Features

The increased range and speed offered by future wireless networks will make them prime targets for security breaches. The appeal of using someone else's high-speed connection free of charge is obvious, and if bandwidth thieves can do this without having to park directly outside a house, so much the better. Providing users with better and clearer information about the importance of wireless security and how to set it up goes some way to solving the problem of network hijacking. To find out more about how to make your current wireless network more secure, see the 'Secure your WiFi Network' feature that appeared in Shopper, June 2007. A copy of this feature is included on this month's cover disc.

No new security features are planned for the n standard at this stage. The WiFi Alliance's official position is that extra security measures are unnecessary. According to the organisation, "WiFi-certified 802.11n Draft 2.0 products all support WiFi Protected Access (WPA2) security, which is the very latest generation of security and has never been 'cracked'. The 802.11n draft doesn't address security at all, since the current security protocol is still quite suitable to protect all Wi-Fi networks."

WiMAX

While WiFi is for local area networks (LANs), WiMAX is for metropolitan area networks. It's also known as wirelessMAN and has the standard number 802.16. As with the 802.11 standards, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the governing body that sets the 802.16 standard, but the WiMAX Forum certifies WiMAX products.

The most recent incarnation of this standard is 802.16e. WiMAX-certified products will conform to this

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standard. The latest Centrino platform, codenamed Santa Rosa, was supposed to support the e standard, but Intel dropped this. It is now planned to appear in the next version of the mobile platform, codenamed Montevina. Notebooks with both 802.16 and 802.11 networking should start to appear on the market by 2008.

However, WiMAX notebooks may still become available this year. WiMAX networks that conform to 802.16e have already been set up in South Korea, where it is called WiBRO. Notebooks that support WiBRO are currently being certified by the WiMAX Forum.

The first version of WiMAX came into being in the Isle of Man in June 2006, although it operated on a different frequency to the official WiMAX standard. The official frequency of 5.8GHz provides a reasonable 30km coverage range. This was recently boosted after Ofcom decided to allow ISPs to increase the power of their base stations from 2 to 4 watts, providing potential coverage of around 50km.

At the very least, WiMAX makes it possible to link together areas where cable laying is not practical, as its range of several kilometres is far greater than that of standard WiFi. This is great news for users in rural areas where traditional broadband services are not available. But it is even better for mobile users. WiMAX could completely change the type of applications available to mobile devices as bandwidth availability increases. It would make services such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) a far more enjoyable experience for mobile users.

There has already been massive interest in services such as voice over IP (VoIP), and this looks set to increase in popularity with the emergence of Voice over WiFi. Now that a large proportion of business-level mobile phones feature wireless connectivity, Skype and similar programs have also developed mobile versions. These enable users to take advantage of free phone calls on the move when they're in range of a wireless connection. But before technologies such as this can really take off, the number of free wireless hotspots available around the country will have to increase enormously. While there are certainly a few of these around at the moment, coverage is far from consistent across the nation, and paid-for hotspots are far more common.