All WiFi certified products are interoperable, so one manufacturer's wireless LAN card will work with another's WLAN card or wireless access point. WiFi and other wireless LANs have two main components. An access point generally serves as a bridge between wired and wireless networks. Universal Serial Bus configurations also are starting to make the scene. There's no doubt that 802.11b wireless LANs are a major breakthrough.
Interoperability means that buyers are no longer limited to a single vendor's proprietary products.
And data security is not a concern because several levels of encryption are built into the new standard. In your pocket What makes wireless handheld devices useful is the cooperation among wireless cellular carriers, Internet service providers, and manufacturers of both handheld products and the wireless modems that support them. J.B. Miles of Pahoa, Hawaii, writes about communications and computers.