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Recent Entries

Wall Street Journal on Wi-Fi
A few questions
wireless networking today
It's No Oneder: Old Folks Surf, Too
Eroding Personal Time
Three Bands for Agere, Which in the Network Binds Them
media converter
Access Point Bridge vs Client Mode
Weapons of Mass Dissemination
EtherLinx Answers Questions

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November 2002 Archives

November 30, 2002

Wall Street Journal on Wi-Fi

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Subscribe to essays from this site via email. Email to subscribe, or sign up via your Yahoo account.

Thorough Wall Street Journal reporting on Wi-Fi hot spots and its challenge to cellular: This very thorough story -- available for free via MSNBC -- outlines the threat to cellular's next generation. As one interviewee notes, the majority of places that high-speed cellular would be ideal can be more easily served by Wi-Fi. This is in accord with my world view. I'm waiting for the time when an article like this can focus on the next level, rather than recapitulating everyone since prehistory. It takes maturity for a technology before mainstream business reporting can assume its readers can understand the background in a paragraph instead of 1,000 words. The New York Times already assumes that, but that's partly because of their heavy tech focus over the last few years, and their Circuits section.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:50 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 28, 2002

A few questions

By Glenn Fleishman

1, What exactly is wireless networking?

2, What standards govern the operation of wireless networking?

3, What components need to be bought to "wirelessly" connect computers together?

4, What are the current operating limitations of wireless networks?

5, What security problems are inherit in wireless networks?

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:40 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

wireless networking today

By Glenn Fleishman

Can some people please describe the state of wireless networking today. Thank you

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:37 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | 2 Comments

November 27, 2002

It's No Oneder: Old Folks Surf, Too

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Subscribe to essays from this site via email. Email to subscribe, or sign up via your Yahoo account.

I'll be at 802.11 Planet next week: For those of you attending 802.11 Planet in Santa Clara, CA, next week, I hope we get a chance to meet. I've exchanged email with so many people in the industry who read this blog that it will be a delight to start connecting names and faces. If you want to try to identify me by sight, visit my home page for photos of me. (Warning: hair in photo on main page may no longer be as robust as it appears.) The event is highly targeted to a few audiences, including the wireless enterprise IT manager, hot spot operators, and the technically focused. I'll try to blog as much as I can from the show itself.

Maryland wireless ISP Oneder (pronounced wonder) offers older folks opportunity for high-speed access: By targeting retirement communities, this startup firm hopes to make inroads among savvy elders, while also tackling business service.

BT OpenZone and Telia HomeRun sign roaming agreement: British Telecom and Telia (Sweden) will allow seamless roaming across their hot spot networks. Telia operates nearly 500 hot spots across Scandinavia, while BT has just 37 hot spots today, but plans 70 hot spots by year's end, 400 by next June, and 4,000 by 2005. The press release says that 800,000 Swedes travel to the UK by air each year! Who knew? Telia also has roaming agreements with carriers in Italy and Holland.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:50 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 26, 2002

Eroding Personal Time

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Subscribe to essays from this site via email. Email to subscribe, or sign up via your Yahoo account.

Ephraim Schwartz decries eroding personal time through ubiquitous expectation: Ephraim's InfoWorld column is dead on, in this writer's opinion. Ubiquitous access to information shouldn't be translated to mean eternal work. I believe that eternal work is as close to damnation as we're allowed to see on this material plane.

It's one of my pet peeves that productivity is required to increase every month to indicate a healthy economy. In fact, increased productivity often comes at the expense of the family life so beloved by pro-business politicians. In the blue-collar world, increased productivity means a faster pace (and thus more accidents or decreased quality) or illegal off-the-clock hours. It rarely means more money.

White-collar workers of all stripes are expected to spend ever-more downtime hours working so their days start when they wake and check email, extend through the commute into the office, and follow them home and over weekends.

When my uncle worked at HP in the 80s and 90s as a manager, they tried to get him to take a very early personal computer home, and he refused. He knew they would demand that much more work from him on top of his long hours. (Ah, the days, when you could turn down a computer.)

To quote a popular phrase at Amazon.com after my time there: you can work long, hard, or smart; pick any three.

I can also reference a brief item from Scott Adams's latest Dilbert Newsletter: one of his correspondents described how his wife, before she quit her job, tried to convince her bosses to let her work part-time when she had a baby. They took her to lunch and said, we don't understand. You work so hard already -- how will you do everything in half the time?

My personal vision for wireless communication is one of liberation, but it's so easily subverted. Instead of spending so much time dealing with the mechanisms of data interaction (making a connection, waiting for data to move), you deal with the result: email you can respond to, a presentation that you needed. The outcome should be less time and in more venues that you appreciate. Instead of handling email when you arrive home, instead you answer it while on the ferry or the train. Although that erodes a different part of your downtime, perhaps it frees up the more important periods.

My cousin might have a cautionary tale. When he worked at Pacific Bell and voicemail was new, as a lower-level manager, he had a limited number of voicemail messages he could have in his inbox. When he was promoted to a higher-level position, that number increased--and so did the messages. Instead of dealing with a dozen messages at any given time, he was into the dozens. His workload suddenly extended without an end in sight.

I'd have to say the moment that I decided to leave my job at Amazon.com after only six months over 96-97 came when it hit me that no matter how hard I worked, my job would only become denser: more tasks packed into the same time and I was working as hard as I felt capable of already. I gave notice a few days later.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:30 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 25, 2002

Three Bands for Agere, Which in the Network Binds Them

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Subscribe to essays from this site via email. Email to subscribe, or sign up via your Yahoo account.

Agere proposes binding three 802.11a channels for 162 Mbps: In an interesting Gedanken experiment, Agere suggests or binding three 802.11a channels into a single multiplexed (muxed) network. The article also has a tight, smart discussion of potential standards Balkanization through adoption of interim standards without per se compatibility.

Sychip offers SDIO Wi-Fi: Devices with Secure Digital (SDIO) slots should shortly have full Wi-Fi access available through a Sychip chipset and reference design. The SD slot is found in Palm and PocketPC models as well as cell phones and other devices.

A wireless walk in Manhattan's Bryant Park: NYC Wireless's project at Bryant Park is treated to a gentle essay in the local City section of the New York Times, as the concepts of urban meeting places and interactions are neatly overlaid onto the latest technology.

Boston Globe: Starbucks plus Wi-Fi equals virtual office: Scott Kirsner writes about how entrepreneurs can use Starbucks as their corporate meeting room, and the etiquette issues that result.

I'm quoted completely accurately in Scott's article, but I should broaden the statement: it's not just T-Mobile networks that are insecure, but all hot spot networks use no encryption of any kind for their data. Users or the companies they work for have to be responsible for encryption their data before it leaves their computer. I've written about this extensively, just finished co-writing a book with a chapter largely devoted to the whys and hows of it, and am moderating a session at the upcoming 802.11 Planet intended for WISPs and their customers on the subject. The long and the short of it: When data leaves your computer, if it's not on an encrypted link, anyone can read everything you send and receive.

Paul Andrews on ubiquitous demand, scarce access: Paul was at Comdex and found everyone had wireless adapters, but hardly a Wi-Fi outlet to be found. He also saw the future of cell-data wireless: fast and everywhere. But he has to remember that he was one of the only users on that 3 Mbps connection. It's a party line, cell transmissions, and when you get a lot of users all downloading streaming video at the same time, you lose speed.

Health of Writing, If Not Economy: It's a sign of something -- an improving economy? wireless industry vibrancy? my own ego? -- that I'm in the middle of writing three articles on Wi-Fi and wireless. Two are for major national computer magazines and the third for a national newspaper. I've been writing about Wi-Fi since Oct. 2000, when I thought I'd made an amazing discovery -- although it was old hat already to some people by then. I've often felt like an industry evangelist, telling my editors how big and transformatory short-range, high-speed wireless networking would become. In the last year, the flashpoint got lot, the tipping point tipped, and now practically every national publication that covers business or technology has at least one wireless article each week or month, and most newspapers seem to cycle through more than once a month with a wireless-oriented piece. Does that mean Wi-Fi is about to become Time Person of the Year? The ultimate kiss of death, you know.

NTT to combine wireline, wireless offerings: Japan's telecom giant NTT has about 250 hot spots rolled out, and is aiming for 1,000 in the near future, but expects to use these as tools to acquire more combo wired/wireless customers rather than a revenue source by themselves. This reflects what I anticipate T-Mobile's secondary interest is in expanding hot spots: relative cheap 24-hours-a-day advertising at most Starbucks, all Borders, and many airport lounges. Good deal for them for the advertising buck. (Their primary interest? Getting their feet wet to see whether Wi-Fi can really bring in revenue.)

Media Unspun: Several links from today's news come from Media Unspun, an interesting daily newspaper that acts as a combination of analysis and compendium of two key issues reported widely. I've been a subscriber since the publication spun off from a defunct dotcom magazine, and it's so worth the cheap annual fee of $50 (for about 250 issues, essentially). It's one of the best reads of the day for anyone who follows business news.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:22 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

media converter

By Glenn Fleishman

I am looking for a media converter with the following characteristics;
1 x pcmcia slot form 802.11 card
1 x 10 base T port for ethernet connection
I have so found only 1 manufacturer in Germany but the lead times to deliver have taken too long.
I would need an initial order of 20 converters.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 6:59 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

Access Point Bridge vs Client Mode

By Glenn Fleishman

Folks,

Probably a trivial question but please bear with me...

I can't figure out the difference between the "client AP mode" and the
"bridge" functionalities that are present in many wireless access
points (mine being a Netgear ME102).

Assuming you want to connect to a given "foreign" access point, what
difference would you have using one or the other method ?

Enquiring minds want to know...

Thanks for any pertinent info !

--alex

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:47 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | 3 Comments

November 24, 2002

Weapons of Mass Dissemination

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Subscribe to essays from this site via email. Email to subscribe, or sign up via your Yahoo account.

Mobile blogging: A superb essay from Justin Hall on how blogging (and informal reporting) combined with wireless networks (cell and LAN) are changing culture. He relies in part on Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs thesis, but pulls together many threads from the realms of blogging, journalism, and technology.

He manages to raise a point I thought Rheingold skipped in his book: it's all well and good to use cell networks to cause spontaneous protests, but what happens if the government simply shuts down the network or restricts it? This used to seem sort of laughable -- along the lines of who can shut down the Internet?

But with an increasing reliance on cell-based networks, all of which are owned by enormous national or multinational firms, a little pressure from, say, an Admiral Poindexter, could have turned the Battle in Seattle into the Battle for Cell Dial Tone.

The growing use of Wi-Fi wireless networks could help forestall the dominance of cell companies, where a few hands owning all means of signal distribution could strangle dissemination. Because many intentional or unintentional Wi-Fi networks use cable and DSL modems, or, increasingly, relay traffic from other locations, the government would have to try to shut down all Internet access to disable communications.

In some cases, this might mean having to shut down links in cities 20 to 40 miles away, or disable satellite Internet communications. True, the FCC limits on unlicensed spectrum power limits prevent extremely long links, but I can't imagine activists, finding their local voice cut off, wouldn't turn on a little more wattage to reach the next hop of connectivity for temporary links -- and from that next hop to another and another if necessary. To paraphrase an old protest cry: The whole wireless world is watching!

To extrapolate only slightly, once Voice over IP (VOIP) phones are cheaply available to work over any Wi-Fi network in the next two years (or maybe next few months), and with embeded Jabber instant-messaging clients in the same device, we stop having to rely on cell data networks except for ubiquity and, perhaps, a predictable cost. (Cell companies aren't stupid: they certainly are testing the practicality of such devices now, as it would allow them to shift traffic off overloaded cell towers.)

Privacy-conscious consumers and activists would almost certainly switch to using community networks that would route their call via an encrypted end-to-end transport to an overseas switch that would anonymize their call before feeding it back into the publicly switched telephone network.

As we find that the options for unfettered expression of free speech are further and further constrained -- protest-free zones, pre-emptive arrests, prior restraint -- wireless networks emerge as one of the Weapons of Mass Dissemination in the arsenal of democracy.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:07 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 22, 2002

EtherLinx Answers Questions

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Subscribe to essays from this site via email. Email to subscribe, or sign up via your Yahoo account.

EtherLinx made a big and unexpected public unveiling in June 2002 when New York Times veteran staff writer John Markoff put them on page A1. In the article, Markoff described how the two founders in a garage a few blocks away from the one in which Apple's Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built early computers had a revolutionarily priced wireless product that combined some aspects of mesh networking with long range point to point and in-home Wi-Fi access.

At the time, I was dubious about the combination of price and features: for $150, they said, they could wholesale a piece of customer premises equipment that could handle the back-haul and local service using off-the-shelf products that already had FCC approval.

Forums on wireless raged with questions and debate, while the founders of the company remained most mum about the details. They hadn't been exactly ready to launch their company when Markoff came calling, but couldn't resist the opportunity.

Several weeks ago, I posted a series of questions about EtherLinx that I couldn't answer based on their material, and have been exchanging email with John Furrier, one of the founders, intermittently over the last few months. We finally found a point when he could answer questions via email as well as provide some follow-up replies for more detail.

I asked Furrier, to start with, whether Markoff was accurate when he wrote: The device, which the Etherlinx executives said they believe can be built in quantity for less than $150 each, would communicate with a central antenna and then convert the signals into the industry-standard Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, signal for reception inside the home.

Furrier: "Yes, this statement is true. We have a working product that converts our signal over to Wi-Fi. It is actually trivial for us, since we just bridge over to an AP verses the Ethernet cable. Yes, we can do quantities of this combo functionality for less than $150."

I followed up on this question in subsequent emails, asking exactly what he meant by bridging to an AP.

Furrier: "Our product that we are deploying today is a CPE that has Ethernet out (CAT 5)." (CPE is customer premises equipment, a common telecommunications industry term.) "We have working a dual-mode COE" (Central Office Equipment used in a switch room) "which is an EtherLinx CPE that receives the long-haul signal, then bridges it over to a standard Wi-Fi radio, and then broadcasts 802.11b . This is for customers who want to have an 802.11b in their house without having an access point. It would be good for public hotspots. Think of it as a DSL modem with an embedded access point."

Finally, does this mean two radios in one device?

Furrier: "Yes, that is correct. Two different units in one device. We are transparent to the end node whether it's Ethernet Cat 5 or 802.11b broadcast. All of our software is L2 we make no modifications to the PHY layer. It's kind of like a multifunction peripheral." (L2 is network model layer 2, or the part of the networking protocol in which frames are exchanged over a physical medium, layer 1.)

Back to the original email interview. Fleishman: "How does the SDR [Software-Defined Radio] benefit what you're doing given that 2.4 GHz radios are so inexpensive? Is the current silicon not flexible enough for your needs? Most of the focus on SDR is dynamic reconfiguration across larger swaths of bandwidth."

Furrier: "The inexpensive nature of the current 2.4 is a good thing for us since we leverage those devices to load our software on. The 802.11b spec however isn't flexible for us but the PHY layer is."

Fleishman: "How do you differentiate yourself from, say, Alvarion's CPE/CO style offerings that have been out on the market for more than five years (with a high price point still) that have similar specs, and from, say, Nokia RoofTop? The literature makes it sound as though you're combining bridge, repeater, and mesh (although not much of that last point)."

Furrier: "Our big advantage is price and the ability to repeat to create low-cost saturation pools within a given area. Nokia is a pure mesh and very expensive. We are point to multipoint with software modifications to handle bridging and repeating--we also have added additional features to maximize channel reuse, etc."

Fleishman: "How can you reconcile the Fresnel zone with your statements about non-line-of-sight service? Is this entirely based on using passive and CPE repeaters, or have you built a system which offers enough signal diversity to overcome the Fresnel limits that restrict, say, DSSS?"

Furrier: "Some of both, but most of it is in the repeating capability."

Fleishman: "What's the status of FCC approval? In the original NY Times article, Markoff said something about provisional approval, but that kind of approval is hard to get and doesn't last forever. Based on the information you sent, it seems like it would be relatively easily (just costly) to get your CO and CPE device certified.

Furrier: "Already approved by the FCC since 1997...type approved."

The community and industry continues to try to understand how EtherLinx's products will affect the near-term final-mile (or perhaps final-dozens-of-mile) market for WISPs. Feedback is, of course, welcome, and I'll publish (with permission) parts of comments people want to share.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 12:03 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

I'm new in this wireless Net. need a a big help

By Glenn Fleishman

Hi i've a Laptop with a DellTM TrueMobileTM 1150 Series Mini PCI Card and i was wondering if is possible to conected with a Desktop Pc with a D-Link AirPlus DWL-520+, the first one is a IEEE 802.11 Standard for Wireless LANS (DSSS) with 11 Mps. and the D-Link is a IEEE 802.11b standar with 22Mps. i wanna know if possible a connection between this two devices?????
i really need your help

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:52 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | 2 Comments

Agree about these 11g folks jumping the gun

By Glenn Fleishman

Glenn,
I'm pretty impressed with your piece http://80211b.weblogger.com/discuss/msgReader$478?mode=topic&y=2002&m=11&d=21
today, and it seems to follow quite closely to something I wrote for the news site http://www.newswireless.net this morning.

I'd quite like to link to your piece, or even quote it; is this possible?

Cheers,

Guy Kewney
mailto:guy@kewney.com

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 4:10 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 21, 2002

News for 11/21/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

Is WiFi part of your product strategy? Let Blue Mug handle the details: integration, interop, roaming, power, performance.

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

The companies take charge: The joy of 802.11b networking is that The Wi-Fi Alliance (formerly WECA) has provided a safe haven for consumers and businesses by certifying that devices carrying a Wi-Fi seal are all interoperable. This mark of approval has been one of the key factors that kept manufacturers from Balkanizing and rapidly drove Wi-Fi into a commodity market in which, for one of the few cases I can recall in my short life, the market forces did sort out the best solution, while economies of scale and technical innovation dropped prices while allowing the companies selling equipment to actually seem to make money by doing so.

The next stage of networking development, however, is about to hit a rocky spot. The various IEEE 802.11 working group's task forces for security, quality of service (streaming data, among other things), and higher 2.4 GHz bit rates have taken glacial steps for technical unity in the middle of this market expansion. The IEEE is acting entirely in the right modality, ensuring that the standards adopted, which may be in use 10 to 20 years from now, aren't designed as stopgaps which can't be upgraded, made interoperable, or made backwards compatible. The IEEE committees are interesting mixes of academic theory, engineering expertise, and market-driven decisionmaking.

Because the work of these committees has dragged on, however necessarily, the industry's manufacturers have finally stepped up to the plate, and written their own roadmap. The Wi-Fi Alliance's WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) balances the current state of 802.11i (the security task group) against the constant bombardment of media reports that Wi-Fi is insecure. It's a compromise for interim deployment that can be upgraded to the final 802.11i specification while still being available as an upgrade to older silicon. It's also the first time the Wi-Fi Alliance mandated a specification. Because they'll test for interoperability, WPA should be just as much of an industry driver as Wi-Fi was in the first place.

More disturbingly, however, is the interim introduction of 802.11g-draft chipsets from several companies. These chipsets, while following the current draft proposal for 22 Mbps and 54 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band, as well as backwards support for 802.11b's several speeds, could produce a near-term market confusion. The Wi-Fi Alliance won't be testing for 802.11g interoperability for some time -- possibly not until 2004 according to some reports. This puts a potential burr in the wheels of Broadcam, TI, Agere, Intersil, and other companies' plans to aggressively push out new, g-draft-compliant chipsets: they can't use an independent third party test lab to assure that all of these interim versions work together.

If consumers and businesses aggressively buy into the g-draft products, and the companies behind them don't stay on top of whatever interoperability testing they can do themselves, they risk alienating segments of the market that don't have the time or technical expertise to understand why they could buy two Wi-Fi devices this year that work together, and not two g-draft devices next year that don't. The risk is high for Balkanization and reducing customer faith. The industry should step up to the bat in assuring voluntary interoperability testing and compliance before Wi-Fi is able to formally create a program when 802.11g is finally ratified.

Other News

Proliferation of choice may confuse: As if to prove my point above, this article appears in Wired News today. With so many flavors of 802.11 networks now or shortly available, businesses and consumers may have a hard time sorting out what they need.

72-mile smackdown!: The HPWREN folks who created a 72-mile link between San Diego and San Clemente Island using 2.4 GHz equipment have dropped their power output after being told by Computerworld readers that they were radically over the EIRP limits for the band. The link is still holding, however, just at a lower speed.

Subscribe to the 802.11b Networking News Mailing List: This list, which I've had running for a while, will be used to send out essays and news on an occasional basis, rather than daily updates. If you want to receive an update whenever I post the first news items on a given day, follow the link to become a Member on the right navigation bar. There are no obligations; it's just a way to manage a subscription to the site's updates.

Verizon enters the business services market for WLANs: Verizon will offer an extremely useful service for small to medium sized networks by installing wireless LANs at a reasonable price. The question is: are they hiring expertise or training installers?

More unlicensed, more powerful: Sen. Barbara Boxer et al are promoting a new bill to open up unlicensed spectrum with more powerful transmission options to speed broadband outside of urban areas. It's clear from the mom-and-pop WISPs that are using current generation equipment that adding better transmission options would spur a new business cycle, and potentially regional companies, who would treat the rural market as an affordable and profitable way to provide broadband. Broadband isnt' a panacea, but connecting people with few resources to many has seemed to help more remote businesses and communities. However, Bill Gates recently discovered that his foundation's attempts to offer computers and Internet access in rural libraries hasn't so far stemmed the brain drain. (Of course, providing or offering wireless to people's homes is a far different proposition.)

Australian government spooks worry over commercial wireless deployment: Australian is opening up the point-to-point wireless business by waiving carrier fees, but government intelligence experts wants piles of information about the users and deployments to forestall their fears of...what?

Companies deploying on-the-road wireless security: Companies are getting smart about mobile users' secure access to the networks, and deploying VPN access themselves or purchasing peace of mind through service providers.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 6:24 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 20, 2002

Broadcom's 54g

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

802.11 Planet article clarifies Broadcom's 802.11g/54 Mbps offering: 802.11 Planet runs down the Wi-Fi hardware makers who plan to use Broadcom's 802.11g-draft-compliant chipset to offer up to 54 Mbps (raw) in 2.4 GHz. The chipset is designed to be upgradable to the ratified 802.11g specification, and interoperable with other g-draft chipsets. Until the ratified version appears and The Wi-Fi Alliance offers a certification, however, it will be risky to rely on intervendor 802.11g-draft and -ratified systems, which may Balkanize purchases over the next year.

Other News

Fortune mag's take on Wi-Fi in business: A thorough article from Matthew Boyle on how Wi-Fi is already transforming business. The article reflects the kinds of discussions I've had with companies, where they find multiple effects from WLANs: cheaper to install, more flexible to move people around, more productivity in meetings where thngs must happen, more productivity across the day. The other factor they don't mention is that employees may actually have improved happiness: if you can work more effectively during the day, you don't need to work as long (or at least one would hope). That extra 30 minutes of email before you go to bed might be eliminated and replaced with sleep or family time, f'r'instance.

WEP is a no trespassing sign: I had the pleasure of talking to Robert Moskowitz at length last night about security, encryption, and authentication for an upcoming article I'm working on, and he pointed me to his latest Network Computing column. This column offers the sensible advice that WEP, while easily breakable, is a no trespassing sign, and thus has an effect of (and threat of) deterrence beyond its weaknesses. Robert noted in passing to me that only 10,000 packets are required to break a WEP key!

Panel at Comdex concludes wider roaming on the horizon, but not around the corner: Put the head of the CTIA, and representatives of Qualcomm, Boingo, Sony's Vaio division, Cingular, and Nokia in a room, and they all agree that it's moving forward, but slowly, to a single bill, single hardware network solution.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:54 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 19, 2002

The Modern Speakeasy Opens Its Doors

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Speakeasy Networks offers its DSL customers Wi-Fi package for explicit sharing (follow link to new customer signup): Speakeasy Networks is offering a free SMC Networks 802.11a or 802.11b access point to new DSL and T-1 subscribers. Speakeasy is a national DSL/digital line provider, which in the spirit of full disclosure is my home and work DSL provider. Some telephone companies have offered limited discounts or promotions for equipment from Linksys and other vendors, but this is the first free promotion I've heard of.

There's a quote in the press release, which I normally shy away from including, but is quite explicit in its authorization of community and neighborhood networking. "Unlike traditional ISPs, which either prohibit wireless networking entirely or grudgingly allow it but saddle customers with extra fees, Speakeasy is encouraging unfettered access. Speakeasy users can extend their broadband connections wirelessly -- to additional computers in their homes or even to computers in neighboring homes," said Mike Apgar, Speakeasy CEO. "Speakeasy is virtually alone in encouraging neighborhood Wi-Fi networks." Later in the press release, Apgar notes that restaurants and coffee shops can buy this kind of DSL and share it, too: it's not just limited to home sharing.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:57 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 18, 2002

Turnkey Hot Spots

By Glenn Fleishman

If you're a desirable venue, like a major airport or a hotel in a downtown business district or a chain of bookstores, you might receive proposals every week about how paid wireless networking could bring in new customers if only you'd shell out some amount of money to company X to provide that service for you.

If you run a coffee shop or other venue open to the public (or even just near congregations of people), you might have considered installing for-fee service, but not known where to turn. (If you want to offer free access, there are a number of community networking resources -- see NoCat, for instance.)

As the hot spot market has developed, turnkey hot spot systems have proliferated, letting venues who want relatively simple access in single locations in their facilities buy a piece of equipment, purchase DSL or higher-speed Internet service, plug the equipment in, and be ready to take customers. The lack of technical instruction and the avoidance of an on-site installation visit combine to make these offerings relatively inexpensive.

Several networks offer their own turnkey systems that tie into just their network, or allow both a local service for one's own users that also allows members of a national network to use the same system, and for you to receive revenue from it. For instance, FatPort's FatPoint system allows Boingo Wireless users access as well.

Turnkey Hot Spot Systems

AirPath: AirPath has several plans, including AirPath Instant Hot Spot. They offer a variety of equipment, starting at $695, and also have approved equipment you can deploy. The advantage of their system is that you keep all the revenue from local subscriber (from a single point or a network of hot spots you build), and receive partner revenue from other AirPath members using your point. AirPath also allows Boingo Wireless customers to roam on their network.

Boingo Wireless: Boingo Wireless has trademarked the phrase Hot Spot in a Box, which is why I refer to them generically as turnkey hot spot systems. Boingo requires the purchase of a $695 Colubris access point configured for authentication, as well as high-speed service and a static IP address. Boingo pays a $20 bounty for each new member, and $1 per connection session at a hot spot location. Boingo also offers WISP in a Box, which allows a hot spot to have their own network customers while also offering Boingo service. (This is actually Pronto's Hotspot Managed Services sold under this name; see below.) The revenue sharing is the same, but Boingo requires that its partners in this service charge no less than $12 per month, $6 per day, and $3 per hour. At the 802.11 Planet conference in December 2002, Boingo's CEO announced Boingo Ready, which is the inclusion of their hot-spot-enabled software in hardware by Colubris, Nomadix, and Vernier. He also said that they expect the price for a hot-spot box that works with their network to drop to as low as $300, and that their software would also wind up in consumer devices. Becoming a hot spot would mean signing up and flipping a switch.

FatPort: FatPort, a Canadian firm, has a set of offerings under the FatPoint name available in North America. FatPoint Complete: A hands-off managed solution for US$199/month, including DSL service, technical support, and what they label an "up to 40%" revenue share. FatPoint Express: US$525 buys the FatPoint server; you supply the bandwidth and tech support for "up to 40%" of the revenue. FatPort also offers an OEM version of their FatPoint server for WISPs. Although a revenue-sharing percentage is noted, there's no detail about what a typical location might see.

NetNearU: This firm offers several kinds of preconfigured hot spot services, but little detail on their online site. You need to contact them for details, such as cost and revenue sharing. Boingo Wireless subscribers can use NetNearU locations. A NetNearU reseller wrote in to note that he resells the turnkey system either for $495 and gives venues 15 percent of the revenue in exchange for providing technical support and marketing; or, for $695 with a 40 percent revenue cut for the location, but they're responsible for marketing and tech support themselves.

Pronto Networks: Pronto wrote in to provide some details on their service. They have two turnkey solutions. The first is Hotspot Managed Services, which is a private-labeled offering for hot spot operators who want to brand under their own identity but not handle backend details like billing or user accounts. For these setups, Pronto charges $799 for a Hotspot Controller, and offers 75 percent of the revenue to the hot spot operator. Pronto also offers the same device in its Hotspot Networking System, which is for hot spt operators who want to fully run their own systems. This costs $799 for a controller and $7,990 for a 10-controller software license for full authentication, roaming, and billing management.

Surf and Sip: Surf and Sip has an offering which they describe only in vague terms on this page. It's a single box that offers both wireline and wireless access to make it easier to set up a net cafe or a pure wireless setup. Details on pricing, availability, and revenue sharing to come as the company is in the middle of revising its offerings.

Toshiba: Toshiba offers a $199 turnkey system that they'll be marketing heavily. They don't provide simple details on what users pay, how much it really costs all told to use a Toshiba hot spot device, nor any other details. (Anyone who knows, please provide them with my thanks.) But they have said they want to get 10,000 hot spots installed in the US (and some equal number under a separate division in Canada).

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:43 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hot Spot

Linksys Offers Draft G (54 Mbps) in December

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Linksys to ship 54 Mbps, 802.11g draft compliant hardware first week of December: Linksys announced today that they would be shipping three products that complied with the current draft of 802.11g in early December. 802.11g is the faster, but backwards compatible flavor of 802.11b (2.4 GHz Wi-Fi), that will be ratified by mid-2003. Several companies have recently announced chipsets and equipment to ship early next year. Linksys is using Broadcom chipsets. A company spokesperson said in an interview that Linksys intended this equipment to be fully firmware upgradable to the ratified release standards, as well as for WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) support.

Although the company wouldn't commit yet to benchmark throughput figures, the spokesperson estimated a rate of 28 to 35 Mbps (as opposed to about 7 Mbps in 802.11b).

Perhaps as remarkable as the early ship date of these products is their pricing: Linksys will ship the first three devices, a PC Card, an access point and a cable/DSL gateway, for an estimated 10 to 20 percent more than the current 802.11b-only equipment.

IDG News Service's Stephen Lawson delivers a status report on other vendors' near-term 802.11g draft plans, including D-Link, Symbol, Buffalo, and SMC Networks.

Other News

FatPort adds Boingo as roaming partner: FatPort hot spots will now allow Boingo Wireless subscribers access starting immediately. Boingo Wireless has roaming agreements with several networks already, notably Wayport.

Turnkey Hot Spot Systems: I've just posted a short article about systems that allow a venue (coffee shop or larger) to set up a hot spot without any engineering on their part, including the Boingo, FatPort, and Surf and Sip options. The article also notes Proxim's new AP-2500 access point, which is optimized for public enterprise use and hot-spot networks.

NY Times: entrenched interests fear Wi-Fi may cause retrenching: In a nicely clever piece of reasoning, John Markoff spells out Wi-Fi's potential to disrupt entrenched telecommunications interests especially as the FCC examines opening up more spectrum to unlicensed or related use. As I have often said, incumbent market interests always get angry when consumers produce a more efficient marketplace. Rather than fight in the market, they encourage regulation or legislation to tip the playing field that's already heavily tilted their direction. [repeated from late yesterday's entry]

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:46 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 17, 2002

Retrenched Interests

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

NY Times: entrenched interests fear Wi-Fi may cause retrenching: In a nicely clever piece of reasoning, John Markoff spells out Wi-Fi's potential to disrupt entrenched telecommunications interests especially as the FCC examines opening up more spectrum to unlicensed or related use. As I have often said, incumbent market interests always get angry when consumers produce a more efficient marketplace. Rather than fight in the market, they encourage regulation or legislation to tip the playing field that's already heavily tilted their direction.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:17 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 16, 2002

Four Channels, Not Three

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Four nonoverlapping channels in Wi-Fi?: An interesting summary of the analysis in a white paper about the signal overlap issues when using channels 1, 6, and 11 (the recommended nonoverlapping channels in 802.11b), and channels 1, 4, 8, and 11 (in the US) or five in parts of Europe (channels not specified). The white paper itself is supposed to show up at cirond.com. [via BoingBoing]

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:24 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 15, 2002

The Wireless Networking Starter Kit

By Glenn Fleishman

The Wireless Networking Starter Kit

Your faithful blog operator Glenn Fleishman has written a book on wireless networking for small networks at home and at work with his colleague and friend Adam Engst (TidBITS, Macworld Magazine). The book, 336 pages long, covers the whole range of issues that neophytes and experienced users alike face when on their own at home or with no information technology staff to call on, from configuring wireless network adapters to working wirelessly on the road to creating long-distance wireless links.

The book, where it's operating system specific, covers Macintosh and Windows issues, focusing primarily on Mac OS X and Windows XP/2000, but also including more limited instructions for Mac OS X 8.6 and later, and Windows 98 and later.

The book can be pre-ordered through Amazon.com, and it will be shipped in mid-December. Amazon.com is discounting the $30 cover price to $21. (Neither the title or cover represents the final results, by the way.)

The book is illustrated throughout to demonstrate important concepts that don't leap readily to mind, such as how PGP encryption works, or how to sketch a network diagram for planning the pieces of your network.

Practical advice in the book includes step-by-step instructions for turning a Mac OS 8.6/9.x, Mac OS X, or Windows XP system into a software access point, and setting up network-to-network wireless bridges.

Table of contents (download complete TOC in Acrobat PDF form)
1 Why Wireless?
2 Networking Basics
3 How Wireless Works
4 Connecting Your Computer
5 Building Your Wireless Network
6 Wireless Security
7 Taking It on the Road
8 Going the Distance
9 Things That Go Bump in the Net
10 The Future of Wireless

A full table of contents and index in PDF form are coming, along with excerpts from the book and other information.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:51 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

News for 11/15/02

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Boingo Wireless drops monthly unlimited price to $49.95: Without fanfare, but noticed by VentureWire (no article link available), Boingo slashed its $74.95/month all you can eat rate (unlimited sessions) to $49.95. A nice move, and I would guess that it signifies more users rather than fewer. You lower your price when you're confident of a model, if you're smart, rather than in panic. Note the inside joke describing the unlimited service: the Sky's the limit? [via alert Dave Gross]

Boingo's Sky Dayton on PocketPCs: Sky shared a few insights about the PocketPC market with me yesterday which I reproduce with his permission: non-laptop Wi-Fi devices will dramatically increase hot spot usage and the size of the potential user population. With Pocket Boingo, PocketPC becomes the first such device. Pocket Boingo on an iPaq, provides an instant-on, 5-10 second login experience, perfect for people who are moving through a hot spot quickly. It's pretty cool to be sitting in a hot spot streaming video on your PDA! Bigger picture -- with Wi-Fi component prices dropping through the floor and all the innovation around power conservation, we can expect to see a flood of non-laptop Wi-Fi devices. Not just PDAs, but cell phones, MP3 players, Game Boys. Anything with a battery that could benefit from fast wireless Internet connection. I concur, not just to be a sycophant, because we're already seeing useful devices that aren't Wi-Fi adapters or access points, but rely on the network's presence. Based on Boingo's announcement, I just purchased a Toshiba PocketPC (due in next week) with a Compact Flash format Wi-Fi card.

Can WPA Be DoS'd?: Acronym city. Can the Wi-Fi Alliance's new Wi-Fi Protected Access replacement for WEP be easily misled into shutting down over and over again, thus acting as a Denial of Service (DoS) attack? The article's author doesn't seem to distinguish between plain WEP-like WPA (shared secrets) and network authentication WPA (802.1x/EAP), and I believe the problem is in the latter system, if it exists. Because this problem is known, manufacturers in their implementations can fix it. Also, the point about not being able to find DoS'ers -- an increasing number of tools allow pinpointing locations, and because you have to actively inject packets to cause this DoS, I wonder how many crackers will be happy to wait for the police to show up?

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:05 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | 1 Comment

November 14, 2002

Put a Boingo in Your Pocket

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Boingo Wireless adds PocketPC software to its roster: Boingo supports several PocketPC models with its sniffing and connection software, which allows easy connection to its aggregated hot spot network, as well as managing configurations. The company also launched a PDA version of its Web site. Four preview screens of the software courtesy of Boingo: connection, hot spot directory, pda.boingo.com in a PDA screen, and profile manager.

News.com notes futility of TI's 802.11b+ flavor: This analysis connects the dots between the non-IEEE 22 Mbps flavor of 2.4 GHz networking TI included in its ACX100 chipset and the coming rise of 802.11g. While TI has pledged support for this non-standard mode (which uses its PBCC modulation to reach 22 Mbps) in new chipsets, there's not much future for it as a separate technology. As I've noted on several occasions in this blog, I believe it was unclear to purchasers who new about 802.11g that the ACX100 chipset couldn't be firmware upgradable to support it. This lack of clarity has little to do with TI marketing or claims, but rather the long, long timetable to reach 802.11g ratification.

USA Today on Wi-Fi: A generally well-balanced article surveying mostly hot spot aspects of Wi-Fi. However, the article repeats the fallacy that businesses were reluctant to use Wi-Fi because of WEP's weakness. I continue to argue that WEP is a non-starter for businesses that have actual IT operations that include authentication systems -- which means the scale of businesses mentioned in passing in the article. The writer quotes Gartner's silly nonsense about "86,000" hot spots by 2006: if there are that few, the hot spot industry will have proven to be a non-starter and some kind of 3G system offering lower but ubiquitous bandwidth will have replaced hot spots. More likely 500,000 or a limited patchwork, but not much potential at 86,000. The article also says that Wi-Fi transmissions aren't regulated by the FCC, which is incorrect. The transmission power and characteristics are. It would have been better to say that Wi-Fi users require no special permission from the FCC to operate licensed equipment.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 5:40 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 13, 2002

Five Letters: TI a, b, g

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Texas Instruments offers chipset plan for a/b/g path: TI announced today its plans for upcoming chipsets to support 802.11a, b, and g, as well as draft quality of service (QoS) and security (802.11i, WPA) standards. Part of their will allow seamless roaming across 802.11a, b, and g networks, so that an adapter can swap opportunistically, instead of requiring a manual change of network type.

The chipset combines both MAC and baseband in a single chip (TNETW1130 is the model number). It supports WEP and WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access), and the optional AES encryption system that appears to be the future of link-layer security coming out of 802.11i. Unlike their ACX100 chipset, used in offering by D-Link and others to provide 22 Mbps PBCC-based 2.4 GHz service, the TNETW1130 includes support for draft standards including 802.11g and TI essentially promises firmware upgradability to ratified versions of these standards. The press release implies compatibility with the ACX100-style 22 Mbps service as well as 802.11a, b, and g.

The chipset also includes TI's new low-power (ELP) mode announced a few weeks ago which can drastically reduce power drain on handhelds and moderately reduce drain in laptops.

TI will make multiple form factors available for PC Cards (home and enterprise), access points, and mini-PCI. They will also offer complete reference designs for easy development.

The cost in quantity is estimated at less than $23 per unit for 802.11g Cardbus form factors, and less than $28 per unit for 802.11a/g Cardbus. TI will sample chips in December and ship by April 2003.

Other News

Updated wireless article: I radically revised my article on this site about WEP's weaknesses and securing data in transit in light of the Wi-Fi Alliance's announcement of WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access).

72-mile link in San Diego: a remarkably progressive and experimental group bringing network access to remote places is running a 72-mile 2.4 GHz link to an island to handle telemetry from a variety of monitoring equipment. The article says the devices use 2-foot parabolic dishes and the maximum 1 watt output, but doesn't specify EIRP, which could be a lot higher. (Engineers, any feedback?)

T-Mobile pushes into Chicago, D.C., elsewhere: T-Mobile HotSpot's page indicates 1,991 locations now, and locations in Chicago, D.C., and elsewhere seem to be live. The Chicago Tribune [registration required] is generally fine, though it repeats two errors made elsewhere: T-Mobile acquired the assets of MobileStar, not the company, thus avoiding its debt and investors; and Project Rainbow has been denied by all putative participants, so can't be cited as an active project without that qualfiication. [via Kevin Kowalczyk]

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:41 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 12, 2002

802.11(b) LAN Security

By Glenn Fleishman

Can anyone provide input on issues with having two separate 802.11(b) LANs in the same building? Is this feasible? What are the security risks (if any), and how can they be overcome?

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:03 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

Rocky Mountain Hiiii...aieeee!

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

WISP operator swatted by mountain lion: The story is less sensational than it seems and only tenuously connected to wireless networking. Still, it's always interesting to see how politically correct attitudes (it's their land, too, man!) result in real-world consequences. Sure, we've encroached on nature, but I'd frankly rather not be stalked as I leave my car. (Which is why I live in urban, not exurban environments.)

Get the skinny from TechDirt: This blog monitors wireless developments of all kinds, including cell, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:49 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

802.11B LINK TO STEREO

By Glenn Fleishman

While there are a number of products that help pipe PC audio to the home stereo system, it seems as if there ought to be something that could use an existing home WAN to establish a presence in the stereo cabinet. I would like to be able to play streaming audio from NPR and to access and play WMA and MP3 files on either of my two linked computers.

The best concept I have been able to come up with is to locate an 802.11b linked (inexpensive) computer in my stereo cabinet.

Is there anything out there? Is my compter idea workable?

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 6:02 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | 3 Comments

November 11, 2002

Infra Dig

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

News.com's uninformed story on a new optical antenna: This story about a new focused infrared antenna misses a number of points. Yes, it's interesting that these scientists have created a way to make a better antenna using invisible light (infrared). But there are several points in the article about security that are just incorrect.

But the [Wi-Fi] technology, also known as 802.11b, has yet to make an impact on the business world because of fears about security breaches. Pass the bowl, dude! And tell that to the thousands upon thousands of Fortune 5000 companies who have deployed wireless in large and small ways. Any company large enough to worry about security breaches is almost certainly already employing a network authentication system which their WLAN can integrate with. System that employ EAP and EAP variants (PEAP and LEAP) as well as or in conjunction with 802.1x already have reliable security at this point, and future revisions and standardization will make them even more secure (and avoid the current man-in-the-middle attack potential, not yet discovered in the wild).

The writer also notes: Because of the way these networks [Bluetooth and Wi-Fi] are set up using radio frequencies, it is possible for just about anyone to tap into a network without the knowledge or permission of the people who administer it. Thank you for playing, and enjoy these lovely parting gifts. In fact, you can't tap into the network, and may not even be able to associate with an access point without using programs like AirSnort (just to break WEP) at which point VLAN or VPN security should defeat your ability to sniff real data.

Any company that isn't employing encryption on their wireless access points and locating them outside of the firewall (or on a separate VLAN) shoudl demand the head of their CIO or IT manager.

Oh, yeah, and just to be clear: these new optical antennas are secure because they are line of sight -- the whole reason we got into wireless radio networking in the first place!

Other News

Emerging Technology 2003: The call for proposals (CFP) is up for The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I'm chairing the Untethered track which will include interesting new and developing technologies on mesh networking, wireless electrical charging, phase-array antennas, community networking's impact, and a large variety of related trends. I take a page (or rather whole chapters) from Howard Rheingold's new book Smart Mobs in looking at the impact that these technologies could have: Howard is writing about the outcomes and behavioral changes; this conference will look at the details that coagulate into systems that drive behavioral change.

We are watching the detectors: Slashdot thread on a white paper about how to detect whether NetStumbler and similar programs are running on your network. Interesting, given that these are typically considered passive activities.

Microsoft releases 802.1x support for Windows 2000; 98/Me/NT 4 to follow: Microsoft now offers a supplicant (or the client-side software) necessary to handle 802.1x authentication within Windows 2000. The page noted says that Windows 98 (all versions), NT 4.0, and Windows Me support is to follow. [via Jim Thompson]

Ecademy offers free Wi-Fi news site: Excellent aggregation of feeds from many locations for news relating to Wi-Fi.

My luggage was never lonely: Bluetooth in a Samsonite piece of luggage. Nice idea, especially on the theft prevention side. (Hmm...could be like the president's football, the nuclear launch codes: once armed, your baggage could start screaming if it gets more than 30 feet away from your personal Bluetooth ID tag implanted in your neck.)

Blog blog blog blog: The power of news plus a blog is starting to increase in frequency. This blog is often cited, partly because of my relentless obsessive nature in reporting on the field, and because of the excellent contributors who constantly email me new information and resources. We all make a great team. I was on a panel discussion put together by the Society of Professional Journalists on blogging and journalism last week at the Seattle Times Auditorium. A few days ago, ur-blogger Rebecca Blood mentioned my blog in passing in this InfoWorld live forum. Let's all keep developing this latest twist.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:37 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 8, 2002

News for 11/8/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Pastrami and Wi-Fi: Schlotzsky's offers limited free service: The deli chain is providing free Wi-Fi in 10 stores as part of an experiment. I picked up on Schlotzsky's just in time to include them in a book that Adam Engst and I are delivering to our publisher next week called The Wireless Networking Starter Kit. (The News.com article from the link above misdefines hot spot, and probably way overestimates the number of wireless nodes. It's more likely that 15 million adapters (cards and access points) have been shipped, not nodes installed, and nodes aren't hot spots, which are publicly accessible locations.)

Dell to add dual-mode Wi-Fi to Latitude line: From this article, it's unclear whether they're just putting PC Cards in the standard preconfigured package, or actually modifying the hardware a la Apple. Apple has also changed its preconfigured offerings for iBooks and PowerBooks by including AirPort as a standard option instead of a Built To Order (BTO) add-on. This is significant, because people typically buy the preconfigured packages, as BTOs can add two weeks to delivery time. Also, Apple resellers and Apple Stores stock the preconfigured units.

Alan Reiter on the state of Wi-Fi in our nation's capital: Alan critiques the Washington Post article from earlier in the week, and notes how there's about to be an explosion of hot spot access, mostly from T-Mobile.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:49 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 6, 2002

News for 11/6/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

The above are paid, sponsored links. Contact us for more information.

Washington Post on Wi-Fi and hot spots; D.C. Starbucks to go live: Leslie Walker of the Washington Post filed this intelligent summary of the state of the industry, and scooped any report I've seen on T-Mobile's near-term lighting up of Washington, D.C., area Starbucks outlets.

NY Times on setting up a home Wi-Fi network: In an article under their Basics heading, the author gives high marks to Microsoft's gateway, partly because it provides prodding for settings other gateways don't quite explain or require. This article also updates one of the tenets of the modern Internet: you can't assign a static IP address to a computer without having it attacked within about 15 minutes. In this author's case, within minutes of setting up a Wi-Fi network without WEP turned on, his upstairs neighbor had noticed it and nicely told him to secure it.

Manhattan thousands of points of wireless access: Only a few of the thousands of points on the map discussed in this story are intentionally meant to be shared, but Manhattan is already a pastiche of almost 100 percent coverage -- south of Harlem.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:33 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 5, 2002

News for 11/05/02

By Glenn Fleishman

802.11 Planet brings together the best ideas and people in the world of Wi-Fi for business and the enterprise, Dec. 3-5

Blow your mind wide open at Supernova 2002, a 2-day conference Dec. 9-10 on decentralization, and the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media.

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More on Vivato: An anonymous correspondent sent in a report about Vivato's test deployment.

Two San Francisco prototype "switch"es deployed on the company headquarters roof (aimed northeast in the SoMa district towards Market St) and another on the 49th floor of the Mandarin Hotel (SSID vivato). Coverage is verified available at the 3rd/Towesend McDonalds from >100mW STA, not available for 30mW STA. The STA is the Wi-Fi station, or the system that's broadcasting a signal.

HQ roof prototype (known as "tankgirl") is comprised of an 2ft by 2ft array ~6in depth on a custom metal pivot mount. Production to be 1 meter by 1 meter ~2in depth. Weatherized by a saranwrap and packaging tape, obviously will be encased in permanent plastic for production.

Five Agere Hermes NICs (MAC prefix 00:02:2d:34:2x:xx), all on channel 6 (current software limitation to be fixed), beaconing out SSID "vivato_wifi_switch". Standard desktop PC behind array, not an embedded board (no Musenki love), running Linux. Same spanning-tree bridging as OpenAP or HostAP ("quick prototype hack"). FCC spec'd for Point to Point, currently 49dBm EIRP (maximum FCC for PtP in Path 15 - See Pozar's paper). Two models - indoor (~$5k) and outdoor (~$10k). This is product one, product two "will blow you away".

Contradicting one of these last elements is email from a Vivato engineer who wrote, the core of the old 'musenki' source tree is the basis for the Vivato switch software, right down to the bootloader. The Musenki software was developed under an open source license.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:51 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

Wireless Paging Systems

By Glenn Fleishman

We are moving offices and are looking for a wireless solution to replace our overhead paging system internally at our office with our 802.11 wireless access points. We have looked at Vocera. Any other suggestions. Thank you.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:07 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

November 4, 2002

Prick up Your Antennas

By Glenn Fleishman

Today's 802.11b Networking News could be sponsored by you, reaching thousands of lucky readers every day.


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Vivato to introduce tuned antenna with remarkable reach: Vivato has apparently developed a clever antenna that could allow a business to distribute wireless network access throughout a building without the current high cost of distributed deployment of access points. (There's still issues about maximum number of users, the amount of bandwidth per access point, and other technical details, of course.) Vivato's project sounds reasonable, and the report comes from the New York Times (John Markoff), but what makes them most credible to me is that Jim Thompson works for them. Jim's a straight shooter, and I wouldn't expect to find him anywhere but on the cutting edge of contemporary technology.

Wired News's Paul Boutin also got the scoop -- I have to ask, why didn't I get the scoop? -- and even managed to quote me in general on the topic of WLAN mobility without disclosing the technology or company in question. Paul's story notes Phil Belanger's involvement. Phil, like Jim, is an ex-Wayport executive. Paul posted additional notes on his Web log that didn't make it into the article.

More coverage of Vivato: EE Times, a more technically detailed, IT-oriented overview; InfoWorld, with some more detail about scope and range of the devices, including from someone who wants to deploy the technology. For more coverage, use this query on Google News.

One potential area of impact not discussed in any article is deployment into airports: airports have tons of RF interference already, and are large, typically metal rangy sets of buildings. If a company could offer wireless in an entire terminal with one or two of Vivato's antennas it reduces an enormous number of costs associated with bringing in various trades (electrical, construction, network) and installing many access points at regular intervals.

One of the folks involved at Vivato told me (and gave me permission to quote him): One of the demos for the launch (today) is that we've illuminated the entire building in SF from inside the building across the street. The other is ...coverage of several hotels from the other unit we have mounted to the roof of the building in SF. For instance, the entirety of the Marriott (over a mile away) is illuminated, as well as several other hotels (one side of the Marriott Courtyard, the Avalon, and the 'W', are all illuminated.

Another related benefit: if you can run all of your access points from more or less the same area, increasing network coverage now becomes an issues of plugging in additional APs with nonoverlapping channels. Because 802.11b has only three nonoverlapping channels, if you used three nonoverlapping APs to handle an entire building, you'd be dividing a net of about 21 Mbps (7 by 3) among all those users. Because Vivato's product is both an access point and an antenna integrated into one package, they may have more control over how they handle this kind of channelization or reuse while still working within Wi-Fi specifications.

The Vivato product puts the company at odds with a variety of enterprise-style systems for deploying and aggregating large WLANs. For instance, Symbol introduced in September its Mobius Axon line, which turns access points into access ports: the port is just a radio with a Power over Ethernet connection that runs back to a central Axon Switch. It's a neat idea for reducing the overall cost of deployment and management itself. Vivato could suck even that advantage way back into a server closet. If Vivato plays out, even in part, the Cisco, Proxim, and Symbols of the world could face a drastic change in their revenue from access point sales.

Other News

Suction cup 7 dBi antenna: Mike from Signull Techologies sent me the URL of a spec sheet for their 7 dBi suction cup antenna pictured deployed on automobiles! Wardriving made easy.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:21 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | 1 Comment

Distance/range.

By Glenn Fleishman

Where ever I look I find nothing to indicate the range of wireless networking equipment and many other features/specifications seem crudely explained or left out. I basically need someone that has a range of about half a mile.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:25 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified | 1 Comment

November 1, 2002

News for 11/1/2002

By Glenn Fleishman

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Sprint confirms upcoming entry into hot spot business: The latest of the cellular telephone companies confirms that they'll be getting their feet wet. This makes three of the top six U.S. firms. Alan Reiter reported on this from an airline convention several days ago, and Sprint has now confirmed it separately.

Linksys prices continue to drop: Linksys equipment prices continue to stagger me with every drop. I'm quite fond of the wireless gateway with a 4-port 10/100 Mbps Ethernet switch, the BEFW11S4, which is now just $100 at Amazon.com. Linksys's PC Card, the WPC11, is just $50 with a rebate. The WET11 Ethernet bridge, which debuted at a street price of around $130, is just $105.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:55 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Unclassified

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