Narrowcom To Unveil Wi-FiBASE-T

The wireless LAN market is unusual in enterprise IT: It deals primarily with end users and features an unreliable physical medium, and getting a wireless design right requires experience beyond what most systems administrators posses. But all that is about to change, as leading WLAN chipmaker Narrowcom unveils Wi-FiBASE-T, a wired variant of the familiar protocol. By leveraging commodity Ethernet hardware, Wi-FiBASE-T reduces cost and improves reliability and performance. The initial wave of products should be released around the first of April.

Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous as a client connection medium. The majority of end user connectivity relies on 2.4GHz 802.11g, and the technology has matured to the point where it works reliably, if not predictably. Although the average coffee shop or Chicago-area airport is easily overwhelmed by just a few Wi-Fi users, wireless engineers now have the skills and technology to make the protocol stand up to any challenge short of an Apple keynote presentation.

But Wi-Fi performance can leave much to be desired. Throughput is hampered by backward compatibility, microwave popcorn and security cameras, and most seventh graders can accurately pitch a note out of range of the average access point. Plus, only anointed wizards possessing dark knowledge have the ability to put together a successful WLAN. The market is ripe for some new thinking, but multiple spatial connections, a switch to 5GHz and the removal of load-bearing walls haven't been successful.

The Wi-FiBASE-T concept was born at an offsite team meeting in Las Vegas, when one engineer was heard remarking to another, "This Wi-Fi stuff would be so much easier if we didn't have all these radio waves to worry about." Shortly after, a skunkworks team began experimenting with other media that could transmit 802.11 signals. After experiments with laser light and hemp rope proved unsuccessful, the Narrowcom engineers hit on the idea of re-purposing the twisted-pair copper wiring often found in data centers and corporate offices.

Leveraging this commodity medium proved successful beyond the dreams of the wireless engineers involved. They were able to create a reliable, high-bandwidth physical medium for their established protocols, ramping up performance to nearly 100 megabits. This is far faster than any wireless LAN performs in the real world, and no complex multiple-radio setups or tuned antennas were required. Narrowcom engineers suspect that they may be able to reach gigabit speeds within the next decade.

Wi-FiBASE-T has many other advantages besides performance. Security is improved, since a physical connection to the cable is required. Engineers have given up work on a "wireless-equivalent privacy" (WEP) system that would have allowed anyone in the neighborhood to snoop on the traffic, claiming such a protocol would be foolish. 

Wi-FiBASE-T also allows the transmission of power, a feature that has never worked well in the wireless space. And product managers envision "hubs" and "switches" that might allow dozens of users to share the same access point in the future.

Some wireless engineers are even suggesting that Wi-FiBASE-T could be useful in the data center. Unifying client and server traffic on a unified network with interoperable interfaces could lead to consolidation of a sort not witnessed since the halcyon days of Token Ring. 

Servers could communicate directly with end users over a single Wi-FiBASE-T LAN, eliminating multiple routing and media translation hops. Some are even suggesting that storage traffic could at last come to Wi-Fi thanks to the reliability and performance of Wi-FiBASE-T. Could Narrowcom's invention spell a revolution inside the data center as well as in the restaurant, home and Apple store?