John Dvorak's Inside Track

High-Speed Wireless Dept.: While you were sleeping, the IEEE and the Ultra Wide Band (UWB) folks have been working on 802.15.3a. This is because we need more standards that have a lot of numbers and dots, with a few letters thrown in for good measure.

802.15 is the number for so-called wireless personal area networks (WPANs), which are generally short-range piconetworks, or personal data clouds. 802.15.1 is the best example of a WPAN standard. You know it as Bluetooth.

Anyway, 802.15.3a is most interesting, because it's a high-speed initiative that uses UWB—also called pulse radio. It broadcasts by sputtering a signal in a crazy way, unlike anything else out there. Because the pulses are all over the spectrum, the signals seem like noise. You can receive a signal only if you can decode the timing of the sputterings. In the past, the military has used this technology, calling it LPI (low probability of intercept) radio. Numerous companies, including Time Domain Corp. and Staccato Communications (formerly Discrete Time), have been perfecting this technology. UWB can also be used as a form of ground-penetrating radar, and construction companies use UWB devices to find steel reinforcement inside concrete.

The technology is controversial. Some engineers say that the sputtering must cause interference with traditional waveforms, despite assurances that the pulse radio signals are below normal noise levels. I've heard rumors that illegal high-power UWB networks are already broadcasting and providing members of secret networks with very high bandwidth. Only military intelligence gear could find such systems.

Papers on 802.15.3a clearly show wireless speeds up to 1.3 Gbps, although it looks as though the technology is optimized for about 480 Mbps. These are hot speeds for casual Internet connections! The technology is revolutionary and more mature than you'd imagine, since it has been on the back burner for so long.

Meanwhile, wireless networking is moving ahead rapidly with the almost universal deployment of 802.11g. D-Link now has "g" products that deliver 54-Mbps throughput. The company has just announced an inexpensive product called the D-Link DSA-3100 Express EtherNetwork Public/Private Hotspot Gateway. Capable of serving 50 simultaneous, discrete users, this $599 gateway should be the perfect system for a coffee shop or hotel lobby. Its features include firewall protection and even the log-on page you get on public systems.

While I'm on the subject, Netgear is back in the game and upping the ante with its new line of dual-band 802.11a/b/g access points/routers with 108-Mbps capability. Wow! Notice how real competition heats things up nicely.

What's in a Name? Dept.: I had high hopes that Transmeta was beyond this, but no. The company has decided to join the Wacky Processor Name Club. The next chips it releases will not have the Crusoe name; instead, they will have an Intel-style name—the Efficeon. Okay, we've got the Pentium, the Xeon, the Athlon, the Duron, the Itanium, and the Celeron—now this.

Disregarding the first wacky name—the Pentium—all these names are quietly suggestive. Pentium suggests the number 5 and lets the company move beyond the 586 moniker. Since then, the approach has been to use a word that suggests reliability or performance.

My question: Is this the best we can do? These names stink. And as far as I know, companies are paying consultants a lot of money to come up with the names, although Efficeon sounds as if it was developed by a bookkeeper (after Accountium and Financeon were eliminated by consensus). Hey, how about the Consensium? Or maybe the Committeeon? Ugh. Good luck, guys.

Interesting reader requests: I often get mail from baffled readers looking for help. For example, David Dreis writes:

One thing I have wondered about over the years is the lack of any ink jet printer—or for that matter any other type of printer, except the now-not-available-anymore Alps printers—that prints in white ink. Evidently, every [printer company] thinks that everyone prints on white paper. Not so! I have a small business I operate at home evenings and weekends. Part of that business requires the purchase of decals where white paint is required. Unfortunately for me (and I know many others, both business and private persons), since I need the white paint on a clear background, I can't print my own decals and save a bundle. If white-ink printers were available, it would add to immediate sales for the first [company] to do it.

Any ideas? I didn't think so.

Unwanted Trend Dept.: If any of you do a lot of public speaking, then you're starting to see a new and disturbing development: people in the audience using their laptops, often on wireless connections. Some even blog the event as a speech is given. This can change the way you organize your speech. It can also turn the speaker into background noise—like a TV show.

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