It's not quite the end of the year yet, but the page-viewing votes are clear: Here are our top 10 stories for 2004 as ranked by readership. See any trends?
- 10. Wireless Printing: This stub of a link to a New York Times article somehow edged out many of our homegrown stories. Obviously, wireless printing is a high-ranked Google term, too.
- 9. Caring about 802.11i: This item on the ratification of 802.11i spelled out the next steps and why it was a significant milestone.
- 8. Review of WiFi Finder: From July 2003, this review still brings in the eyeballs, due to the popularity of the Kensington device.
- 7. WPA’s Little Secret: It's an oldie, but a goodie: our Nov. 2003 story reporting on Robert Moskowitz's paper on WPA passphrase choice weakness. (See below for the other half of this.)
- 6. Weak Defense…But Getting Better: My omnibus article on wireless security that keeps rolling in more recent information over time.
- 5. Tool to Crack Cisco LEAP Released: LEAP's death knell.
- 4. WPA for Free under Windows 2000: Windows 2000 users weren't left to hang in the breeze in regards to WPA as Wireless Security Corporation stepped in to fill the gap.
- 3. WPA Cracking Proof of Concept Available: Popular through Slashdot and other sources concerned with WPA's small faults.
- 2. Weakness in Passphrase Choice in WPA Interface: It's technically a 2003 story, but it racked up almost as many page views in 2004 as our number one story, so it counts.
And our most popular story? Best Wi-Fi Signal Finder Yet, a signal finder that has now been trumped by the Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter, however!
Seven of the top 10 stories were about security and three of those about WPA weaknesses (two of those being from 2003). Two of the top 10 focus on Wi-Fi detectors.
Obviously, security is what brings in the traffic to Wi-Fi Networking News on a rolling basis, with older articles getting regular reads even as newer pieces appear.
Interestingly, our top two categories by far for 2004 were 802.11n and WiMax, two areas about which readers are hungry for information.