WLAN standards

Dear Brian,
Your article on WLAN implementations in India in the September 2002 issue was very interesting and insightful. What is the maximum bandwidth WLAN can offer to users? It seems current WLAN systems can't offer more than 11 Mbps.

Regards
Richard Youmaran

Dear Richard,
Thank you for appreciating the article. 802.11b is the most popular WLAN standard at present. You can expect 802.11a, which has been developed by IEEE as the next generation of enterprise-class WLANs. It provides greater scalability, better interference immunity, and higher speed than the current technologies. It also allows higher bandwidth applications to be run simultaneously and supports more users.

Devices utilizing 802.11a are required to support speeds of 6, 12, and 24 Mbps. Optional speeds can go up to 54 Mbps.
Other standards in the pipeline are:

• 802.11e - It adds QoS features and multimedia support to the existing 802.11b and 802.11a wireless standards, while maintaining full backward compatibility with these standards.
• 802.11i - This specification is currently under consideration. It features security and mobility enhancements to the existing standards.
• 802.11f - This specification is also under consideration. It involves the IAPP (Inter Access Point Protocol) task group.

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ICICI's case

Dear Minu,
I read with great interest the article in the September 2002 issue called 'ICICI Centralizes Applications.' The case interests me from the perspective of business system design as well as its impact on working of people. I will be grateful if you could send me more details of your discussion with Manoj Kunkalienkar, of ICICI Infotech. It may be the copy of the entire discussion.

Regards
Dr. Shiri Ahuja,
Assistant Professor
Institute for Integrated Learning in Management, New Delhi

Dear Dr. Shiri Ahuja,
Thank you for writing to me. It's nice to see that the case has been of interest to you. If you have specific queries regarding the case, you can mail them to me. And I will be glad to forward it to Manoj Kunkalienkar, who can get back to you on them.

Software licensing

Dear Brian,
Congratulations for the article on 'Software Licensing' in the September 2002 issue. I found the information quite valuable and would like to know a little more about the technical issues involved and how it is implemented.

Regards
Prasad Laxman Jambotkar,
Technical Consultant,
Seacom Solutions (India) Ltd.

Dear Prasad Jambotkar,
I think it is important to understand all the minute details of a software contract. And for this you need to engage in a dialogue with packaged and custom software vendors to understand the terms of their respective software contracts.The technicalities for software licenses vary between software vendors, as each have their own terms and conditions in the software contract.