Wireless Mobility: The Why of Wireless

CHAPTER 10Next-Generation Mobility

Unlike Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, who both sailed to the New World in the 16th century, we don’t need to leave home permanently to make progress, but just as surely as the Cortes’s 11 beached ships weren’t returning to water, or the mutineers to Spain, there’s no going back in today’s wireless networks. There’s only forward, and what a forward it is. Although my employer, Cisco Systems, alone has shipped something on the order of 5 million access points (APs), easily ten times that number of devices has shipped from all providers, including wireless clients such as laptops, smartphones, laser scanners, and RFID tags. In spite of these staggering numbers, we remain in the earliest days of wireless devices. ...