Oklahoma City, for example, for a year has operated a 620 square-mile 802.11g wireless network for mobile computer access for the city police and fire departments. As convenient as this Tropos Networks-based meshed 802.11g is, interference problems are significant enough that mobile public-safety units have also been given mobile cards as a connectivity backup.

And latency issues associated with all the 802.11-based wireless networks used by the city are complicating Oklahoma City's security plans to transition thousands of employees from re-usable passwords to stronger token-based, two-factor authentication. Why? Wireless latency issues, says Steve Eaton, Oklahoma City's information security architect.

Wireless networks "have issues with firewalls and timing concerns," Eaton says, noting that latency -- the time it takes a packet to reach from one designated point to another -- is slower than in wire-only networks.

So when installing the Quest Defender two-factor authentication gateway the city selected, technical adjustments have had to be made to accommodate the latency lag time of wireless networks.

Others benefiting from the advantages of wireless say they are also cognizant of its challenges.