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Our Technology

Network

     On January 10, 2000, Don Brown, who manages the technical aspects of the WOW mobile training model and continues to research and develop improvements, took WOW wireless!

     A typical WOW Wireless training LAN (local area network) model contains:

• 1 Server (Dell -- only needed when connecting via modem)
• 1 Access Point (Aironet AP4800 -- wireless)
• 6 Clients with power supplies (IBM)
• 6 PCMCIA Ethernet Cards (Aironet PC4800 -- wireless)
• 1 PCMCIA Ethernet Card (3com -- not wireless)
• 1 10 foot Ethernet Cable (for connecting Access Point to Existing Network)
• 1 10 foot Crossover Cable (for connecting Access Point to Server)
• 1 RJ45 (for connecting two Ethernet Cables together)
• 1 20 foot telephone wire (for connecting Server to a phone outlet)    

Access Point and Cache

     Our wireless network centers around the wireless Access point and the wireless PCMCIA cards. This wireless system runs at a maximum of 11 mega bits per second (mbps).

• Access Point: Aironet AP4800 Enterprise 11bps
• PCMCIA Card: Aironet PC4800 (128b encryption) 11bp

     In addition to the wireless equipment we make use of IP Masquerading and Cache Proxy.

IP Masquerading

     IP Masquerading allows our network to function with only one "real" Internet Address (IP), temporarily assigned to the server when it dials in to our ISP. We assign addresses to the clients and they are masq'd from the ISP. This allows us to run multiple clients using a server connected to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) by modem.

Cache Proxy

     The basic concept of the Web is for a single server to send pages one at a time to individual browsers as they are requested...an inefficient model. While this works fine with a limited audience, it is like having everyone who wants to see a musical fly to New York. As more pages are requested, congestion and latency increase. Caching helps ease the bottleneck by duplicating content and moving it closer to you.

     Our server runs a Cache Proxy, allowing caching on the server of Web pages visited. This then speeds up delivery of classroom instruction as other participants request the same pages. An average Web page takes 15-20 seconds to download, caching reduces this to about three seconds. This comes in very handy when you have six clients connecting through one server on a dialup (56k).