WLAN to boom in 2007

Anywhere, anytime connectivity - that's the new business rule. Organizations are conducting business on the go. Companies need fast responses and want immediate results. Business environment is fast transforming with instant messaging, text paging, voice services, network access while traveling, and real-time network access in the office.

WLANs are now business-critical. This year the wireless networks, both WLANs and cellular data networks, are poised to get a lot more effective. Draft 2 of the IEEE 802.11n WLAN standard is expected to become final this year. Products based on the draft standard are expected to start appearing by mid 2007 and could have a major impact on enterprise backbone networks. These products, with throughput of 100 to 300Mbps, will be aimed first at the residential, home office and small-business markets, which already have been snapping up so-called pre-11n gear that began shipping in 2006.

At the enterprise level, however, the installation and management of WLAN services has proven to be very time consuming and expensive. As a result, engineers have been developing more efficient 'managed access' mobile solutions that are making WLAN more practical for use in enterprise applications. In addition, many of these technology advances are also in the process of migrating back into improvements for new-generation 'public access' hot spots and evolving unified SMB switching platforms.

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