Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Porsche, 205 miles per hour and Wi-Fi

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:27:28 -0400

Porsche, 205 miles per hour and Wi-Fi

Macworld Daily News
Monday - October 20, 2003
AirPort WiFi tested at 330kph
By Martyn Williams

Researchers at NEC have taken Wi-Fi wireless connectivity to new levels by
successfully demonstrating handovers between access points while traveling past
them at bullet-train speed.
In a test earlier this month at a automobile test track north of Tokyo the company
says it successfully demonstrated in-house developed software that allows for a
fast sign-on and hand-over between standard access points.

The test involved four IEEE802.11b (the technology standard behind Apple's AirPort
for Macs) access points placed at 500-metre intervals along a portion of the Japan
Automobile Research Institute's test track in Ibaraki prefecture, said Yasuhito
Jochi, a spokesman for NEC in Tokyo. The access points were connected to a router
and it is in this router that NEC's high-speed handover software was installed.
Super highway

A Porsche car traveling at 330kph (kilometers per hour) (205 miles per hour) sped
past the access points while software managed the switch from one access point to
the successive one, he said.

The uninterrupted session was confirmed by a notebook computer and camera in the
car that remained connected to a NetMeeting server as the car drove through each
of the access point coverage areas, according to Jochi. The test also included the
downloading of a file to the PC in the car from a Web server.

The software that allows the fast handover has been developed for use in
intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications and could be used to keep an
Internet connection with cars running along a highway or high-speed trains, said
NEC. The speed attained by NEC falls around the average speeds achieved by
super-express trains such as Japan's Shinkansen (bullet train) and France's TGV.
With the successful test of the system NEC is ready to begin sales, said Jochi.

The company will provide details of the software and test at the 10th World
Congress and Exhibition on Intelligent Transport Systems and Services in Madrid,
Spain, from November 16 to 20.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=7114

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