Donkey God

What is the biggest advantage of forming an alliance?

Everyone has their own definition of an alliance. I had a potential alliance with a person that was starting his own business. He came to my residence with his partner and I brought in a couple of friends and business associates to discuss the possibilities. He gave us a fabulous demonstration of his company offerings. I really liked what he had to offer and was willing to pass leads on to him. He was excited about the possibilities. He next mentioned that he would love to work with our current client base. I asked how he saw the relationship working and his reply was that he would piggyback on our current sales effort. I then asked him how we would be able to capitalize on his client base and how he would help sell our services.

Guess what? He only wanted a one-way relationship: we would make money on sales we did for him! This would certainly take us away from our core business; take us into another area which might fit within our focus in some respects, but not entirely at all. Needless to say, this potential alliance did not get put on paper, even though his offerings were good. You see, an alliance has to be a two-way street. Each member must have a benefit to forming it.

In this example, the business presented would not be a good choice for an alliance. We needed to have a company that provided us with services we could offer in addition to our own services. The allied company would also have the opportunity to sell our services as an add-on. The important thing to remember is that you must carefully choose your alliances.

Bette Daoust, Ph.D. has been networking with others since leaving high school years ago. Realizing that no one really cared about what she did in life unless she had someone to tell and excite. She decided to find the best ways to get people’s attention, be creative in how she presented herself and products, getting people to know who she was, and being visible all the time. Her friends and colleagues have often dubbed her the “Networking Queen”. Blueprint for Networking Success: 150 ways to promote yourself is the first in this series. Blueprint for Branding Yourself: Another 150 ways to promote yourself is planned for release in 2005. For more information visit http://www.BlueprintBooks.com

Wireless networks use radio waves instead of wires to transmit data between computers. Here’s how:

The Binary Code: 1s and 0s

It’s well known that computers transmit information digitally, using binary code: ones and zeros. This translates well to radio waves, since those 1s and 0s can be represented by different kinds of beeps. These beeps are so fast that they’re outside the hearing range of humans.

Morse Code: Dots And Dashes

It works like Morse code, which is a way to transmit the alphabet over radio waves using dots (short beeps) and dashes (long beeps). Morse code was used manually for years via telegraph to get information from 1 place to another very quickly. More importantly for this example, though, it is a binary system, just as a computer system is.

Wireless networking, then, can be thought of as a Morse code for computers. You plug in a combined radio receiver and transmitter, and the computer is able to send out its equivalent of dots and dashes (bits, in computer-speak) to get your data from here to there.

Wavelengths And Frequencies

You might wonder how the computer can send and receive data at high speed without becoming garbled nonsense. The key to wireless networking is how it gets around this problem.

First, wireless transmissions are sent at very high frequencies, which allows more data to be sent per second. Most wireless connections use a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz (2.4 billion cycles per second) — a frequency similar to mobile phones and microwave ovens. However, this high frequency produces a wavelength that is very short, which is why wireless networking is effective only over short distances.

Wireless networks also use a technique called “frequency hopping.” They use dozens of frequencies, and constantly switch among them. This makes wireless networks more immune to interference from other radio signals than if they transmitted on a single frequency.

Internet Access Points

The final step for a wireless network is to provide internet access for every computer on the network. This is done by a special piece of wireless equipment called an access point. An access point is more expensive than a wireless card for 1 computer, because it contains radios capable of communicating with around 100 computers, sharing internet access among them. Dedicated access points are necessary only for larger networks. With only a few computers, it is possible to use 1 of them as the access point, or to use a wireless router.

Industry Standards

Wireless equipment from different manufacturers can work together to handle these complex communications because there are standards which guide the production of all wireless devices. These standards are technically called the 802.11. Because of industry compliance with these standards, wireless networking is both easy to use and affordable today.

Wireless Is Simple To Use

If all this talk of frequencies has you worried — relax. Wireless networking hardware and software handle all of this automatically, without need for user intervention. Wireless networking, for all its complicated ability, is far simpler to use than you might expect.

Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer. Visit Wireless Internet for more info.

Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact.