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High-Speed Wireless LANs Move Forward
GrokSoup writes: "Neat article from the WSJ (free site) about European hackers using 802.11 technology to create limited-range, high-speed outdoor networks. As you might expect, people are messing with directed antennas to send signals up to a kilometer. While I've tried this to get from the house to the pool, the idea of banding together in open-source fashion had never really occurred to me. Nifty!" We've mentioned consume.net before, but this piece mentions some interesting possibilities, like how the same idea may result in an approved-by-the-Man wireless network in Sweden, and the golden hope that multiple connection methods will let us switch handily among several wireless protocols as the occasion merits.
In practice you need a line of sight and radio frequency is used by many other devices. A common joke is to call it instead of a "wireless Network" a "connectionless network". Still those few who have managed to get a subscription seem to be more than happy.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Julian Priest is walking east down Clink Street away from his office. He's holding his laptop in both hands and surfing the Web as he goes through an enviable five-megabits-per-second link to his desktop computer.
I can see the headlines....
LONDON - Chalk two more victims for Clink Street. In a continuing display of brutal idiocy, two men were killed earlier today when they inadvertently stumbled onto the busy thoroughfare. Ralph Foster, of York, was "surfing the web" on his new laptop while out for his lunch time stroll. Witness say he had just logged on to Hotmail.com and was happily deleting spam when he tripped near the curb and tumbled out headfirst into traffic. Police say he was killed almost instantly - managing, however, to log out before logging off.
Simon Edwin, of Chester, had a slightly different fate. With two Palm V's in each hand, Simon was actually playing a modified version of pong online - against himself! The police cannot confirm his exact cause of death, saying only that they have yet to find the 2nd PalmPilot.
These unfortunate events come just days after the loss of the entire development team from WebSolutions.com, who met untimely deaths when their Internet-connected coach flipped four times after the driver veered to avoid packet loss...
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
Currently we have a 802.11 based system which can do up to 30km on a p-t-p link and 5 km in radius!!
We're using a selfmade module for enhancing the signal on the receivers end and 1,8m parabol antennas.
ssss;;;;jjjjjjmeeeeing it outsid;;;;ow, ans I jove it!!! ;ometimes I get a little ;;ne nojse, which can be distracting, but over all it's just ;;;;;j jjjjj;l;jjsssssaaaajd jjjjj;l
Of course, I wouldn't do anything confidential this way... would you?
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I usually dont like to make "smart-ass" remarks, but apparently all your data is based on what you have "heard" and "read", how long ago did you read that magazine article? All 802.11b compliant devices being made today support WEP which a form of encryption used for wirless lan technology (note: some older 80211b cards do not have wep ala AIRONET (before cisco bought them). Also on the other hand here is something to think about with wireless links, you would put an unprotected computer on the net? Well then dont put one on a wireless link, use a vpn over the wireless if you feel insecure. But "stay away from these things" becuase of what you hear is not the way I live my life. Later
-ipl31
Any one interested in this technology should check out Seattlewireless.net we are a group building a free wireless network in the seattle area. Along the same lines as consume and other projects, however our mission is not based on internet access, but to create a network unto its own based on 80211b technology. We plan to have internet gateways present on our network, however we would like to see a local/free/public wireless network that had its own web its own irc, quake servers etc... Check it out for more info.
-ipl31
There is 64/128 bit crypto, in each case 24 bits are taken for the node address, leaving 40/104 bits for encryption keys.
Crypto is done using RC4, a system with known, exploitable weaknesses.
No Wires Needed offers cards with factory-installed public key encryption and Diffie-Hellman support, but they do not offer their cars in the USA.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Available at http://www.networkmagazi ne. com/article/NMG20001106S0004.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
We've implemented a Wireless link with Encryption to connect multiple sites. I have to say that I'm impressed with the performance.
To join the network you have to be a registered device on that network.
To eavesdrop you have to break the encryption key.
The alternative to wireless was to implement a fibre link, but it seems to me that it would be easier for someone to dig into the ground and plant a device on the fibre much easier than attempting to break the encryption keys on a wireless link.
Note this:
With our wireless link there are a fair few checksum errors on packets, resulting in the odd retry request from the other node. I presume that these errors would not be known unless you knew the encryption keys, making it almost impossible to crack the keys as you cannot tell where the errors are without first knowing the keys. Has anyone done any research in random (deliberate) corruption to encrypted traffic in order to prevent key-cracking? Obviously this would come at a performance cost (extra re-transmit packets), but I guess this is to be expected for higher security.
I'm sure anyone with enough spare time could probably break the keys, but probably not before we changed them.
Carnegie Mellon has a decent sized Wireless LAN.
To obtain a lease from the DHCP servers you have to be a registered device on the network.
This approach seems to work well enough along with secured client applications (AFS, IMAP, etc via Kerberos [kclient]).