Abstract: Disclosed are a system and method for providing wireless access to a network, such as the internet. The disclosed technique takes into account the inherent asymmetric and bursty characteristics of internet communication to obtain more efficiency in the communication between a user and an access provider. In doing so, the invention provides a technique that can be used to economically provide wireless access to the internet at data rates that are comparable to what a user would receive over ISDN lines.

Abstract: A periodic wireless data transmission has improved access latency obtaining information regarding users' interest in the information and by arranging the information on an transmission in order of descending popularity. In one embodiment, each adjacent pair of topics on the transmission. The topics' positions on the transmission are exchanged if the exchange decreases the average latency for all users. This may be repeated for all of the topics on the transmission. The transmission structure may also be arranged so that the transmission combines a number of transmission channels to obtain greater aggregate capacity. This may be done using, for example, an FDMA transmission structured to be theoretically comparable to a plurality of "striped" disks known as a RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks).