The number of announcements of wireless deployments for everything from municipal networks to industrial applications to home networking is beginning to make for crowded airspace these days. A tour through any neighborhood with a halfway-decent wardriving setup tells you two things. First, there are a lot of home wireless networks set up. Second, they are not using the channel space very well.

I found this out firsthand when I recently had to reconfigure the base stations in my house to use channels that did not collide with my neighbors. I was finally forced to give up and set up an 802.11a base station. I had planned for such a day and made sure that both my wife's laptop and mine had 802.11a/b/g capability.

Expansion space for ISM networking such as 802.11 is going to be even more important as multimedia wireless networks become popular. There are plans to expand the allocations, as described in a recent EE Times article, but for now I think it will begin to force more people into the 5 GHz space. Theoretically the MIMO technology in 802.11n will also help by directing signal intelligently, but we shall see...

Larry Mittag