NCJ Number
206791
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 52 Issue: 6 Dated: June 2004 Pages: 76-78,80,82
Date Published
June 2004
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article examined the use of Wi-Fi technology to assist police in their daily technology practices.
Abstract
Wi-Fi technology has been around for a couple of years, but it has recently become so commonplace that it has attracted the notice of people who do not even use computers. Wi-Fi, also known as 802.11x is a networking protocol that allows computers and other devices to communicate with one another. In its simplest and most common form, a hardwired connection to the Internet, via a telephone dial-up connection, cable modem or DSL line, is wired to a Wi-Fi access point. The access point is a transmitter-receiver that broadcasts a signal in the 2.4 or 5 GHz band to computers equipped with a wireless local access network (WLAN) card. This WLAN card is itself a tiny transceiver, capable of sending and receiving signals from the access point. The result is that the AP and WLAN cards replace the need to string Category 5 (CAT5) networking cables between computers in order to allow them to network. Networking allows devices on the network to share resources, such as connection to the Internet, files that reside on one machine but not on others, printers, and servers that handle tasks such as routing and delivery of e-mail. Wireless networking requires the purchase of specialized hardware, but is often cheaper than the cost of purchasing and installing cabling. The best reason for using Wi-Fi to create a wide-area mobile network is cost. If the intention is to use WI-Fi to establish a wireless mobile data network, the setup process is more or less the same as the WLAN process. There are many options for mobile computing and much research and investigation is necessary for selecting the appropriate choice of technology.