Chapter6
A Tale of Two Networks
The iPhone is capable of getting online using either of two methods (which is
one more than most phones):
Wi-Fi hot spots. Wi-Fi, known to the geeks as 802.11 and to Apple fans
as AirPort, means wireless networking. It's the same technology that lets
laptops the world over get online at high speed in any Wi-Fi
hot spot
.Hot
spots are everywhere these days: in homes, offices, coffee shops (notably
Starbucks), hotels, airports, and thousands of other places.
at
www.jiwire.com
,
you can type an address or a city and find out exactly where to
find the closest Wi-Fi hotspots. or, quicker yet: open Maps on your iPhone and
type in, for example,
wifi austin
tx or
wifi 06902
.Push pins on the map show you the
closest Wi-Fi hotspots.
When you're in a Wi-Fi hotspot, your iPhone has a very fast connection to
the Internet, as though it's connected to a cable modem or DSL.
Better yet, when you're online this way, you can make phonecalls and
surf the Internet simultaneously. And why not? Your iPhone has two
independent antennas -- one for Wi-Fi, and one for the cellnetwork.
AT&T's cellular network. Unfortunately, the whole world is not yet a Wi-
Fi hotspot. Whenever you're outdoors, in a taxi, or otherwise in a non-Wi-
Fied area, you have a PlanBt of all back on: AT&T's own cellular network.
That is, your iPhone can connect to the data over the same airwaves that
carry your voice.
The problem with the AT&T datanetwork (called theEDGEnetwork),of
course, is that it's slow. Really slow--sometimes dial-up slow. And you
can't be on a phonecall while you're online using EDGE.
aT&T also has a much faster data network--its so-called "3g" (third-generation)
network. But it's available only in 160 U.S. cities so far, and the chips required to
receive it draw an enormous amount of battery power. For those reasons, apple
designed the iPhone to use the older, slower network until the newer,faster one,
and the chips necessary to receive it,
improve.
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