On The State of Wireless

There's a short piece on Mindjack about the state of wireless. Actually, the piece is a minireview of a piece that Nicholas Carroll produced at Hastings Research. Yes, it's a PDF, and yes, it costs money. Having read through it, it's also totally worth it, especially if you are an organization that does basically anything with wireless.

Comments

Wireless is definately the way forward.

[Anton Anatopopov]

It is clear that wireless is going to be the next big thing. Whatever Nicholas Negroponte says about 3G, it will take off, and the consumer will want it. Imagine being able to watch "Star Trek - TNG" on your mobile phone!

The real problem with wireless at the moment is security. WEP notwithstanding, it is still far to easy to take an 802.11b equipped laptop outside a large corporation, and to gain acess to its network with little more effort than clicking a mouse.

The way the CIA and FBI act on encryption now could see wireless thrive, or kill it off completely. Nobody would want an insecure wireless service, but if the CIA and FBI get their way, that's all that will be on offer.

So, encryption (and governmental attitudes toward it) is the key to all this.

Re:Wireless is definately the way forward.

[Sloppy]

The real problem with wireless at the moment is security. WEP notwithstanding, it is still far to easy to take an 802.11b equipped laptop outside a large corporation, and to gain acess to its network with little more effort than clicking a mouse.

But this really just makes a problem that already existed, more obvious. If switching to wireless looks insecure, then you're probably already insecure.

That's why I think wireless will increase security: it'll get people to realize that they have to patch up their holes. Before wireless, they ignored the problem. I know of plenty of customer sites where you can log in to certain servers with full read/write permissions to everything, without even knowing a password. And anyone wearing anything that looks like a uniform and holding a piece of paper and looking busy, could effortlessly infiltrate their office and hook a laptop onto their ethernet (then log in, sniff, or whatever). Maybe with wireless, that kind of vulnerability will finally end.

Re:New /. low

[Cato]

Why is this any different to reviewing a book? You have to pay for that, too, and this PDF is about the same price as some books - I suppose the expectation is just that anything online should be free.

It might be better if stories about for-pay content are done just like book reviews, with enough information that you can decide whether to buy it. Also, such stories should only be about really interesting topics - there are a lot of for-pay tech reports out there.

Re:New /. low

[scott1853]

Hmmm, book reviews give some content and offer some insight into what is for sale. Didn't get that here. I can follow a ThinkGeek ad and find out more about a product before I purchase it.

I rarely see sites that say "pay us first, then we'll show you what you're getting".

Re:New /. low

[Nater]

Why is this any different to reviewing a book?

Because a book review is actual content. This article's got nothing. It basically says "Here's an interesting piece, but you'll have to pay to see it." That's very different from a /. book review, which generally consists of a few paragraphs of original writing.