Say you have a Bluetooth enabled Palm handheld. When you walk into a room, the device will sniff out other Bluetooth enabled devices in the immediate vicinity. In this hypothetical situation, say your handheld has recognized your cell phone, a nearby printer, and your friend Joe's Palm m505. On your handheld's screen, a list of these devices will be presented. You can then choose the one to which you want to connect.

Joe says he has a spreadsheet he wants you to look over with him. You then select Joe's Palm m505 from the list, and it's here that my security concerns are addressed. On Joe's device, a message will pop up asking him whether or not to accept your attempt to connect. In this instance, of course he'll say yes and allow you to access the spreadsheet in question.

802.11b
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) 802.11b, also known as WiFi (Wireless Fidelity), is a slightly wider range wireless technology. The best description I've found of 802.11b comes from Glenn Fleishman, a writer for The New York Times, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Weekly, O'Reilly Network, Fortune magazine, and Wired magazine. He is also a regular columnist for 802.11 Planet and a moderator and panelist at their conference, so he's definitely well qualified. At his site, 802.11b Networking News (at http://80211b.weblogger.com), he describes it this way:

The IEEE 802.11b specification allows for the wireless transmission of approximately 11 Mbps of raw data at distances from several dozen to several hundred feet over the 2.4 GHz unlicensed band. The distance depends on impediments, materials, and line of sight.

802.11b is an extension of Ethernet to wireless communication, and as such is ecumenical about the kinds of data that pass over it. It's primarily used for TCP/IP, but can also handle other forms of networking traffic, such as AppleTalk or PC filesharing standards.

Basically, what this means is it's a way for all the computers in an office to connect to each other without the use of wires. The signal range is much greater than that of Bluetooth, but it's still limited to about the size of the average office. Physical obstacles can block the signal, however, so when using 802.11b, it's best not to hide yourself in too elaborate a cubical.

Solutions for connecting your Palm handheld to your company network via 802.11b are becoming available. Xircom's new Wireless LAN Modem for the Palm m500 series is a great example. It was reviewed by Ray Rischpater in the September 2001 issue of PalmPower's Enterprise Edition at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200109/xircom001.html.

But it doesn't stop there. In an ongoing quest on the part of the wireless industry to make us all go even more crazy, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers has finally accepted a new high-speed wireless LAN standard called 802.11g. 802.11g, which can run at up to 54M bps, runs in the same radio band as 802.11b (also called WiFi), so the two can interoperate.