The endorsement of Atheros' wireless LAN technology by such industry players as Card Access, Intermec, Proxim, TDK, and Xircom comes only weeks after the company closed on its third round of financing to the tune of $66.7 million.

The emergence of a 5-GHz option somewhat sooner than many had expected has cast doubt on the viability of current 802.11b implementations at 11 Mbits/s, as well as on the relevance of the 802.11g IEEE Working Group, which is striving to increase the data rate in the 2.45-GHz band to 22 Mbits/s and beyond. That group is meeting next week to, among other things, try to decide between Intersil Corp.'s multicarrier proposal or Texas Instruments Inc.'s single-carrier proposal for those higher data rates. A third option, from Supergold Communications Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland) was ejected at the Working Group's March meeting in Hilton Head, N.C.

The Group will also be continuing its ongoing efforts to shore up the 802.11 media-access control (MAC) layer's security and quality-of-service capabilities, both of which have come under fire recently.

"We're very excited to have those five companies as part of our Premier Partners Program," said Rich Redelfs, president and chief executive officer of Atheros, based in Sunnyvale, Calif. The Program is Atheros' newly announced initiative, which invites industry leaders to partner with it to develop, build and market the next generation of wireless local-area network (WLAN) systems based on the IEEE 802.11a standard and using, of course, Atheros' Radio-on-a-Chip technology. "We're particular excited about Xircom's entry," added Redelfs, "as Xircom was bought by Intel — which is working on 5-GHz solutions."

Only game in town

For those OEMs about to enter the 5-GHz market, Atheros is really the only game in town. Radiata Inc., which announced its 5-GHz chip set at the same time as Atheros last year, has since been bought by Cisco Systems Inc. and its chip set has remained under wraps ever since. Intersil and Agere Systems Inc. are also working on a 5-GHz option, as are startups such as Envara Inc. But to date, none have stepped up as a viable alternative to Atheros.

"We polled all the available options, but opted for Atheros, as the real value-add in wireless right now is at the MAC layer and higher-level software," said Greg Smith, vice president of the wireless product division at Intermec Technologies Corp. "We wanted to have access to the MAC layer to make changes to it as security and quality-of-service features get added to the specification — the Atheros chip gives us that."

Smith also liked the fact that the Atheros solution was only two chips. "Most others have three to five chips," he said. "The AR5000 offers higher integration — and still CMOS VLSI technology."

Originally starting out as a player in the automated data-collection industry, Intermec (Everett, Wash.) has since evolved into what Smith called "the best-kept secret in wireless," thanks to its relatively low profile and the wealth of WLAN deployment services and technologies for the enterprise, small office and campuses.

The company plans to integrate the .11a option into its current line of access points (APs), with a dual .11a/.11b radio option for situations where there is already an installed .11b base. "We don't want to send the message to IT managers that they messed up and bought the last generation and now they have to rip it all out," said Smith. "Our dual .11b/.11a radios will allow them to go wireless now with .11b and then install .11a in the future." He expects Intermec's .11a option to become available around September "for a price similar to our .11b offerings," said Smith. The PC Card will be around $100 and the AP will be in the $895 range, he said.

Proxim Inc. too will offer a dual-radio option. Agere already does that in its Orinoco AS-2000 Access Server line, which currently has two .11b radio beds. According to a company spokesman, the dual radios for now give the installed customer base twice the bandwidth, but as Agere rolls its own .11a solution, it will also allow its customers to migrate smoothly.

According to Lynn Chroust, director of the commercial networks business unit at Proxim (Sunnyvale), the emergence of .11a won't have an overnight replacement effect on .11b. "We see it like the wired network is today, with many different options depending on the applications — not all of which will need the 54 Mbits/s offered by .11a," she said.

While .11a does offer higher data rates, its operation in the 5-GHz range has many pundits believing that the laws of physics will limit the technology's range and penetration through walls and other objects. "Yes, this is a factor," said Chroust, "but studies have shown that at any given range, .11a will always be as good as or better than .11b."

As for the 802.11g Working Group's work on a 22-Mbit/s rate, Chroust questioned its relevance. "That standard hasn't even been selected yet, and it'll be nine months at least after that before products appear on the market," she said. "We're not sure it'll have an impact."

Proxim plans to integrate .11a into its Harmony line, which already supports the standard through its .11b foundation. Pricing, again, is expected to be similar to what the company is charging for its .11b offerings, with PC Cards going for $199 and APs going for $599.

Crack is wack

Security for .11b WLANs came under heavy fire recently when researchers at Berkeley announced that they had "cracked" the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol used for .11b. Since then it has come under close scrutiny, though the 802.11e Working Group had long been aware of the protocol's shortcomings and was well into the process of making modifications.

Nonetheless, rumors have since circulated about hackers running around with antennas and tapping into corporate networks. Those were quickly dispelled by David Cohen, wireless product manager for 3Com Corp., chairman of the Wi-Fi 802.11b interoperability and certification group — which is also planning to certify .11a products as more devices become available.

"The Berkeley 'cracking' was a purely theoretical analysis," Cohen said. "The WEP protocol is much more difficult to crack than they make out," he said, pointing out that "many only get as far as seeing the server, but can't actually get access to the network."

Cohen also pointed out that the biggest security risk comes from IT managers and other users not actually enabling security in the first place.

"The network components come with security disabled," he said. "That way, the IT department can work on getting the network up and running first, then security can be added once that's accomplished. Unfortunately, they often forget to enable it afterward and then blame the devices and the vendor. That's a point we really want to get out to them."

Proxim's Chroust agreed, and added that "along with forgetting to enable security, customers also find that the network operates slower than they expected. They don't realize that there are many tools out there that are designed to greatly improve throughput from the initial turn-on state."