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
A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes.
Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and bus ...
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 (ZDS) was a division of Zenith Electronics founded in 1979 after Zenith acquired the Heath Company, which had entered the personal computer market in 1977. Headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Zenith sold personal compu ...
.
It first based its technology on the RangeLAN2 products licensed by
Proxim Wireless
Proxim Wireless Corporation is a San Jose, California-based company that builds scalable broadband wireless networking systems for communities, enterprises, governments, and service providers. It offers wireless LAN, point-to-multipoint and point- ...
, 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 media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commun ...
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.
History
Early 802.11 products suffered from interoperability problems be ...
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 is an American Swiss-domiciled technology company that designs and manufactures connectors and sensors for several industries, such as automotive, industrial equipment, data communication systems, aerospace, defense, medical, o ...
), Citadel, Cruise Technologies,
Data General
Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. 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 ...
,
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 headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
,
IBM, 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 corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...
,
NEC Computer Systems Division, Percon (formerly a division of
PSC Inc. PSC Inc. was a manufacturer of portable data terminals, mobile data terminals, wireless terminals, bar code scanners, linear bar code verifiers, and RFID readers. It was founded in 1969 by John E. Blackert (Xerox) and Lawrence P. Albertson (Eastman ...
, later IntelliTrack), Proxim Wireless and
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products, headquartered in Sakai-ku, Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. Since 2016 it has been majority owned by the Taiwan-based Foxconn Group. Sharp employs more than 5 ...
.
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 technologies, performance ma ...
) 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 is an optical scanner that can read printed barcodes, decode the data contained in the barcode to a computer. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor for translating optical impulses into e ...
.
RangeLAN2
''RangeLAN2'' was a broad family of wireless devices developed by
Proxim Wireless
Proxim Wireless Corporation is a San Jose, California-based company that builds scalable broadband wireless networking systems for communities, enterprises, governments, and service providers. It offers wireless LAN, point-to-multipoint and point- ...
, and is a
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...
of that company. It also refers to the RangeLAN2, used by these devices, which was subsequently officially renamed
OpenAir {{short description, Aspect of system integration regarding artificial intelligence
The core idea of Artificial Intelligence systems integration is making individual software components, such as speech synthesizers, interoperable with other componen ...
. 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 group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
market, but drivers for some RangeLAN2 products (such as
PCMCIA
The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was a group of computer hardware manufacturers, operating under that name from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), i ...
cards) for
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the ninth major release of Apple Inc., Apple's classic Mac OS operating system which was succeeded by macOS, Mac OS X (renamed to OS X in 2011 and macOS in 2016) in 2001. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "T ...
were developed, although
these did not get wide distribution.
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
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) ener ...
and used
frequency hopping
Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) is a method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly changing the carrier frequency among many distinct frequencies occupying a large spectral band. The changes are controlled by a code known to both tra ...
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 transmitted through discrete frequency changes of a carrier signal. The technology is used for communication systems such as telemetry, weather ball ...
modulation.
This protocol was in use prior to the adoption of the
IEEE 802.11b
IEEE 802.11b-1999 or 802.11b is an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking specification that extends throughput up to 11 Mbit/s using the same 2.4 GHz band. A related amendment was incorporated into the IEEE 802.11-2007 standard.
...
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 0 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 media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer commun ...
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