The Evolution of Wi-Fi and
its Role in the Future Mobile/Wireless Networks

Moderator: Sunghyun Choi, Seoul National University, Korea

The IEEE 802.11 WLAN technology known as Wi-Fi was originally developed as a wireless Ethernet technology, and has been prevailing as a means for a broadband wireless Internet access in recent years. Currently, it is evolving to support various network architectures and applications including multimedia, roaming, mesh networking, etc. However, there still remain lots of inherent problems in this technology coming from different characteristics including the usage of the unlicensed bands, open/distributed network architecture, limited transmission range, and limited mobility support. On the other hand, there are some emerging wireless access technologies including IEEE 802.16 or WiMAX and their mobile version called IEEE 802.16e or Mobile WiMAX, and they might replace some of the application sectors of Wi-Fi, e.g., hotspot services.

Particular questions, which will be addressed, include:

1. Is somebody making money out of Wi-Fi hotspots today? If not, will somebody do in the future?

2. What are the key problems with today's Wi-Fi technologies and deployments?

3. What will be the major money-making applications/services over Wi-Fi?

4. How should the charging work?

5. Will Wi-Fi survive in the emergence of other competitive wireless technologies, e.g., Mobile WiMAX, and then how?

Panelists:
         Kevin Almeroth, UC Santa Barbara, USA
         Sung-Ju Lee, HP Labs, USA
         Saishankar Nandagopalan, Qualcomm Inc., USA
         Adam Wolisz, TU Berlin, Germany