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Truck stops, ferries may soon be Wi-Fi hot spots, if not hot beds: Nancy Gohring finds Wi-Fi in the likeliest of places, including truck stops. Rig owners need to always have a load, and cell phones and pagers might be useful, but powering up a laptop could be more efficient. Meanwhile, the Washington State Ferry system is still waiting on a bill that would let them explore putting Wi-Fi on popular runs. The local ferries are riddled with high-tech commuters who would latch onto this service in a second.
Tim Higgins sees throughput not interoperability as key draft 802.11g problem: In his usual exhaustive fashion, Tim digs into the Intersil 802.11g draft chipset's performance. He notes that in his testing of various "g" devices, he's seeing problems maintaining speed not in actually getting equipment to function.
Cisco to share...something: Cisco has announced they'll share some wireless technology with chipmakers to expand the use of...something. I wondered if this was PEAP (Protected EAP), a secure tunneled method of encapsulating EAP transactions using 802.1x, and I should have just consulted the press release. Cisco says it will share PEAP, WPA support for PEAP, and LEAP. It also said it will support marketing word marketing marketing word, but this just means they'll allow their WLAN management unit that lets you configure access points in aggregate and collect their reporting also work with gear from all the makers who implement it. There are obviously some other bits and pieces. I can't figure out yet why Cisco would offer this to the laundry list of competitors and partners: Agere Systems, Atheros, Atmel, Intel, Intersil, Marvell and Texas Instruments.
Benefits of mesh from Intel: The BBC reports on Intel's mesh networking technology demonstration and gives a primer on mesh's utility.
Nokia Rooftop discontinued: In researching an article I'm working on, I attempted to get in contact with Nokia about their Rooftop product line, which was a meshed wireless ISP system to allow deployment of broadband to residential and commercial areas. Their site seemed dead, but I couldn't believe a product introduced so recently and that's such a hot button would just go away. In fact, it has. A Nokia representative confirmed for me today that it's been discontinued. Did I just miss the press release on that? Or did it die a quiet death? Rooftop's absence leaves Locustworld (shipping MeshAP) and Sky Pilot (in trials) as the only two pure mesh distribution systems I'm aware of.
Smart consumer advice for managing Wi-Fi security: A brief intelligent piece (quoting our favorite Wi-Fi pundit, Nigel Ballard, of course) on using Wi-Fi without giving up your secrets. Although VPNs are beyond consumers today, I wouldn't be surprised to see tunneled services become more prevalent in the near future.
Ethical hacker acquitted in Wi-Fi security demonstration: The Register reports that a hacker trying to demonstrate the of a justice Wi-Fi network in Texas was acquitted quickly after being arrested for causing $5,000 in damage to the systems. Right. This is the same logic that led to the leading perl explainer being convicted many moons ago of causing lots of damage to Intel when he embarassed them by showing their password security was ridiculously weak. When in doubt, you sue the person showing you the problem for the amount of money required to fix the problem that they're showing you, not that they caused. If any of you ever endeavor to help clueless systems get better, I'd suggest having a form of release that your subject (victim?) signs holding you harmless for demonstrating their failure. [via TechDirt]