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Hot Topics In The Mobile Computing Industry
Bandwidth
Optimization in Wireless Networks
Slow data rate of 2G wireless
networks (9.6 Kbps on GSM, 14.4 Kbps with PCS and 19.2 Kbps with CDPD) is
one of the most important factors that is mentioned often by enterprises
and users as an impediment in the adoption of wireless Internet applications.
3G networks which were expected to increase the speed and capacity of
these networks are going to take a while to get installed and provide
nationwide coverage. Even interim solutions i.e. 2.5G GPRS, CDMA 2000 or
Edge networks will take one to three years for nation-wide coverage. It is one thing to have
coverage in a few metropolitan areas and it is entirely another thing to
have adequate coverage for your wireless projects where your sales and
service people are, especially for enterprises with regional and national
reach.
MobileInfo firmly believes
that even when these new
breed of networks get installed and become operational, there will be a
shortage of bandwidth and capacity for the number of users and type of
applications that are
expected to utilize wireless networks if the speed is acceptable and price is right.
Content-Agnostic
Optimization
Several small
wireless-network-savvy vendors have started figuring out ways of reducing
the amount of network traffic and utilizing the bandwidth more
efficiently. These vendors are now offering server-based
bandwidth optimization solutions to wireless carriers and large
enterprises. The objective is to optimize the bandwidth utilization
so that you can send higher amount of data traffic (capacity) on the same
channel - thus creating virtual bandwidth. This also gives an
illusion of faster speed though actual airlink speed remains the same. The
vendors are quoting performance improvements of up to 6X. Our own
assessment is that on an average, you should expect sustained improvement
of 2X. The type of techniques employed are caching, intelligent
compression, protocol optimization, spoofing, window size management,
etc. We would like to mention the following vendors in this context:
Content-Aware Optimization
Software
Some companies have developed software that optimizes wireless
network traffic. One such company is WISP Inc. Their Zadiel
Proxy server optimizes in-bound and outbound traffic
Full Web Browsing Without
Network Optimization Solutions
A small number of vendors are attempting to offer full web browsing
on handheld devices in such a manner that some of the browsing is
off-loaded
to a server. This approach may solve the user experience problem inherent
with web-clipping, WML/WAP, cHTML or even i-Mode but does not address the network
bandwidth problem. Following efforts, in early stages of development (in
June 2001) are worth watching because we expect merging of the two
approaches:
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Zframe Server for Palm
Applications - In June, 2001, Zframe, an wireless application
software company out of Belmont, Ma, USA announced an interesting full
web page implementation but s small section of the page at a time.
Zframe does perform some optimization but more important part of the
implementation is to render a specific part of the page to the
handheld device. Go to www.zframe.com
for more info.
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BitStream's Thunderhawk
Technology - In May 2001, Bitstream Inc. started previewing a new
technology, code-named "ThunderHawk", which brings
full-featured Web browsing to wireless devices. Unlike mobile micro
browsers for wireless devices, Bitstream ThunderHawk gives users
complete Internet access to real Web pages while maintaining full text
legibility. Bitstream has filed 12 preliminary patent applications for
this technology. Go
here for more.
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