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Staying mobile: how to stay connected when you''re on the move. (Hotspots).

Article Excerpt
Maintaining seamless roaming capabilities between various communication access methods, without ever losing connectivity to the network or experiencing any interruption of service, is essential for a successful wireless future.

Wireless technology is changing the way millions of computer users stay in touch, both in their offices and on the road. Many companies throughout the world are using private wireless LANs as extensions of their core communication strategies. As a result, productivity is improved because enterprise users are able to move about the corporate campus while maintaining their direct connections to core databases, shared applications, and collaborative communication links. Smaller companies and millions of individual users are also turning to WLAN technologies to tie together computer networks and connect to broadband access points.

External to the enterprise, operators, service providers, and site owners have begun rapidly rolling out public hotspots that provide fee-based wireless services. Aside from the advantage of providing Internet access, these services are increasingly focusing on much higher value-added services such as printing and localized online content in public locations such as airports, cafes, hotels, and conference centers.

Industry researcher Gartner Inc. estimates that by the end of 2003, 12.5 million business users will use WLAN hotspots, growing to 58 million in 2006.

In addition to building upon the expanding base of WLAN-equipped computer users, wireless hotspots can also leverage an even broader group by offering the same localized services to users with PDAs and cellphones.

However, as corporate and public WLANs continue to gain popularity and workforces become more mobile, moving between different network technologies and locations presents a number of new challenges. The majority of users can't and don't want to deal with the setup issues for accessing different wireless technologies such as 802.11b, and subsequent WLAN standards,...