By Farhood Moslehi
Traditional networking technologies offer tremendous capabilities from an office or home via the Web. But, limitations to networking through the use of wired-based systems exist because you cannot utilize these network services unless you are physically connected to the system. As mobile computing becomes more prevalent, systems and applications must deal with scarcity of resources such as bandwidth. Mobile devices and wireless workstations should handle some of the work that has been traditionally carried-out by the network through techniques such as document partitioning. Dynamic documents can also be used to cache and prefetch documents while the network connection is not being utilized fully.
Meanwhile, the need for higher speed wireless connections is growing with multimedia rich contents on the World Wide Web (WWW). The IEEE 802.11 protocol and the Medium Access Control part of the protocol (DFWMAC) will allow wireless networks to operate at high data rates (1 to 20 Mbps). Furthermore, the 802.11 only effects the bottom two layers of the OSI's seven layered architecture; hence, through an access point (Router), wireless packets are routed to the Web.
Copyright © 1996 Farhood Moslehi, All Rights Reserved
Farhood Moslehi <moslehi@vt.edu>
Last modified: Dec 10, 1996