Liberating the Laptop

hen Vice President Al Gore's government reinvention team moved into new offices in downtown Washington in early 1998, the reinventors seized the opportunity to showcase an office of the future. They chose an open office layout with flexible furniture so that workers could be moved into new groups as their project assignments changed.

When it came to the office computer system, leaders of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government likewise "wanted to free our workers from the tyranny of hard-wired connections," recalls Andrew Boots, an information technology manager now working on student loan programs at the Education Department. The NPR workers got cellular phones and were supposed to get laptop computers with wireless hookups so that they could connect to the local area network (LAN) from anywhere in their offices.

That was the dream, but the reality didn't quite measure up, Boots says. The employees had various makes and models of laptops, and getting all the right hardware connections and software drivers proved an overwhelming job for the small support staff. What's more, the wireless network was noticeably slower than the conventional one-sometimes less than one-third as fast.

"The bandwidth was not an issue for casual users" who simply wanted to download their e-mail or store a letter, Boots says, but for heavy use such as surfing graphics-intensive pages on the World Wide Web, "it was just not acceptable."

Boots and another NPR worker got wireless connections, but in the end they reverted to conventional means of connecting to the LAN. The wireless network didn't warrant the effort needed to get it fully up and running. "We just had bigger fish to fry," he says.

Just over a year later, however, there's renewed interest in wireless LAN products among both suppliers and their customers.

This summer, for example, networking company Cabletron Systems of Ro-chester, N.H., made a series of wireless product announcements that added up to a direct assault on chief complaints about products already on the market. Cabletron lowered the price to around $300 per user, added security features that company spokesmen claim are effective and easy to manage, and increased the wireless network's standard speed by a factor of five. "We're really seeing wireless as a mainstream technology," says Frits Riep, a Cabletron marketing manager.

Catching the Wave

Meanwhile, Compaq Computer Corp.'s new president and chief executive, Michael Capellas, told a European audience in September that he expects wireless connectivity to "become the actual baseline" for future PCs.

Dell Computer Corp. also is trying to stake out a commanding position in wireless LANs. "We're very excited about it," says Leo Holland, a Dell Federal marketing manager. "We're right at the very beginning" of a trend toward more mobile computing, Holland says.

Some industry analysts agree. Jackie Fenn of Gartner Group, an IT market research firm in Connecticut, told a group of federal IT managers two months ago that wireless data transmission "will be one of the most significant discontinuities that we see happening." It will affect many kinds of networks, she said, including the wide area networks that carry federal agency data traffic across the nation.

Experts like Fenn say the issuance of a new industry standard for wireless Ethernet has been a key factor in the recent wireless LAN developments.

But others aren't sure that wireless LANs will amount to more than a specialty product. NPR's Boots is among these doubters. He expects wireless to show up in the places where it already has established a presence.

These include conference rooms, temporary office space where it doesn't make sense to install network wires, and environments such as warehouses and hospitals where workers don't spend much time at their desks.

Federal Users

At Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, for example, wireless systems are being used to record medications administered to patients. Nurses push a cart with a notebook computer and medicines into patients' rooms. At each bedside they scan the patient's plastic ID bracelet, which has a bar code printed on it, and then the labels on the medications they will administer. The system checks the type of medicine, dosage and time interval since the last dose.

In a trial installation, one VA hospital reduced dosage errors by 84 percent. The remaining errors were attributed to individuals who bypassed the automated system.

Now all VA medical centers are under orders to install similar "point of care" medication systems by early 2000. They then will add wireless capabilities to a much more complex application, a comprehensive patient record system, so that doctors, admissions representatives, therapists and others can record their interactions with patients, wherever they occur.

"Putting [wired] PCs in the rooms is just not a good alternative," says Richard E. Moore, information resources management chief at the Carl P. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix, because space is tight. The Phoenix hospital is using a system from Nortel Networks Corp. while evaluating other products.

NASA Network

Meanwhile, Intermec Technologies Corp. of Everett, Wash., has installed what it calls the world's largest wireless LAN at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The network covers 47 square miles-an area the size of San Francisco-and links 300 buildings that house 300,000 items needed for space shuttle operations. United Space Alliance, the shuttle contractor, hired Intermec to put a unique bar code on every item and supply handheld computers and scanners along with the network and special software. With the system, shuttle ground crews can locate any item in seconds, saving nearly $1 million in downtime caused by delays in locating equipment or parts.

Although installed as a largely proprietary network, the NASA installation is being converted to a standard Ethernet, says Mark Colborn, an Intermec project manager. The adoption last year of a technical standard for wireless connections to a standard Ethernet at standard LAN speeds is one important reason wireless networks are taking off. Once the wireless network interoperates with other NASA networks, the space alliance will run its Peoplesoft inventory management system over the wireless LAN, Colborn says. Then the parts location system can be tied into the back-office procurement and financial systems at the space center.

The Postal Service is using wireless technology in similar ways. The service tracks trailer movements, mail containers, airline shipments and individual trays using handheld scanners and bar codes.

How They Work

Wireless LANs use radio frequency links between the computer and a device known as an access point. The access point is wired into a conventional data network. PCs-either desktop or portable models-are equipped with special wireless adapter cards instead of the conventional network interface card that gives them a LAN connection. Wireless adapters for laptops usually are PC card devices that slip into a special slot on the computer case.

Once the access points are installed in a workspace, computers within about 225 feet of an access point can connect to the network, just as if they had a wired connection. They can surf the World Wide Web, retrieve data from a local server, check their e-mail and so on. As with a cellular phone, there can be dead spots where the signal travels weakly or not at all, but the access points can be moved or supplemented to increase coverage and network capacity.

The cost of wireless LANs has dropped sharply this year, making them rather competitive with conventional wired LANs. Of course, cost comparisons depend on the size of the network and the area covered. But one factor it's easy to overlook is that a wireless network requires substantial wiring to link the access points.

Although wireless network adapters cost more than a standard wired device, the ability to move workers from one desk to another without changing their PCs can save substantial sums.

Several analysts say the cost of moving one user on a wired network exceeds $400. The International Facility Management Association reports that organizations typically move the equivalent of 44 percent of their employees every year. While the federal government may move fewer employees than businesses move, there is no doubt that employees are shifting locations more often than they once did, thanks to reorganization, downsizing and program changes. Furthermore, today's office workers engage in more meetings, travel and conferences.

Campus Environment

One environment in which computer users are constantly on the move is a college campus. That's why the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington installed a wireless LAN for its Information Resources Management College. Each student is issued a laptop computer and network user account on arrival at the college. They can use the Internet for research and keeping in touch with their home bases, downloading instructors' presentations, taking notes and producing their own papers or presentations.

The network's chief advantage is that students can roam from classroom to classroom without having to plug their computers into network ports and log in each time they do so. Donald J. Couture, the top technology executive at the IRM College, says the 5-year-old wireless network from Lucent Technologies Inc. is slower than the standard Ethernet LAN, but "it does everything I need, except if I want to do heavy graphics from the Internet."

When the students turn in their computers at the end of their terms at the college, they are given compact disks with presentations and other information from the courses they took. Couture also creates CDs to load the software on the computers for the college's 900 to 1,000 students each year. He wipes the hard disks clean and reloads the software for each new set of users, a chore that's much easier with portable computers than with those wired to the desktop.

Couture is a rare bird among his federal peers. There are few wireless LAN users in ordinary federal offices. But many believe that situation could change soon. As one indicator, software giant Microsoft Corp. is planning to switch its entire enterprise to wireless local networks, probably in 2000. Michael Fink, a technology executive at WinStar Communications Inc. in New York City, says that in view of the cost of delivering cable to a desktop-about $300 or $400 per desk-wireless LANs are starting to make economic sense. "It won't be long before it [wireless] is mainstream technology," Fink says. "All the parts are there."

Insecurity-Real or Imaginary

Fink and others says concerns about data theft or loss of privacy in a wireless environment are fast becoming less of a worry, thanks to new technologies such as encryption and the Secure Internet Protocol, which can be used in a wireless network. In fact, most of the security measures used in a wired office network are applicable as well in a wireless one, and the medium over which the data travels plays only a small role in protecting the data.

Nonetheless, at a time when concern about information systems security is high, fears of security breaches in a wireless network have slowed adoption of the technology, experts agree. What's more, other radio frequency devices and even microwave ovens can disrupt transmissions.

The popularity of cell phones (which have their own security problems) seems to underlie the current interest in wireless computing. People who make phone calls on the go and take their laptop computers with them crave the ability to make wireless data connections too.

Laptops, as an alternative to desktops, are becoming the norm for military officers, and the desire to remain connected in the field is spurring military adoption of wireless technology.

Wireless LANs, of course, link laptop users only to their own networks. That's why major phone companies, data networking companies and federally funded resarchers are exploring how to provide more expansive wireless computer connectivity, perhaps in the form of a wireless Internet.

Cellular phone and paging companies, in particular, are offering devices that deliver some text, such as short e-mail messages, to customers.

But full wireless access to the Internet is not likely to be available anytime soon, while business-quality wireless LANs are available today. Managers like the VA's Moore are enthusiastic about wireless for some situations. Wireless is not right for every situation, Moore says, but "in the future, we'll use both."