Wireless Wonders

Reported July 2005

LAS VEGAS (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Tired of your slow wireless Internet and network connections that get bogged down? The next generation of WiFi technology is here, and it may be the best solution yet for our overloaded information super-highways.

Computer user, Kevin Maddrey says, "Sometimes the Internet connection is spotty, and I'll automatically lose connection for no reason."

Maddrey knows exactly what happens when too many uses try to log on. But now computer engineers have found a better way to wirelessly connect to cyber space. It's called mesh technology; a system where the more users there are the better it works.

"It's the exact opposite of a traditional 3G technology," says Mitchell Gonzalez, President & CEO of Cheetah Wireless Technologies in Las Vegas.

Gonzalez says mesh wireless technology is faster, cuts down on congestion and interference, has better coverage, and has one more special perk. "What the mesh technology does is increase our ability to provide service more efficiently for a lower cost," Gonzalez says.

Here's how it works: Once you subscribe to the network, wireless PCs in the network "talk" with each other. They connect through wireless routers installed throughout a business, home or car -- an ideal network for Maddrey and the millions of other people who log on to the Internet every day. And overcrowding is never a problem. If too many people are using part of the mesh network, users move through each other to reach an unused signal.

The mesh network is also ideal if local communication resources are destroyed during a disaster because the network seamlessly picks up where one left off. The first mesh networks are being tested in Philadelphia, New York and Las Vegas.

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