Corporations often need more wide area network (WAN) bandwidth but are deterred by its high cost and slow speed. Pricing for these lines runs from hundreds to thousands of dollars per month, and typically the links deliver 1.5 mbps (megabits per second) of throughput. . . .
Corporations often need more wide area network (WAN) bandwidth but are deterred by its high cost and slow speed. Pricing for these lines runs from hundreds to thousands of dollars per month, and typically the links deliver 1.5 mbps (megabits per second) of throughput.

Now a small but growing number of firms are opting to use wireless LANs (WLANs) for their WAN links, because this option has no recurring monthly charge and provides up to 54M bps of bandwidth.

To date, this approach has been used only in select cases. "While WLANs Latest News about WLAN offer help to companies that need more WAN bandwidth, their use has been limited to corporations that have a few sites that are located close to one another," said Allen Nogee, a principal analyst with market research firm In-Stat/MDR, a division of Reed Elsevier.

Lower Cost, Faster Deploymen

The Town of Ocean City, Maryland fits that description. Sitting on an island that is about four miles wide and 10 miles long, the local government supports around 400 users in 17 diverse locations, ranging from a skateboard park to a police station. In the summer of 2002, the agency's WAN bandwidth requirements were growing as new applications, such as a Geographic Information System, emerged and large files traveled from place to place.