Wi-Fi and 5G 151
6.9. Hotspots
Hotspots are Wi-Fi access points whose purpose is to facilitate a
high-data-rate Internet connection from a smartphone, tablet or PC.
Situated in places with a great many people passing through, they are
open to all clients who wish to connect, or sometimes only to those
who have a subscription. If the access point is open, any and all clients
can connect. However, in numerous countries, the operator of the
access point must be able to monitor the clients, either in order to
charge them for access or to preserve their information to locate the
clients later on if the connection is used in the commission of a crime.
Hotspots are located in rail stations, airports, shopping centers, at
marinas and beaches, boutiques, etc.
Hotspots essentially use Wi-Fi technology and depend increasingly
on telecom operators to handle their 3G/4G traffic to relieve the relay
antennas which, today, are very often overloaded. This is the
technique which we looked at earlier: offloading.
The difficulty for a hotspot is to manage to offer QoS to the
clients’ applicational flows. More specifically, the capacity of the
access point depends on how far away the client is and on the degree
of interference: the further away a client is, the more the signal is
attenuated and the greater is the risk of interference, and therefore the
access point’s overall data rate degrades. In order to deal with these
problems, Wi-Fi technology relies on oversizing. Still rarely available
when many clients are connected to the same access point, oversizing
should soon be introduced generally, thanks to new technologies
which have reached maturity since 2014: specifically, IEEE 802.11ac,
ad and af, which should help to ease communication.
In today’s world, operators use Wi-Fi for the purposes of
offloading, but as the solution is not standardized, each operator has
developed their own technique (although they are all fairly similar to
one another). Since 2014, the technology championed by the Wi-Fi
Alliance – Passpoint – has served as a common standard for all
operators. This technology is described in detail a little later on.
www.it-ebooks.info
6.9. Hotspots
Hotspots are Wi-Fi access points whose purpose is to facilitate a
high-data-rate Internet connection from a smartphone, tablet or PC.
Situated in places with a great many people passing through, they are
open to all clients who wish to connect, or sometimes only to those
who have a subscription. If the access point is open, any and all clients
can connect. However, in numerous countries, the operator of the
access point must be able to monitor the clients, either in order to
charge them for access or to preserve their information to locate the
clients later on if the connection is used in the commission of a crime.
Hotspots are located in rail stations, airports, shopping centers, at
marinas and beaches, boutiques, etc.
Hotspots essentially use Wi-Fi technology and depend increasingly
on telecom operators to handle their 3G/4G traffic to relieve the relay
antennas which, today, are very often overloaded. This is the
technique which we looked at earlier: offloading.
The difficulty for a hotspot is to manage to offer QoS to the
clients’ applicational flows. More specifically, the capacity of the
access point depends on how far away the client is and on the degree
of interference: the further away a client is, the more the signal is
attenuated and the greater is the risk of interference, and therefore the
access point’s overall data rate degrades. In order to deal with these
problems, Wi-Fi technology relies on oversizing. Still rarely available
when many clients are connected to the same access point, oversizing
should soon be introduced generally, thanks to new technologies
which have reached maturity since 2014: specifically, IEEE 802.11ac,
ad and af, which should help to ease communication.
In today’s world, operators use Wi-Fi for the purposes of
offloading, but as the solution is not standardized, each operator has
developed their own technique (although they are all fairly similar to
one another). Since 2014, the technology championed by the Wi-Fi
Alliance – Passpoint – has served as a common standard for all
operators. This technology is described in detail a little later on.
www.it-ebooks.info