Tuesday, April 15, 2008

What is WiFi?

To find a general answer to "What is WiFi?" I searched using Google (search: WiFi technology) because I was looking for common knowledge on the topic and wondered what other sites would reference if searching for WiFi. I found an article that looks promising, but lacks recent updates.

www.itaa.org/isec/docs/innovation/wifiwhitepaper.pdf

The ITAA is the Information Technology Association of America which helps businesses and the government alike help configure different technologies. The site is funded by both the government and commercial industries.

The paper gives a careful definition of Wifi and provides some history of the technology. It also gives the strengths and weaknesses of WiFi, unlike sites who were trying to promote the technology. However, it would be more useful if the information was written recently. It was published in 2004.

Google also gave me a Wiki link which was really helpful for becoming familiar with technological terms, but was not credible enough for sources.

I also searched for images through Google Image and found a great one from The Washington Post that compares WiMAX to WiFi. It will be helpful for us to look into the differences between WiFi and WiMAX in the presentation, and what WiMax can do for municipal broadband. In addition, there is a pretty comprehensive Wiki about those differences.

Here is the image link.
www.washingtonpost.com/.../GR2007100900131.html

The search terms "Wifi technology" through Wikipedia also led me to a newspaper site about citywide wifi in London through the references at the bottom of the Wiki.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4578114.stm

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Hey Look!

Would you look at that? A new blog site. How spectacular.