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:Wireless is definately the way forward.

[Paul68]

Nicolas Negroponte does make some valid points. 3G is not much of an improvement over what we have with 2G or can have with 2.5G (especially here in Europe with much coverage and no shortage of bandwidth like they have in Japan). Looking at the costs of 3G, licences, equipment and handhelds, one can quickly calculate that this wireless branch is going nowhere. It means that everyone who has invested in 3G technology has to write off the costs, have a good cry and start again.

Having said that. Not all is lost. As mentioned before on /., WiFi seems to be going places and nicely filling the gap between a low-bandwidth voice and short message service and wireless broadband.

On encryption however the comment is way off the mark. The between choice encryption or not does not equate wether or not there is legal intercept! The authorities need a place to get the bytes that you communicate. That place does not need to be the air-interface, in fact it is better to pick it off a router in the service provider's network. You and your wireless provider can agree on an encryption scheme that will keep your bits from being snooped by anyone with an antenna and too much spare time. (OK, well not your and your SP per-se but first the parties in the standards fora agree and that will enable a contract on privacy between you and your SP.) In fact as customers get more tech-savvy they will demand that the contract with their service provider will make statements about privacy of their data. It is then up to the service provider to keep their data safe (except from cops with warrants) even from their own employees.

Before this post gets downgraded to -infinity, think for 2 seconds (or 2 minutes if you are just waking up). This is not a technical problem, good security technology is readily available. It is a legal and commercial problem!

Some problems can not be solved just by looking at the technology, if you look at the legal and commercial framework in which services are deployed you find that you can solve some issues there as well.

How difficult would it be to convince a court that you were damaged because your service provider did not safeguard your data and somebody used it against you to harm you financially or your standing in the community...

OK, on the first case the service provider with try and claim that the technology is not available to secure this. BS On the second they will claim that the government has ordered them to leave this non-secure. Hmm, in some countries they have a point. The governments around the world are feeling the pressure from citizens organisations demanding more privacy.

So the government will listen if one can demonstrate that they can get what they want (legal intercept) and the citizens can also get what they want (privacy).

think about it.

Re:Wireless is definately the way forward.

[sethg]

That's why I think wireless will increase security: it'll get people to realize that they have to patch up their holes.

You have a lot more faith in human nature than I do.

Re:Hun?

[M-G]

It's either:

a) A devious plot to increase revenue by getting a kickback on each pay-to-view

b) A way to show how many people comment on Slashdot without bothering to read the linked material...

FYI - if you're thinking wireless...

[zerocool^]

If you're thinking wireless, and you're considering college, virginia tech. We just bought 4 OC-12's, and we're putting up wireless thru the entire campus this winter, or spring, i don't know which (i suspect spring). Its already available in some parts of campus.

Ummmm

[wiredog]

. Imagine being able to watch "Star Trek - TNG" on your mobile phone!

Just imagined it. Eyes hurt. Head hurts. From trying to focus on small screen.

New /. low

[scott1853]

What the hell is this? Slashdot linking to PDFs for sale. Anybody check to see whether or not the poster worked for the company selling the PDF?

Kind of hard for us to discuss the actual story here when we'd be required to pay for the content. So instead, I'm betting most posts are going to be similar to mine. Might as well just mark everything as offtopic.

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.

Re:Hun?

[aclarke]

I admit it, I just go here for the pictures.

Response for sale

[gosand]

In response to this article, I have a little tidbit of information that the govenrment doesn't want you or anyone else to know about. It will affect the way the internet functions in all areas, from personal affairs to business to entertainment.

Click Here to order my response. Cost is only $16.99, all major credit cards accepted.

Sheesh.

Re:How appropriate...

[jgaynor]

mod me down as OffTopic if you want but that is AMAZING! -

Why isnt this a frontpage article? Basically cisco is deploying an upper atmosphere wireless IP layer for planes, shuttles and research craft.

With the new version of the software, a Cisco router along with its entire network of connected IP devices can now roam seamlessly across network boundaries and connection types, the company said. For example, an airplane with a router running Cisco mobile IP can fly around the world with all passengers continuously connected to the Internet.

He said NASA will deploy Cisco's mobile networks on low-earth-orbiting research craft to allow continuous connection to the Internet.

With the economy as it is Cisco still has the capital and sway to create a wireless network that will blanket the WORLD? The potential to hack this is unbelIEVable. A strong mobile transceiver would be almost untraceable.

Beyond the sheer magnitude of this is the complexity of the technical details behind it. This network has to be completely self healing and aware of where networks will show up next, all with astoundingly fast convergence time. No current routing protocol would be able to handle this without some serious modification. Im guessing its completely proprietary.

for all you anime fans this is straight outta cowboy bebop - pictures of ed in the desert with a satellite dish come to mind.

The author

[intuition]

Maybe you would like to see a picture of the author No? What about his wife Maxi..... or is it Lisa? If the first article wasn't deviod of any information, maybe you would like to read another penned by the same man. Of course the author has already changed his homepage to reflect the fact that his article was posted on slashdot.

As for Hastings Research : maybe you would like to see a sample of some of their other quality research. When have you ever heard a white paper draw a metaphor between market conditions and a glass being half full? But seriously they do have a six foot magnetic whiteboard to "prototype" their research. (they don't put rookies in center field either.) If you need to know they also provide a list of profitable web sites. (Look to the bottom of the page for their judicious use of "keywords" to help prop up their standing in search engine results.)

This is the worst article ever on slashdot.

Re:Have you seen Wi-Lan's latest? 192Mb/s

[A Commentor]

Notice the "per six-sector cell" in their press release: "up to 192 megabits per second per six-sector cell".

The way I read this, is that a single cell (made of 6 sectors) can support 192 Mb/s, thus each sector would only be 1/6 of that speed (32 Mb/s). In most cellular systems, a user accessing the system would be only connected to a single sector so that MAX that a user would see would be 32 Mb/s.

Not much better than 802.11b, and less than 802.11a.