City wide Wi-Fi
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How to get free wifi with easy WIFI radar ! |
St. Cloud, Florida became the first city in the United States to offer city wide free Wi-Fi, although many others have plans to offer the service. Corpus Christi, Texas had offered free Wi-Fi until May 31, 2007 when the network was purchased by Earthlink. Philadelphia is also using Earthlink for its city wide Wi-Fi. New Orleans had free city wide Wi-Fi shortly after Hurricane Katrina. City wide Wi-Fi is available in nine cities in the UK, including Leeds, Manchester and London. Other cities, such as the Minneapolis metro area, have a large number of Wi-Fi hotspots so you can receive good signals anywhere, even if from different sources. In Europe, the City of Luxembourg has a city-wide Wi-Fi network.
Origin and meaning of the term "Wi-Fi"
Despite the similarity between the terms "Wi-Fi" and "Hi-Fi", statements reportedly made by Phil Belanger of the Wi-Fi Alliance contradict the conclusion that "Wi-Fi" stands for "Wireless Fidelity". According to Belanger, the Interbrand Corporation developed the brand "Wi-Fi" for the Wi-Fi Alliance to use to describe WLAN products that are based on the IEEE 802.11 standards. In Belanger's words, Wi-Fi and the yin yang style logo were invented by Interbrand. We [the founding members of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, now called as the Wi-Fi Alliance] hired Interbrand to come up with the name and logo that we could use for our interoperability seal and marketing efforts. We needed something that was a little catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'.
The Wi-Fi Alliance themselves invoked the term "Wireless Fidelity" with the marketing of a tag line "The Standard for Wireless Fidelity," but later removed the tag from their marketing. The Wi-Fi Alliance now seems to discourage the propagation of the notion that "Wi-Fi" stands for "Wireless Fidelity", but it has been referred to as such by the Wi-Fi Alliance in White Papers currently held in their knowledge base: "… a promising market for wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) network equipment." and "A Short History of WLANs." The association created the Wi-Fi logo to indicate that a product had been certified for interoperability. A public safety network is a wireless communications network used by emergency services organizations, such as police, fire and emergency medical services, to prevent or respond to incidents that harm or endanger persons or property.
Many municipalities are turning to mobile computing and other networked applications to improve the efficiency of their workforce, including public safety personnel and first responders. Consequently, public safety workers are increasingly being equipped with wireless laptops, handheld computers, and mobile video cameras to improve their efficiency, visibility, and ability to instantly collaborate with central command, coworkers and other agencies. Video surveillance cameras and unattended sensors are becoming important tools to extend the eyes and ears of public safety agencies. A pilot study along the US-Mexico border uses a wireless mesh network.
The need to access and share this vital new flow of data and images is driving investments in a new kind of network: broadband wireless mesh networks using Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and 4.9 GHz public safety radio frequencies.
These networks are metropolitan or regional in scope, can maintain connections with highly mobile workers, deliver large amounts of low-cost bandwidth with extremely high reliability, and support real-time video, voice and data.While the term wireless network may technically be used to refer to any type of network that is wireless, the term is most commonly used to refer to a telecommunications network whose interconnections between nodes is implemented without the use of wires, such as a computer network (which is a type of communications network).
Wireless telecommunications networks are generally implemented with some type of remote information transmission system that uses electromagnetic waves, such as radio waves, for the carrier and this implementation usually takes place at the physical level or "layer" of the network. A wireless LAN or WLAN is a wireless local area network, which is the linking of two or more computers without using wires. WLAN utilizes spread-spectrum or OFDM modulation technology based on radio waves to enable communication between devices in a limited area, also known as the basic service set. This gives users the mobility to move around within a broad coverage area and still be connected to the network.
For the home user, wireless has become popular due to ease of installation, and location freedom with the gaining popularity of laptops. Public businesses such as coffee shops or malls have begun to offer wireless access to their customers; some are even provided as a free service. Large wireless network projects are being put up in many major cities. Google is even providing a free service to Mountain View, California and has entered a bid to do the same for San Francisco. New York City has also begun a pilot program to cover all five boroughs of the city with wireless Internet access.
