
standards? Vendors are now working towards ensuring that various stan-dards can
speak to each other, so that the customer gets the maximum return from his
inve-stment in wireless networking. Due to the decreasing costs of b/g and a/b/g
chips, more ven-dors are combining standards to give the users better value for
their money.

Vendors are providing products that are 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g
compa-tible. However, interoperability between 802.11a and 802.11b is difficult,
as the operating frequency range is totally different. "There will be a
requirement for two separate radios to handle this and it will only increase
costs. There will be price increases as most vendors will not be willing to take
that risk. Since the current 802.11 systems are being improved, there will
definitely be an improved system that will co-exist, but when newer generations
of technology evolve, the existing ones will eventually be phased out. As long
as the underlying protocol is the same, only additional fea-tures will be
offered," says Puri.

Team DQ

Technology

Key drivers for next generation WLAN products

• Convergence of voice application over data on the wireless environment
  (Voice over WLAN)
• Employee productivity improvements
• Adoption of wireless across newer devices
• Commercialization of hotspots, and large service providers showing
  interest in this business.
• Further enhancing the security over wireless networks

Performance anomalies in 802.11 standards

• 802.11a standard offers faster network speeds than 802.11b, but is
  incompatible with 802.11b.
• 802.11g is compatible with 802.11b and has faster network speeds, but may
  not support as many access points to networks in crowded environments as the
  802.11a standard can.
• 802.11b gives a theoretical 11 Mbps, and a real-world 4-5 Mbps; 802.11g
  gives a maximum of 54 Mbps or 20-25 Mbps while 802.11a band can give speeds
  up to 54 Mbps in the 5 GHz band.