Someday, all computing devices will include an embedded wireless network interface. But today, despite high-profile industry efforts to promote the benefits of wireless mobility, the Wireless LAN market is mostly about add-ons.
Nearly every enterprise wireless network deployment involves equipping a range of existing computing devices with wireless NICs and, though these products sell for close to commodity pricing, multiple competitive differentiators still exist. The most popular wireless standard is the 802.11b/Wi-Fi WLAN interface, but WLAN NICs conforming to newer standards, including 802.11a and 802.11g, are also gaining market share, as are NICs that support multiple standards concurrently.
The label on a wireless NIC may say very little about what's inside. Many vendors, particularly those targeting the consumer and SOHO (small office/home office) markets, acquire product from original design manufacturers. These ODMs deliver a generic hardware and software platform that can be customized with a vendor's brand name. The vendor can add little more than labeling, customized installation and client utilities, or enhancements to drivers and the underlying hardware.
It Starts With the Chips
Only a few manufacturers supply the chips that reside in wireless NICs. Every wireless NIC must have a high-speed radio modem to manage transmission and reception, as well as a baseband processor responsible for digital functions, including all the framing and access that take place at the MAC (Media Access Control) layer.
Although it was once common for ODMs to combine different chips from multiple suppliers, the trend today is toward integrated chipsets. Atheros Communications, Broadcom, Intersil and other wireless semiconductor vendors promote packages, increasing competition among wireless chip developers. This translates into enhanced functionality at lower prices. Chipmakers develop reference designs that include both hardware and software marketed to multiple ODMs.
WLAN NIC Checklist
1) Driver availability for required OSs
2) Compatibility with WLAN standards: 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g
3) Suitable performance and range
characteristics
4) Value-added features for survey and monitoring, security and diagnostics
From an enterprise perspective, the role of the chip vendor and ODM is arguably more important than the role of the supplier, because fundamental functionality usually resides in the hardware. Although it is possible to add functionality via software, the results often mean a substantial performance hit. For example, in the early days of 802.11, some cards that performed WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption using software took a performance hit. And some differentiators--antenna quality and radio receiver sensitivity--are almost exclusively hardware.
Some chip suppliers may claim better range or better power efficiency, but as the market matures and engineering knowledge diffuses, product differentiation becomes more challenging. It's not uncommon for vendors to resort to proprietary features. An example is the turbo-mode offered on some 802.11a products, which binds two 802.11a channels together to double the raw data rate.
The most recent area of differentiation is multiband and multimode capabilities. The first products to provide these capabilities were those that supported both 802.11b and 802.11a. Newer products support 11a, 11b and 11g. Multimode products provide long-term flexibility, but you'll pay for that benefit. For example, a major online retailer lists Proxim's Orinoco Gold WLAN NIC 802.11b card for $60 and its trimode card for $99.
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