The Mobile Office

TECHNOLOGY SETS WORKERS FREE Sven J. Vaughan-Nochols

Teleworkers, telecommuters, mobile workers. A new class of workers has come into existence. And these workers are part of new organizations - virtual corporations.

A host of new products is arising to serve this growing mobile market. The solutions - wired and wireless - generally allow workers to dial in to centrally located computers or networks via modems to forward and access information and to exchange messages.

The most truly mobile systems are wireless. But wireless connections are less available, less functional, and more expensive than wired solutions. Because of the bandwidth requirements and cost, fullblown access to graphical applications like the World-Wide Web via a wireless modem is not a widespread reality. Wireless e-mail is the most practical approach today (see "Wireless World," pg. 34).

Wired dial-in systems, on the other hand, allow users to access the Web via 9.6 Kbps, 14.4 Kbps, and 28.8 Kbps connections, as well as via ISDN lines at up to 128 Kbps. To allow mobile workers to dial in to the office server, companies generally set up routers with modem banks, much like Internet service providers.

Wired mobile systems require you to jack in to a telephone line somewhere - in a house, hotel, or remote office. Increasing numbers of hotels provide modem jacks in rooms, and the trend is now spreading to airplanes.

To dial in to the Net wirelessly or over wires, users need a portable computer, modem, communications software, Internet applications, and a network connection (via a phone line or wireless service). Following are some of the products available or under development to serve the growing army of telecommuting Internauts.

Some workers need to be more peripatetic than remote. Let's say you're accessing the Internet on the office LAN and your network administrator is going to burst into tears if he has to drag one more foot of cable through the place. In situations like this, you might want to consider one of a pair of wireless LAN technologies: infared and spread-spectrum radio.

Infrared, as the name implies, uses infrared light for network connections. The infrared advantage is that these devices are cheaper than spread-spectrum systems, albeit still not as cheap as standard network cards. Infrared's chief problem is that it can only work in line of sight. While you can play some tricks (such as bouncing off the ceiling), you can't get an infrared signal to go through a wall.

Spread-spectrum has no problem going through walls. It sends your Internet connection not through a single radio frequency but through an array of frequencies. Some systems hop about their assigned range of the radio bandwidth, which is called frequency hopping. Others march up and down their assigned frequencies using the faster direct-sequence spreadspectrum (DSSS) technique.

A problem both technologies have in common is slowness. Infrared technology can reach the breakneck speed of 3 Mbps with the right equipment. Spreadspectrum tops out at 2 Mbps. That may sound fast if you're stuck in the 14.4- Kbps lane, but it's painfully slow compared with Ethernet's standard 10 Mbps.

Why bother with these technologies? Well, for applications like e-mail and newsgroups, 3 Mbps is just fine. Moreover, there are situations in which wireless technologies have the advantage over their faster copper-bound cousins.

Some circumstance in which wireless works better are obvious. If you've just moved into an office where the physical structure doesn't permit dragging the Ethemet cable through conduits, wireless may be the only real option. If your business is in a state of flux with desktop systems moving every few months, you may want to save yourself the wear and tear of constantly shifting cable. There's also a lot to be said for being able to move workstations hither and yon without worrying about dragging your cable behind you.

Wireless is no cure-all solution, though. Even if you can live with the speed, wireless network adapters still cost more than their wired equivalents. A spread-specctnum card, for instance, will run about $600-about four times the price of a standard network interface card (NIC), Interoperability is also a real concern. For most practical purposes, you can't mix NICS from different vendors. All that said, wireless LANS can still be the right answer for some users.

Spread spcctrum doesn't have to be limited to LANS, One company that's been exploring the possibilities of TCP/IP networking sans wires on a bigger scale is Tetherless Access Ltd. (TAL).

TAL proposes to combine spreadlack of expense (see "Wireless World,' Pg. 34). Instead of mere yards, TAL İs looking towards deploying networks with single link ranges of up to 18 miles. The speed, which should be in the 64- Kbps ballpark, isn't going to keep wired ATM and frame-relay vendors awake at night. Still, companies that need wideranging networks but can't pursue a wired solution should give TAL's services serious thought.

TAL is only now making the transition from pilot projects to commercial reality. That said, TAL is no fly-by-night firm with high-technology dreams and call (510) 814-3900. corporate nightmares. Want to know more? Hop over to http://www.tetherless. net/home.html.

The mobile market is hot, and new offerings are popping up everywhere. IBM recently introduced three wireless modems and a LAN/modem system that enables mobile workers to connect to existing wired LANS wirelessly. IBM's new modems are the Wireless Modem for Cellular/CDPD ($1,095), for Ardis ($995), and for Mobitex ($795). The new IBM LAN solution consists of the PC Card Adaptor for laptops ($445) and the Wireless LAN Entry 8227 Access Point unit ($1,350) for sending and receiving signals.

MCI just launched its XstreamAir service that enables mobile workers to access the Internet from laptops via cellular phone accounts. The service is priced at an average of eight cents per minute for XstreamAir, plus regular services charges for the cellular call.

ETE Inc., in San Diego, Calif., has debuted a line of wireless software and hardware systems, including a toolkit for wireless cross-platform software development and its Apple Newton Communicator system that offers Ardis, RAM Mobile Data, and cellular phone data/fax modem options, For more information, call (619) 793-5400.

Ora Electronics (818-772-2700) sells a Cellular/Data Link that lets you commute portably and wirelessly by connecting a portable computer to a cellular phone. It's a mouse-shaped device that sits between your phone and modem.

Another new company offering remote access products for mobile Unix users. You can test drive TribeLink8 on the Web at http:/www.tribe.com. The company's TribeLink2 servers connect two offices networks in difference locations using IP routing. For more info, contact [email protected] or

Mobile Internet links also are spreading to airplanes. Continental Airlines has joined a growing number of airlines buying into the FlightLink program, a technology from In-Flight Phones Corp. that allows airline passengers to connect to the Internet from a computer screen on the back of the airplane seat. Nine Continental planes are equipped with the devices and the airline says it plans to install FlightLink in 183 of its planes by the end of the year.

To connect to the Net when you're five hundred miles from home, consider wireless Internet e-mail. The main two players in this fields are RadioMail and Datalink International (see "Wireless World").

RadioMail Corp.'s newest pride and joy is RadioMail Connection for Windows. This program accesses Internet e-mail via any of several differ. ent brands of wireless modems with either the RAM Mobile Data or ARDIS wireless network.

Whenever you're in range of an appropriate service, RadioMail starts sending out your messages and polling for incoming mail on its own. You can go on about you business without trying to micromanage your net e-mail.

Datalink, on the other hand, uses the Mobitex UHF data network to let you keep in touch. To use Datalink, you'll need an Ericsson radio modem and either a PC or a Mac. At $595 for the modem, plus the network services fee, the service is well worth the prices for Net users on the go. While not quite as feature-rich as RadioMail, Datalink is a strong technology on its own right.

A smaller but still interesting player in the field is Wynd Communication Corp. Its WyndMail for Windows service combines Internet access with pager and other telephony services. With WyndMail, the emphasis is on managing Internet Corp. Its WyndMail for Windows service mail. For example, your alphanumeric pager could alert you that an important message had arrived. You could then arrange via a telephone to have it forwarded to the nearest fax machine.

In the near-future, we can expect to see other Net services via cellular systems. The Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) and Circuit Switched Channel (CDC) standards are both making it possible for Intermet programs to operate over the cellular airways.

What do you do if you're stuck in the boondocks and there's no nearby Internet provider? Even the online services aren't a local call away for many suburban inhabitants-and let's not even talk about the access options for people in the country. Soon, however, even people in the backwoods may have local Internet services, from 435 miles straight up.

Two companies trying to bring this to you are Teledesic Corp. and Hughes Network Systems. Teledesic is a venture of Microsoft's Bill Gates and Craig McCaw, a major power in the cellular world (see "Wireless World"), In theory, Teledesic would be operational by the vear 2,000. Government red-tape may push the opening date well into the 21st century. For more info, call Teledesic at (206) 803-1400.

Hughes Network Systems, however, isn't forcing its way through the muck of governmental bureaucracy and the daunting prospect of an almost 1,000-plus satellite network. Indeed, Hughes has already gotten off the ground. One reason that Hughes has been successful is that the DirecPC program was meant to use offthe-shelf technologies.

DirecPC, for example, uses a 24 inch Ku-band satellite dish that doesn't look very different from today's smaller DirecTV television satellite dishes. The antenna hooks directly to PCs with a 16-bit expansion card. The entire combo is called Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT). With this system you can expect to see "incoming" data throughput of 12 Mbps.

You may think that's great, but look back over that last sentence again. Notice the word incoming?" You'll be getting Web graphics and huge FTP files at better than local Ethernet speeds, but you'll be sending information out at either normal modem or ISDN speeds. In other words, DirecPC is great if you're an Internet user, but if you want to host a Web page or run a Gopher site, it's not really an attractive option. For more info, call Hughes Network Systems at (301) 428-7113.

If you can wait, Hughes plans to launch its Spaceway Interactive satellite system in 1998. Spaceway will give you high-speed two-way satellite links.

We're not in a wireless Internet world yet. The day is coming, however, when you'll be able to walk around anywhere with your personal digital assistant (PDA) slate under one arm and never be out of touch with the Internet. The promise of today's wireless Internet resources is that we will soon see a world where the Internet is as ubiquitous as the radio.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (sjvn@ access.digex.net) is a freelance writer who specializes in the Internet and online services.