The idea of a wireless LAN has always had a certain charm -- suggesting an end to the expense and inconvenience of running cable, and to users' whining about being tethered to their desks. And now, with wireless standards firming up, . . .
The idea of a wireless LAN has always had a certain charm -- suggesting an end to the expense and inconvenience of running cable, and to users' whining about being tethered to their desks. And now, with wireless standards firming up, throughput increasing and prices dropping, more and more IT managers are succumbing to temptation. In fact, Cahners In-Stat Group predicts that the wireless LAN market will grow 25 percent annually over the next few years, from $771 million last year to nearly $2.2 billion in 2004.

At the enterprise level, however, security is a major stumbling block. While the 802.11b wireless Ethernet standard includes several security measures that can lock down small installations, how well these measures scale to environments with tens of access points and hundreds of users is still unclear.

The link for this article located at NWC is no longer available.