The Wireless LAN Interoperability Forum (WLIF) was a non-profit industry organization founded in 1996 to promote and certify
wireless LAN
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...
products. It was active from about 1996 through 1998 and disbanded in 2001.
History
The organization was announced on May 20, 1996, chaired by Chris Gladwin of
Zenith Data Systems
Zenith Data Systems Corporation (ZDS) was an American computer systems manufacturing company active from 1979 to 1996. It was originally a division of the Zenith Radio Company (later Zenith Electronics), after they had purchased the Heath Com ...
.
It first based its technology on the RangeLAN2 products licensed by
Proxim Wireless, which were originally developed around 1994.
The RangeLAN2 name was later changed to OpenAir, and
IEEE 802.11
IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer com ...
standards were later mentioned, although the
Wi-Fi Alliance
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a non-profit organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark. Manufacturers may use the trademark to brand products certified for Wi-Fi interoperability. It is based in Austin, Texas.
History
Early IEEE 802.11, 802.11 product ...
controlled the trademark for those protocols.
In 1998 Mike Jones of
Intermec Technologies was its chairman and its membership included:
AMP (now part of
Tyco Electronics
TE Connectivity plc is an American-Irish domiciled technology company that designs and manufactures electrical and electronic components. It serves several industries, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, and energy.
TE Connecti ...
), Citadel, Cruise Technologies,
Data General
Data General Corporation was an early minicomputer firm formed in 1968. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer intended to ...
,
Fujitsu Personal Systems,
Hand Held Products,
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
, IDWare, Intermec Technologies, Kansai, Kinetic Computer, LXE, MaxTech,
Mitsubishi Electronics America, Monarch Marketing Systems (subsidiary of Paxar, then part of
Avery Dennison
Avery Dennison Corporation is a multinational manufacturer and distributor of pressure-sensitive adhesive materials (such as self-adhesive labels), apparel branding labels and tags, RFID inlays, and specialty medical products. The company is a ...
),
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...
,
NEC Computer Systems Division, Percon (formerly a division of
PSC Inc., later IntelliTrack), Proxim Wireless and
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese electronics company. It is headquartered in Sakai, Osaka, and was founded by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1912 in Honjo, Tokyo, and established as the Hayakawa Metal Works Institute in Abeno-ku, Osaka, in 1924. Since 2016, it is majority o ...
.
Hand Held Products (later
Honeywell
Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...
) marketed Dolphin RF devices to extend
Ethernet
Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...
and a
barcode scanner
A barcode reader or barcode scanner is an optical scanner that can read printed barcodes and send the data they contain to computer. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens, and a light sensor for translating optical impulses ...
.
RangeLAN2
''RangeLAN2'' was a broad family of wireless devices developed by
Proxim Wireless, and is a
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...
of that company. It also refers to the RangeLAN2, used by these devices, which was subsequently officially renamed
OpenAir
The core idea of artificial intelligence systems integration is making individual software components, such as speech synthesizers, interoperable with other components, such as Commonsense knowledge (artificial intelligence), common sense knowled ...
. RangeLAN2 devices have typical bandwidths of about 2
Mbit/s
In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols (baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multi ...
, and an indoor range of about , similar to 802.11b. RangeLAN2 uses spread-spectrum radio transmission technology. These devices can interoperate with 802.11b and can still be used today. Support for RangeLAN2 products was aimed primarily at the
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
market, but drivers for some RangeLAN2 products (such as
PCMCIA
The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was an industry consortium of computer hardware manufacturers from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), it created v ...
cards) for
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the ninth and final major release of the classic Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever", highlight ...
were developed, although
these did not get wide distribution.
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
drivers were also developed for many RangeLAN2 devices.
Typical RangeLAN2 figures:
* Radio Data Rate: 1.6 Mbit/s per channel, 800 kbit/s fallback rate
* Channels: Supports 15 independent, non-interfering "virtual channels"
* Official Indoor Range: Up to 500 feet (~150 m) radius (not necessarily reached in practice)
* Official Outdoor range: 1,000+ feet (300+ m) radius
OpenAir
The protocol operated in the 2.4 GHz
ISM band
The ISM radio bands are portions of the radio spectrum reserved internationally for ''industrial, scientific, and medical'' (ISM) purposes, excluding applications in telecommunications.
Examples of applications for the use of radio frequency (RF ...
and used
frequency hopping
Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) is a method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly changing the carrier frequency among many frequencies occupying a large spectral band. The changes are controlled by a code known to both transmitter ...
with 0.8 and 1.6 Mbit/s bit rates via 2 or 4 bits per symbol
frequency-shift keying
Frequency-shift keying (FSK) is a frequency modulation scheme in which digital information is encoded on a carrier signal by periodically shifting the frequency of the carrier between several discrete frequencies. The technology is used fo ...
modulation.
This protocol was in use prior to the adoption of the
IEEE 802.11b standard, and was in competition with it, and uses approximately the same portion of the
radio spectrum
The radio spectrum is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum with frequencies from 3 Hz to 3,000 GHz (3 THz). Electromagnetic waves in this frequency range, called radio waves, are widely used in modern technology, particula ...
. When 802.11b was adopted as a standard, the RangeLAN2 market began to contract and OpenAir use declined.
See also
*
IEEE 802.11
IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer com ...
References
External links
RangeLAN2 7100 ISA Card
{{authority control
Standards organizations in the United States
Organizations established in 1996
Organizations disestablished in 2001
Local area networks
Mobile telecommunications standards