Notoriously slow to use new technologies, hospitals, for example, are beginning to use Wi-Fi networks for phone calls. The new phones enable nurses to answer doctors' pages right away rather than run back to a nurse-station telephone.
In Florida, nurses use notebooks with Wi-Fi capabilities to check and update patients' charts faster, without having to walk back to a nurse's station to enter information. This saved time that was especially important during a nursing shortage last year, according to Gil Sturgis, a network services manager at an Orlando Hospital.
Hewlett-Packard, like other companies, refined and expanded its wireless products, after vertical customers experimented with the technology. Because of a project that involved a university, HP enabled its products to work with several other technologies. HP has also confronted important privacy issues in working on projects in the health care industry.
Standards take flight
Early products from established networking companies are leading to new standards that can be used throughout the wireless industry. Symbol, for instance, says it played a key role in the development of an international "roaming" standard for wireless networks while working on a project for an aircraft company that sought faster airport turnaround times for its planes.
Because countries use different bands of the radio spectrum, the aviation company was unable to transmit flight log information wirelessly from onboard computers to airports. The problem was solved with the development of a roaming standard known as 802.11d, which essentially tells systems which frequencies to use and when to send data.
Other standards that are making progress include 802.11e, which involves quality of service, and 802.11r, which is meant to improve the roaming of clients as they move from network to network.
Still, security remains "the front-and-centre obstacle to mainstream adoption," said Matthew Zanner, manager for HP's ProCurve Networking.
Some businesses have already become concerned about employees who bring in their own wireless hubs for convenience's sake -- either because their companies haven't yet gone wireless, or because they want to supplement the existing setup. Such "rogue," or unauthorised, access points can be insecure, giving outsiders access to the company network.
