Gerry Blackwell

Ask Doug Jackson why he installed wireless LAN security gateways at the University of Texas at Dallas last year and his answer is blunt and simple. "Students," says Jackson, who is the university’s director of technology customer services. "We have large engineering and computer science programs," he goes on to explain. "And [these students] are […]

There is something about the disruptive capabilities of wireless networking, especially Wi-Fi networking, something about the prospect of being able to use the technology to mount stealth attacks on established businesses, that turns on entrepreneurs. Just about anyone who knows anything about the technology has probably daydreamed ideas for new ventures that exploit it. It […]

WiFi hotspots are hot these days and hotels are hot spot hotbeds as we saw in our recent look at of lodging industry Internet systems integrator RoomLinX of Vancouver, Canada. The old model of third parties installing high-speed wired or wireless Internet networks in hotels and then sharing revenues from guest fees with the hotel […]

Wireless ISPs are responding to a call to action and peppering the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with often-angry comments on a proposed new rulemaking that would force WISPs to collect contributions for the Universal Service Fund (USF) — which in turn would increase costs for their customers. Competitive telephone service providers currently collect USF contributions […]

Wireless video distribution – sending multiple high-quality video streams to terminals around a home or even an airport or conference center – could be the wireless LAN killer app of tomorrow. And ViXS Systems Inc., a fabless semiconductor and software solutions start-up based in Toronto, Canada and Austin TX, hopes to cash in big time. […]

How secure does your enterprise wireless LAN have to be? We’re guessing that if it was as secure a U.S. Army battlefield network, you’d be satisfied. Are we right? The Army has decided that 802.11b networks are secure enough to carry Sensitive But Unclassified (SUB) data – if they’re protected by add-on security technology that […]

Voice over WLAN, an application with a high gee-whiz quotient if nothing else, has yet to really capture the imaginations of enterprise users, or vendors for that matter. The reasons are perhaps not hard to find. The case for running voice over a 100-Mbps fast Ethernet wired LAN is not difficult to make. In most […]

The broadband wireless hotspot business is a little like real estate. Three things matter: location, location and location. And after airports, the hottest locations for wireless hotspots are hotels. But judging by the soul searching going on at White Plains NY-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (www.starwood.com), hotels may not be the slam dunk for […]

The trouble with being a wireless pioneer is that sometimes it means you make your move too soon. Three years ago when Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto received a huge anonymous grant earmarked for “improving patient care,” it decided to spend the money on overhauling the way patients and staff communicate. The hospital, an 18-floor, […]

Movie star Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival has always pushed the envelope artistically, and with technology too. The event, held every January in Park City UT, a ski town near Redford’s ranch, now includes a parallel online festival of short digital films, for example. This year, in a project that could serve as model and […]

Homeland security has suddenly become a hot button and security technology companies like Norcross GA-based Axcess Inc. (www.axcess.com) are hoping it produces a bonanza. WLAN systems integrators might be able to grab a piece of the action too if they learn how to deploy innovative Wi-Fi-enabled remote video monitoring systems from Axcess – or develop […]

MeshNetworks Inc. (www.meshnetworks.com) aims to turn the wireless world on its ear. In its vision of WLANs and wireless access networks of the very near future, MeshNetworks sees every client device also becoming a relay point or router for network traffic. One immediate benefit is that such networks can in effect see around corners. Even […]