In a bid to cut the cost of home networking the Wintel alliance is drawing up a method to turn PC’s into low cost access points for 802.11x wireless networks.
The aim is to half the cost of wireless access points from $250 to $100 by working out a way of repartitioning the software for an access point to be run on a PC in conjunction with a client PC card.
Microsoft is expected to unveil its part in the project at next weeks Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), but have declined so far to detail any specifics before the event.
As windows isn’t capable of real-time computing capabilities, it is expected that Intel will leave all the real-time tasks to the client PC card which would contain a small real-time kernel, with everything else left up to Windows.
It is very unlikely that such access points will replace the current hardware access points sold today, mainly due to businesses requiring manageability of such devices that could not be provided in the software based access point.
Instead such points are aimed mostly at consumers and home networks. It is expected that by 2005 27 million homes, and 28 million businesses will have wireless networks. With this new development Intel is betting that most of the 27 million will have some kind of Soft Wi-Fi.
Intel may launch its first hybrid 802.11 products as soon as May, but as always such timelines are subject to change.
But unless Microsoft creates an open standard solution (how likely is that) it won’t be much help to those people using Linux. Surely if Microsoft is going to play its part in trying help wireless networking take off by reducing the price point of access points it should be made so that it is cross-platform, or will we just see another Wintel piece of hardware/software like those horrible WinModems?
Soft Wi-Fi for Windows?
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