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Wireless Innovations
Contact: Chriss Swaney, +1 412.268.5776, swaney@andrew.cmu.edu
Carnegie Mellon's Wireless Innovations Lead To Development Of Popular Wi-Fi Tools For a Mobile Global Workforce
Synopsis
Wi-Fi permeates our lives. We use it in airports to read our email, in coffee shops to watch the latest video news clips, and at home to hear a favorite singer's new tunes. And Wi-Fi is just beginning to convert our airline seats to remote offices at 35,000 feet. Wi-Fi is everywhere. It all began 15 years ago at Carnegie Mellon University, where managing along the cutting edge is the norm, and where a mixture of ingenuity and guile helped the world rethink the Internet.
Overview
The leader of this Internet revolution was Alex Hills, a raw bundle of nervous energy with a sense of purpose. Like a high-speed sunrise, Hills burst onto the computing scene with a wireless research initiative that would ultimately lay the foundation for today's Wi-Fi computing environment.
"The challenges in building large wireless networks are significant," said Hills, a distinguished service professor at Carnegie Mellon and former chief information officer for the university. "We developed ways to design networks capable of handling any kind of user community."
The university built the first such network anywhere, long before the Wi-Fi standard was adopted. Carnegie Mellon's network is called "Wireless Andrew" for university benefactors Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon.
Started in 1994 as a National Science Foundation-funded research network to support Carnegie Mellon's wireless research initiative, Wireless Andrew provided coverage in seven campus buildings and was expanded in 1999 to serve all 65 residential, academic and administrative buildings on the Pittsburgh campus.
The long-term impact of Carnegie Mellon's Wireless Andrew initiative could boost the rate of innovation by increasing the speed at which ideas spread between businesses, within economies and across countries. The technology that cropped up in the labs at Carnegie Mellon is now an essential part of every business and consumer toolkit. There are a few breakthrough technologies that have altered our lives over the last 200 years, and Carnegie Mellon's early wireless work deserves a place in this august group.
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