* The wireless year in review
There’s never a dull moment in the multi-faceted wireless industry, which embraces networks that scale from small, low-power personal-area networks to full-blown mobile WANs and broadband satellite networks.
As a refresher in some of the past years’ events, take a shot at answering the following questions. E-mail me your answers at joanie@jwexler.com by Jan. 12, and I’ll post the names of the top scorers in an upcoming newsletter.
1. Which wireless LAN switch start-up recently became the first to be acquired by a large telecommunications company?
2. Before announcing its intent to merge with Sprint PCS in December, what broadband wireless technology was Nextel testing as a possible next-generation platform?
3. What’s the minimum number of antennas needed to constitute a true Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system?
4. Name at least one architectural approach to reducing the costs and complexity of running cable from wiring closet switches to wireless access points.
5. How many individual customers do the newly merged Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless reportedly serve?
6. Name two vendors shipping 802.11a VoIP handsets.
7. Name at least two Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) types (used within the 802.1X authentication framework) that use mutual authentication to authenticate not only the supplicant (client) but also the access point (authenticator) to protect the client from associating to a rogue AP.
8. In what month did 802.16 (WiMAX)-standard products start shipping?
9. What is the minimum aggregate throughput that the forthcoming 802.11n standard will deliver?
10. In general, how do radio frequency identification (RFID) tags differ from bar codes?
11. What primary benefit does 802.11g have, compared to 802.11a?
12. What’s the primary downside of 802.11g, compared to 802.11a?
13. What is the basic purpose of emerging 802.15.4/ZigBee networks?
14. Which ever-emerging 802.11 standard extension – important for voice over WLANs – has been jokingly called “the standard that is 6 to 9 months away” for about the past 5 years?
15. Name the three industry partners working on merging WLANs, VoIP, and cellular networks since early 2003.
