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.