802.11b is a standard for wireless ethernet connections. Lucent calls it wavelan (although, did they just change the name?) and Apple calls it airport. Whatever the name, 802.11b allows you to set up short range wireless local area networks (LANs.) You plug one part (the base station) into your phone line (or DSL, or cable modem line) and the other part into your (portable) computer. Now you can move around your house, or out into the yard, and your computer will stay connected to the web by wirelessly talking with the base station. Cool. But even cooler is that you can set up multiple base stations, and if you have everything positioned correctly, your roaming portable computer will sense the different base stations as they come into range and automatically switch off (like cell phones - especially PCS phones - do when you are moving around.) So the question, then, is wouldn't it be cool if people (especially those living in densely populated urban areas) started blanketing certain regions with publically accessible 802.11b base stations. A free wireless internet could be built in the traditional decentralized grass roots way. Oh wait, people are already doing this.
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- jim 2-24-2001 3:47 pm