WLANs Arrive on the Scene

With WLANs, finally a networking technology has been designed that matches the way people use laptops. It is likely that the large extant pre-existing population of potential users (i.e., laptop owners with spare PC Card slots) enabled the rapid adoption of WLAN technology as soon as the first “fast enough” (up to 11 Mbps) cards became cheap enough for mass-market adoption. Based on the rapid acceptance of these products, the market was clearly ready and waiting for them.

So, wireless has the edge in convenience, but will probably always fall short in terms of ultimate performance.[6] Luckily, in order to be successful, WLANs need not be fastest (or even as fast as wired LANs), just “fast enough to be useful.” The most ...

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