Wireless Net access woes at Comdex

Everyone from Microsoft Corp.’s Bill Gates to booth pitchmen are hyping the joys of wireless networking at this week’s Comdex trade show, but an attempt to make the technology useful to conference attendees has been less than perfect. Many users who tried to connect their wireless-enabled laptops and handheld computers to the local wireless network were greeted with error messages sputtered back by their Web browsers. The problem, conference organizers say, was that demand for the free wireless service was far greater than anticipated. “It’s an unprecedented amount of usage,” said Geoff Horne, a network engineer for Key3Media Group Inc., the conference’s organizer. Horne said organizers wanted to ensure a positive experience for users and thus limited the number of connections to about 300 users. Anyone who tried to connect after the 300 connections were taken were unable to do so until someone dropped out. About 125,000 people were expected to attend the weeklong show.