Wireless technology can be used to connect computers to the Internet via the airwaves, but also to connect your PDA with your computer at home, or even your mobile phone. Wireless technology offers new flexibility, but also raises issues for security and the government. This Topic in Depth reviews these issues and provides some background on wireless technology.

Wireless Networking Mini-Tutorial (WKMN) [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.wkmn.com/newsite/wireless.html#what
Wi-Fi Alliance
http://www.wi-fi.org/OpenSection/index.asp
3Com: 802.11b Wireless LANs [pdf]
http://www.3com.com/other/pdfs/infra/corpinfo/en_US/50307201.pdf
Information on BlueTooth
http://www.palowireless.com/bluetooth/
e-week: WiFi Security
http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,1738,1591939,00.asp
O'Reilly Network: Wireless Surveying
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/05/27/wirelessonPocketPC.html
Bitpipe: Wireless LAN White Papers [pdf]
http://www.bitpipe.com/data/rlist?t=sys_10_34_4_2_np&sort_by=status&src=google

The first website from WKMN (1) identifies the major types of wireless used today as Local Area Networks (LANs), Wide Area Networks (WANs) and Mobile Wireless, and Personal Area Networks. The WiFi Alliance, which certifies interoperability of IEEE 802.11 products in order "to promote them as the global, wireless LAN standard across all market segments" also gives an overview of WiFi, or Wireless Fidelity, on this second website (2). The IEEE 802.11 is the common standard used for LANs and is described more in this white paper from 3Com (3). The Bluetooth infrastructure, more common in Personal Area Networks, is described on this website (4 ). The current hot issue in the Wi-Fi world is security, which is discussed in this article from e-Week (5). Legal issues are also being raised, especially since the boundaries for wireless are unclear, which means people can survey for wireless networks without paying for access. This process is described in an article from the O'Reilly Network website (6). Finally, this last website (7) offers a number of white papers on wireless LAN. [VF]