Aerohive’s Atom boldly goes where no Wi-Fi has gone before
The opening to “Star Trek: The Original Series” featured Captain Kirk proclaiming that space was the “Final Frontier” and that the Enterprise was going to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”
In networking, Wi-Fi is really the final frontier, as it lets us explore strange new apps and seek out new tweets regardless of where we are. Untethered from cables, we are as free to roam around as the Enterprise was in space. There should be no question that good Wi-Fi is as important to us today as dilithium crystals were to the Enterprise.
But what happens when Wi-Fi isn’t available? Or just as bad, when the connectivity is almost there but not quite strong enough to be useful. I recall being in a hotel where I couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi at the desk in the room, but I could connect if I sat in the hallway by the entry door, so I wound up sitting there all night trying to get work done. It’s easy to say that Wi-Fi should be everywhere, but sometimes it’s hard to achieve that because of interference or cabling problems.