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You know you would have thought that with all the 802.11b stories on here, somebody would have mentioned the much more secure counterpart to 802.11b -- which is 802.11a, a frequency hopping standard that defines a much much much harder to intercept, much much much more stable, reliable communication (we are talking orders of magnitude) above 802.11b (Oh yeah, and plenty of equipment is available also.)

How come when LAN's go wireless, geeks suddenly forget the basic fundamentals of RADIO which, for the specific technology we are discussing, is almost as well understood as power generation. Wait a minute, but didn't the folks who delegated the IP address space give RADIO OPERATORS a quite enormous chunk for EXPERIMENTATION? Where are all these guys. For instance, the story that ran a few days ago where someone at O'Really (sic) declared that a 802.11b product was good because his microwave oven did not interfere with its operation might have taken one second to read the frequency of his microwave off the little label inside the door and look up the frequency of whatever channel his DSSS radio's was on before realizing that the microwave was (99% likely) not even on the same frequencies.

It's about time for all of you to go out and read how these radios and standards really work before making wild comparisons, accusations, etc. or being suprised when someone points out that the standard is not fundamentally secure. Here's a hint: It was never designed to be any more secure than wireline communications. The amount of money someone would have to spend to tap into your wired LAN is equivalent to the amount of money they would have to spend to intercept your wireless. If you require secure communications over wireless, use IPSec or encrypted tunnels. Just like you would do on the wireline.

Get it together. I am losing faith in you guys.

~GoRK

To wkearney99, many of these "public access wireless networks" are using DSSS-based gear, which more susceptible to frequency interference than FHSS-based gear. While many WISP's are also using DSSS gear (those in rural areas usually have great success with it), many WISP's in densely populated areas have resorted to FHSS equipment such as that from BreezeCOM.

It obviously requires good RF engineering to deploy a wireless network. Since the WISP's are doing this for a living, it behooves them to ensure their networks will work properly and "play nice" with others.

Most people will use the 802.11b standard because it is faster, however in some cases 802.11 is desirable because it can support more users without frequency overlap.

Western Multiplex has some cool toys too.

Here in New Mexico, a company called LoboNet uses 2.4GHz LAN/WAN radios from BreezeCOM with outdoor antennas to businesses in the more rural areas. (Near Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but too far for DSL or ISDN)

They have around a dozen customers, and there's no problem with the FCC, since the 2.4GHz spectrum is an non-license spectrum. As far as power levels go, I don't know. But it works quite nicely.

(Although for some reason LoboNet doesn't have any mention of it on their site... strange. But I know it's there! Maybe there's some mention at the Integrity Networking Solutions site, since many of the wireless networking customers go through them.)

Seems like Prairie iNet are using the 2.4 GHz band, which is generally unlicensed around the world - assuming they are using the same technology as Midcoast Wireless, a Maine ISP, which has a very useful FAQ

This is all based on IEEE 802.11 technology, which is normally used for wireless LANs with a range of a few hundred feet. The trick here seems to be using more power and directional antennae so that you can go up to 9 miles (or maybe much more).

One company making this sort of kit is Breezecom, who have an overview of wireless Internet access here.

This technology, along with the competing licensed LMDS technology, may make mincemeat of DSL and Cable - it involves no rights of way hassles, no cable laying, and can give very low latency plus bandwidths in the 1-2Mbps range. Having used Wireless LANs at conferences and trade shows, I found the latency and bandwidth very similar to a T1 line.

For info on 802.11, see the Linux Wireless LAN FAQ, which also has good links to generic WLAN info at the end. Although the technology for 802.11 long-distance (i.e. wireless local loop) is not identical, it should give you an idea of how things work.

For info on LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution System), see the Webopedia entry for LMDS, which has links to related pages. One new European telco that is rolling out LMDS quite aggressively is FirstMark - they are also doing cool things with MPLS VPNs, which is how I know about them since my company just sold them the software to manage this :) MPLS is a way of getting the best of the ATM and IP worlds at the same time.

Low latency is important because it's a key determinant of web response time, particularly for sites with many small GIF buttons, and also because Internet routers tend to treat high-latency sessions less fairly, so they get even less bandwidth then they should. It's also essential to winning at Quake, which is clearly the critical driver here :)

This story matters more for the technology than for the particular ISP using it - it will affect most Slashdot readers in the next year or so, particularly those not covered by DSL or cable. In the UK, BT is being astonishingly slow at rolling out ADSL, and the cable companies have very little coverage, so wireless technology may be the only way to get broadband for many people...

Two I am familiar with are Breezecom and Aironet , just bought by Cisco. If you poke around, you'll find many of these products have Linux drivers .

The AirPort and Apple arent the only systems that go wireless. There are others that support IEEE 802.11 DSSS standard.

Check out:
ZoomAir
BreezeNet
SkyLine
MaxTech

...among others.

There is the BreezeCom unit, but it is only 3 Mbps.

I have worked with wireless, I have used the Breezecom, Lucent WaveLAN, and Solectek Corp. wireless, and I am happy with the results, in so far as a solution for a remote site, but when you are dealing with 900 mhz, the licensed MMDS band (2.500 to 2.690 GHz), or unlicensed U-NII band (5.725 to 5.825 GHz). You have to realize that those are all microwave, or in the case of the 900mhz almost microwave frequencies. Now I may be paranoid but a microwave has heavy layers of sheilding that stop the propagation of radiation, but these things have antennas that help propogate radiation and you stick a card in your laptop and set it on your lap. I don't know. It's just to creapy for me, also the latency of microwave wireless over a relitivly short distance is far to much to get any good voice over ip, or do anything that is time sensitive, I.E. q3 and such. It's a good choice for some instances, like browsing the net, chatting, or e-mail, but don't think it can give you everything that your lan can.

Whoops ... I apologize for making an assertion regarding range based on anecdotal information. The Lucent sales rep says 30 miles -- but I am scouring Lucent's site for anything that even comes close to that.

Basically to extend the range of either BreezeCom or Lucent Orinoco technology you need a reflective external antenna that has been aligned to point directly towards the central omnidirectional antenna.

One provider claiming to be nearing a working 30 mile range is MidCoast.net. From other sources, including ISP Planet the more typical cell size is based on line-of-site, approximately five miles with optimal base antenna placement.

Again I offer my apology for posting anecdotal information.

About a year ago I worked for an ISP that deployed this type of connection. It's most likely using "microwave" in the 2.5ghz range using something like breezecom or airolan equipment. They do use spread spectrum but in addition they also use frequency hopping, and the number of hops per second can be set in the radio.

The antenna is normally a 24db antenna, which is aproximatily 24"x36" or somewhere in that range. It may fall under "eyesore" regulations in your community, but if you own your home or your landlord agrees to let you put it up, the eyesore regulations do not apply. The FCC has ruled that any antenna less then 1M (3ft) in size can not be restricted in such a manor. It's just a matter of whether or not you want to make those waves. ;=)

For the connection, the transciever uses standard ethernet, most commonly 10baseT but the Airolan also has thinnet and thicknet connection on it. Depending on which transciever they use it can use a striaght through cable either directly into your machine or into a hub. (The breezecom, for example, has an SA-10, which allows only one machine connected to the radio (You can still use subnets or NAT, though) and a WB-10 which will bridge your network in) Since this is standard ethernet, you can use any OS you'd like.

Basically, no matter which unit you use, they just act like an ethernet bridge. Unless you have your own anternna on their side, anyone who's on the same antenna can sniff each other's traffic. To make matters worse, (Or better, depending on your point of view) if the ISP doesn't have a switch on the hill, you'll be able to sniff everyone's traffic who uses the wireless connection.

As for dhcp vs. static IP's, etc, that's all determined by your ISP, of course, of course.

As others have stated, these aren't really new, just the first time they've been posted to slashdot. Still, the 1.5mbit/s is just theorectical, unless they've found some way to boost the power or they're using a really small radius, realistic speeds are somewhere in the 512K-768K. But it is bi-directional, which is a plus. Great for those who can't get DSL but want to be low ping bastards. ;=)

As for those questioning why some ISP's don't allow their customers to run servers, it's mostly a bandwidth issue. Your average warez kiddie will setup a warez server and max out their bandwidth 24/7 (We actually had this happen to us). Normally mail servers are overlooked it's the ftp/http servers that ISP's are targetting. And from people I've talked to that have used ISP's that forbid servers, they don't check. It's just a legal out should someone start running an ftp server and utilizing bandwidth 24/7. As long as you're not abusive, they usually won't care.

-skullY

Our vendor, Breezecom, offers modest security and increased reliability through frequency hopping, performs extremely well in most all conditions, and makes relatively cheap (compared to the monthly cost of a T-1) hardware. They make many different antennas, depending upon the user's gain needs, from pizza-box sized to PCMCIA-sized (bringing wearable wireless ether one step closer to commodity level).

To refute an earlier post, though we do not charge anywhere near the fee mentioned in the article, we do not lose money on this service. The reality of [multi-]community-wide wireless ether is that rarely does any one customer come close to saturating his bandwidth. When an access point becomes overused, it is a simple matter to set up another on a different network and provide more bandwidth.

After a lot of analysis, the BreezeNet series of devices bubbled to the top of the heap. They are NOT cheap, but they will plug into any ethernet NIC and provide totally transparent 1.5 mbit to 2.5 mbit connectivity between a wired LAN and wireless nodes, or between wireless stations only. Details are at http://www.breezecom.com/Products/brz nprd.htm.

Unfortunately, a 2 node set-up (for example) will cost well over $1000. The access points (wireless hubs if you will) are around $1000, but you only need one of them. The "stand-alone" stations for individual ethernet interfaces are about $400, if I recall correctly.

The stuff has fantastic range (well over 500 feet through walls between 2 buildings with little signal loss in my case), requires absolutely no configuration, and works with any 10baseT ethernet device. My only complaint is the expense. If someone made similar hardware at a $200/node price point, they'd own this market.

FWIW, I have no connection with BreezeCom other than as a satisfied user of the BreezeNet hardware.