With the home rapidly becoming an extension of the workplace, consumers increasingly are turning to wireless home networking equipment as a way to keep connected. According to an IDC report, worldwide local area network shipments are expected to top 4 million in 2003, with Frost and Sullivan predicting the market to grow from $305.4 million in revenues in 1998, to more than $1.6 billion by 2005.
“Wireless, in our opinion, is particularly well suited for home networking, not only because of the prevalence of mobile computing devices, but also because of the ease of installation of a wireless local area network,” noted UBS Warburg L.L.C. in a recent report.
The competition
The competition for the wireless home networking market is reacting to this potential with claims by competing technologies of high data rates, easy interoperability and low cost. Those competitors include two 802.11 standards, HomeRF and to a lesser extent, Bluetooth.
The 802.11 standard, an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers standard for wireless local area networks, defines both the physical and medium access control protocols for wireless LANs. For wireless home networking, the standard includes both 802.11b and 802.11a.
The .11b standard currently enjoys support from a variety of manufacturers, and is offered by personal computer manufacturers Toshiba Corp. and IBM Corp. as additions to their PCs, and Apple through its AirPort wireless interface. The .11b standard uses the unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrum band and allows data transmission rates as high as 11 Megabits per second using a direct sequence transmission, with a range of approximately 300 feet.
Reaching beyond the home networking space, the .11b standard has recently been adopted by some airlines to provide wireless connections to travelers with wireless devices in airports across the country. This wireless connectivity will augment existing wired connections offered in many airports.
The toughest competitor for .11b in the home network market is HomeRF, which is supported by such companies as Intel Corp., Motorola Inc. and Proxim, and also uses the 2.4 GHz unlicensed spectrum band to provide a range of about 150 feet.
One of the shortcomings of HomeRF was recently addressed when the Federal Communications Commission ruled companies supporting the technology could increase the speed of data transmission from 2 Mbps to 10 Mbps.
FCC Chairman William Kennard said the rule change would “facilitate development of new high-speed data devices for business and consumer applications such as transmission of CD-quality audio and video streams from home PCs to portable devices.”
Likely delays
The Yankee Group, which in a recent report predicted .11b would win out as the wireless technology of choice in the home, noted that the competition between these two technologies could harm the home networking market.
“This ongoing battle between the HomeRF and supporters of IEEE 802.11b has only just begun, and given the large pocketbooks of companies on both sides it may continue for some time,” the report said. “The longer its does go on, however, the worse it is for the home networking market as a whole and especially for wireless in the home.”
Supporters of HomeRF are not so sure of .11b’s dominance, pointing out that a big advantage of HomeRF technology is its ability to handle voice transmission, along with data and voice capabilities.
“This characteristic of HomeRF is key for the technology to win the support of the broadband cable operators, in whose best interest it is to discourage the use of copper telephone wire,” noted UBS Warburg.
Proxim, which leads all wireless local area network vendors with 37 percent market share, also noted that HomeRF uses a frequency hopping technology that increases security and minimizes interference with other wireless protocols using the 2.4 GHz spectrum band, including cordless phones and microwave ovens, that are common in the home.
“Those frequency hopping capabilities really set HomeRF apart from 802.11b, said Jeff Orr, product manager for home networking at Proxim. “With its recent ruling upping the data transmission rate for HomeRF, the FCC has said it is up to the marketplace to decide which wireless networking standard is the best.”
Orr noted that even if customers in the past had implemented different technologies in their wireless networking environments, Proxim offers its Harmony wireless networking solution that embraced all current and future wireless LAN standards.
Todd Hanson, a senior networking and telecommunications analyst at Gartner Group’s Dataquest, said he sees the .11b and HomeRF standards as more complimentary than competing in their intended markets.
“802.11b is a logical transition from work to home,” Hanson said. “It is to expensive for low cost devices and makes more sense for work-based home networking. HomeRF is less costly than 802.11b and does not replicate a true work LAN experience.”
With .11b and HomeRF battling for the mainstream home networking market, .11a, supported by Radiata, is slowly positioning itself as the high-speed data transmission service. Radiata, which recently introduced its .11a-based “wireless engine,” said .11a is a natural progression from .11b offering bandwidth at up to 54 Mbps, and operating in the 5 GHz spectrum outside potential interference conflicts with other wireless networking systems.
Radiata also points out its .11a solution uses an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing technology designed for indoor wireless networks, which it claims is more robust than typical spread-spectrum technology.
While .11a seems to have plenty of performance advantages compared with .11b and HomeRF, cost of deployment and interoperability concerns have plagued development.
Radiata acknowledged the cost differential when compared to other home networking solutions, but said when comparing price with the speed potential, .11a comes out on top. As for interoperability, Radiata said it offers dual-band, dual-mode access points that will support both .11b and .11a.
“Those guys [Radiata] are very confident in their system. With interference concerns factored in, 802.11a seems like a pretty good technology,” said Hanson. “Unfortunately, we do not expect to see 802.11a chipsets for a while, and consumer devices using that technology are not expected for a few years.”
Bluetooth connections
Bluetooth has garnered plenty of buzz recently in the wireless connectivity market, with manufacturers announcing plans to introduce Bluetooth-enabled products later this year. Bluetooth uses the same 2.4 GHz spectrum band as .11b and HomeRF, but at data transmission rates of around 1 Mbps. Like HomeRF, Bluetooth also uses a frequency hopping technology to provide increased security and minimize interference with other wireless protocols, and offers a range of about 30 feet.
While Bluetooth has plenty of supporters in the wireless industry, most acknowledge its lack of speed and range will relegate Bluetooth to more of the personal area network market, as opposed to the local area network market.
“Bluetooth is more of a person-to-person technology,” explained Hanson. “We will see Bluetooth applications as more of a short-range cable replacement instead of a true home networking solution. It definitely has its place in the market due to its low cost, but its lower performance when compared to true wireless networking options will limit its implementation.”
