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Coffee drives WLAN rollout
Friday, August 02 2002
by Matthew Clark


The rollout of public wireless LANs in the US will be driven, in part, by coffee,
claims a new report from Massachusetts-based research company IDC.

In its recently released report, "Bridging the Archipelago: US WLAN Hotspot
Forecast, 2002-2006," the company claims that by 2006 there will be nearly
42,000 locations around the US that will offer wireless public access to the
Internet. And despite the well-publicised failure of Internet access at coffee
retailer Starbucks, hotels and cafes will represent the lion's share of hotspots,
also called visitor-based networks (VBNs). Other locations such as libraries,
campuses, and even apartment buildings will also be significant contributors to
the growth of VBNs. 



In fact, IDC says that by 2006 around 5 million Americans will access the Net
wirelessly, mostly through laptops, at these quickly multiplying locations. "This
trend is expected to accelerate given that the PC manufacturers are leveraging
embedded wireless LAN as a way to sell more PCs in this increasingly difficult
market," claimed Keith Waryas, research manager in IDC's Wireless LAN service.



The research firm goes on to claim that as the cost of 802.11 hardware declines,
non-PC devices capable of accessing Wi-Fi networks will proliferate. In fact, the
company said that in the future, consumer electronic companies will get in on the
WLAN game, adding Wi-Fi functionality to items such as DSL/cable boxes, cameras
and radios. 



IDC's forecasts seem to jibe with what other research companies are saying about
the emerging industry. And although rollout is proceeding at an almost
astonishing pace in the US, there remains some question about the money-making
potential for the service. 



According to In-Stat/MDR, 2001 proved to be a brilliant year for WLAN
enthusiasts, who saw hardware shipments rise 175 percent as total end-use
revenues increased by 92 percent. But this year the numbers will fall, with
In-Stat/MDR predicting that business WLAN unit volumes will grow by only 60
percent. What's more, end-use revenues are expected to increase by a mere 7
percent, due to falling prices for 802.11b equipment and the lower-than-expected
prices of 802.11a products debuting on the market.



The In-Stat/MDR report went on to say that so far this year, Asia Pacific, led by
Japan and South Korea, has grabbed almost 25 percent of business WLAN unit
shipments, surpassing EMEA. Other figures show that Cisco dominated the business
WLAN market in terms of revenues in 2001. However, the research firm added that
the business WLAN landscape has shifted, as Agere and Buffalo & Linksys topped
Cisco in terms of unit shipments in the first quarter of 2002.   



And security concerns continue to abound. A new report from security intelligence
company iDefense pinpointed the 10 top concerns security professionals have about
wireless networks. Among these concerns were a lack of firewalls between wireless
and wired internal networks, a reliance on the standard Wired Equivalent Privacy
(WEP) encryption to protect Wi-Fi networks and access points that transmit Wi-Fi
signals to public places, like parking lots or adjacent buildings. 



"In one short stretch of mid-town Manhattan, we found that 77 of 106 wireless
networks we uncovered were wide open to intruders," said Brian Kelly, president
of iDefense and a veteran of the government information intelligence community.
"As with any technology, the human factor is the greatest risk for wireless
networks. Many organisations just install them out-of-the-box -- overlooking
important built-in security options and advertising how their systems are
configured."