How Wireless Works

Wireless Internet Access is comprised of four components:

• high-speed Internet access
• a network gateway
• a wireless network
• a wireless customer

View an interactive diagram of How it Works

High-Speed Access

High-speed Internet access or broadband is generally defined as an Internet connection that is comparatively faster than dial-up service. There is no official speed definition of broadband but services of 200Kbps and above are commonly thought of as broadband. Thus, services such as ISDN, cable modem, DSL and satellite are all considered broadband as compared to dial-up Internet access.

Wireless Internet access begins with bringing high-speed Internet access to your property. To understand how high-speed access works, look back at the graphic above and think of a pipeline coming into your property. This pipeline, either satellite, cable, DSL or T1, is the Internet access for you and your customers. The pipeline size determines how fast you and your customer’s connection to the Internet will be.

Network Gateway and Management
The network gateway sits between your high-speed Internet access connection and the wireless network and acts just like a gate. It prevents people from walking through to use the Internet unless they know how to open the gate and it prevents things from the Internet from getting to your network.

The gateway also allows you to manage the wireless network. Network Management activities can include:

• Authentication: how do you allow customers to “open the gate” and use the Internet access.
• Customer Pricing and Billing Plans: What customers should be charged for the service, what rates will be offered. Plans would include hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, multi-months.
• Billing Methods: how to pay for billing plans -- free, credit cards or coupons sold at the register.
• Branding: the information that customers see when they login
• Login: Allowing customers to establish their own, easy-to-remember User Names and Passwords for login
• Quality of Service Controls: These controls ensure that customers have a consistent speed of service, preventing individual users from hogging bandwidth or prioritizing traffic from certain users.
• Firewall: a wall that prevents people on the Internet from attacking the people inside your network.
• Network Monitoring: 24x7 Network Monitoring to ensure network availability
• Other Services: Including printing, Voice over Internet Protocol, etc.

Wireless Local Area Network
This is a system of connecting PCs and other devices within the same physical proximity using high-frequency radio waves rather than wires for sharing resources such as an Internet connections, printers, files and drives. When 802.11b or Wi-Fi wireless standard is used to connect the devices, the system is known as a wireless LAN or WLAN.

Wireless networks work just like a cordless phone. As long as the phone is within range of the base station, it works. So, the WLAN is the means of wirelessly connecting or distributing the high-speed Internet access to your customers. This wireless network can supplement or substitute for a wired network, providing your customers the ability to connect wherever they want on your property.

Looking at the graphic above, the wireless network is actually a series of transmitter/ receivers, which transmit wireless signals to “cover” your property with the wireless signal. These transmitter/receivers include antennas and amplifiers to increase the strength or change the shape of the signal. In this manner, a wireless signal is like a flashlight—you can have stronger light bulb, higher reflection or a stronger battery.