WLANs: What Does the Future Hold?

[Brad Isaac]

If you are like me you wonder when you will be able to upgrade your WiFi enabled Pocket PC from 802.11b to a newer faster protocol. To do so, means one waiting on the hardware manufacturers to bump up the cards/modules, the other is to wait on the WLAN industry to figure out which way they will be going with the WiFi strategy in the near future. Will it be WiMax? 802.11Q?
eWeek has an interview with a couple of WiFi insiders to try and get an idea of what our Wireless LANs have in store for us in the future.
"Last year, the WLAN industry was divided mostly between vendors that sell central switches and scaled-down access points and those that keep intelligence in so-called fat access points. This year, the lines are less clearly defined. In interviews at the NetWorld+Interop show in Las Vegas earlier this month, eWEEK Senior Editor Carmen Nobel spoke with industry executives who come at 802.11-based wireless LANs from different angles to see what the future holds.
In the hot seat were Craig Barratt, CEO of WLAN chip-set manufacturer Atheros Communications Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif.; Bill Rossi, vice president and general manager of the wireless networking business unit at Cisco Systems Inc., of San Jose, Calif.; William Nuti, CEO of Symbol Technologies Inc., of Holtsville, N.Y., and a Cisco veteran; and Don LeBeau, another former Cisco executive who recently took the helm as CEO of WLAN switching startup Aruba Wireless Networks Inc., also based in San Jose."
Any particular WiFi technology you are rooting for?