Wireless Mania

burnsy and others sent in links to stories about 802.11b that are cropping up everywhere. The New York Times has one. (Well, two, actually.) Salon has one. InternetNews has a piece about Boingo, a new wireless start-up, that's also covered in this Forbes article. (The NYT article above also mentions Sputnik.) Both Boingo and Sputnik are trying to leverage the existing community wireless networks to speed their network build-outs. MIT's Tech Review has an interesting piece about a wireless start-up that has already tried and failed. Fixed wireless is also booming, according to an industry study.

Comments

bah

[Morphine007]

humbug... what a waste of time... I'd personally rather see more initiative in securing wireless networks, instead of proceeding in a definitely windowsesque fashion and just ship ship ship the damned thing... who cares if it's ready??

No killer app yet

[Jack Admiral]

There still isn't a killer app for wireless access yet - either for cellphones, PDAs, or PCs, so I can't see wireless networks becoming successful. I can't imagine why one would use 2400 bps to connect when I can connect at 160 kbps at home unless you're on the road and can't use anything else. Probably the best use for wireless access are cellphones and yet even these haven't taken off. Of course, wireless networks would succeed if they were free which gives a 2400 bps/0$ (infinite) price performance ratio compared to 160 kbps/50$.

Re:No killer app yet

[Conspiracy Theorist]

No killer app?

Do you have dozens network drops in every room of your house or aparment? Does every conference room in your office building have a network connection for everyone in a max capacity environment? Have you ever surfed the web or checked your email while sitting on the front lawn, enjoying a summer afternoon? Wireless LANs themselves are the killer app.

Recipe for a Slashbot! AGAIN!

[ReluctantBadger]

Recipe for a Slashbot First, take a teenage boy (not like that, Katz does that later). Next, give him a "C for Dummies" book and then get his folks to cough up enough cash to send him to university. Simmer with annoying teens of a similar ilk until enough pent up sexual frustration allows the boy to feel rebellious towards his country and all the laws that have got him to university in the first place. Next, add a dash of commie ideals and force repeatedly down with generous helpings of the Linux operating system. Now that the wannabe "hacker" has had his mind filled with backwashed rubbish, add in a dash of anti-Microsoft sentiment. Pay particular attention at this stage and make sure that said boy also uses a dollar symbol for every iteration of the Microsoft trademark. When complete, prepare the "Source". Mix a little piss-poor C code with a hint of Perl. Stir with adequate helpings of MySQL. Now add emacs and vi - just enough to add spice and future raging flame war material. Now shake until a large mess of fucking awful "Source" is produced. Most of these "I hack the kernel" wannabes cannot and will never code to a good standard. While simmering the "Source", open the boy up and stuff him full of bullshit ideology. Recommended ingredients are:

• "Freedom of Speech" : I can trade copyrighted MP3s because information wants to be free.
• "Free the Chinese from internet monitoring by Big Brother" : I completely ignore the fact that they have a right to live with their own culture, ideals and values as is stated in MY OWN FUCKING CONSTITUTION.
• "The government is out to get me" : Start working with Linux distributions such as Tin Foil Hat and then post completely raving non-sensical rubbish about how 'the NSA has been bugging me for years'.

When "Source" is ready, open a PayPal account and hand over a few dollars to a bunch of useless chimps who can't spell. While waiting for the boy to come to the boil, peruse Slashdot. Find hundreds of arrogant comments posted by "I'm a student and I know Linux so I must be a fucking computing god and don't you dare argue with me" types, print out and stuff into boy. 30 minutes later, your slashbot is complete. Finish off nicely with a side-order of Debian CDs, unwashed Linux t-shirt and ThinkGeek gift certificate. Your final result should be : An arrogant, paranoid, smelly know-it-all with basic UNIX capabilities, fuck-all programming ability and appalling social skills. You will find that the result of your labours will be the first to shout out about freedom of speech, but will quickly moderate down anyone they disagree with.

What we need is...

[swordboy]

It would be really great if they would start releasing 802.11x telephone PBX equipment. Blanket an area in wireless internet and telephony. Now *that* is my idea of sticking it to the Comcasts and Ameritechs...

Re:Wireless is great!

[stripes]

Well hopefully RFC 3118 (Authentication in DHCP) will be implemented soon, meaning less unathorized addresses passed out.

Ugh, what a stunningly bad idea. Now rather then having people stumble across your network and use it without getting in your way they come over have to run tcpdump, guess your netblock and DNS server, and pick an "unused looking" address. If they guess wrong one of your machines could be inaccessable.

As I see it people using your DHCP server is doing you a huge favor, they don't get in your way, and they get logged with the IP address assigned, so you can later figure out what happened. Now all you will know is some mac address wanted a DHCP lease and was denied, lord only knows what IP address they picked out after that!

Re: Wireless is great!

[elemental23]

I know about WEP not being perfect, but it's better than nothing. In my case the short range is an advantage as well. The only people remotely close to my house are two neighbors and I know neither of them would attempt to connect to or sniff my network, mainly because of their complete lack of computer knowledge. Anyone wandering around with a laptop would be noticed pretty quickly.

MAC address filtering though... How can it be bypassed? (other than randomly guessing one of the addresses on the allow list, extremely unlikely as that is)