Road
warriors, you may no longer have to quarantine yourselves in an
airport lounge or Starbucks to Wi-Fi the Internet. New software
invented by computer scientists at UCSD’s Jacobs School of
Engineering now makes it possible to really ‘roam’ with
a laptop, PDA
or Wi-Fi phone.
Called SyncScan, the patent-pending technology was developed by
Computer Science and Engineering professor Stefan Savage and
graduate student
Ishwar Ramani. The software changes the way mobile devices search
for stronger signals from nearby Wi-Fi access points. Instead of
waiting for the current signal to weaken before initiating the search,
SyncScan scans for the beacons of nearby Wi-Fi access points at continuous,
preset intervals.
In tests on campus, SyncScan made the delay almost imperceptible
to the user. The average handoff time was just 5 milliseconds—100
times faster than when using current technology. The downside: There goes another
excuse for ignoring office emails.  — Doug Ramsey
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