Can 802.11 Become A Viable Last-Mile Alternative?

NikiScevak writes "As telco's around the world move from government hands to private investors the incentive for them to create compeition at the wholesale DSL level drops dramatically. The CSIRO in Australia are investigating the use of Wireless LAN technology 802.11b as a means through which to provide alternative broadband access, achieving range of up to 7km with standard components."

Comments

tired of the insecurity troll

[Erris]

And, last but not least, the damm networks are (usually) insecure as hell - not by nature but by incompetent setup. I remember an article about a bunch of 'hackers' who drove around downtown london's financial distric with a laptop and a wireless card and where ablet o log onto all sorts of networks b/c of lack of security.

Dude, you read an article about sniffers? Wow, can I touch you? Yes, this is a flame because I'm sick of hearing such bullshit.

Here's ignorance taken to a new degree. I once heard a story about the whole internet being insecure, a place where all sorts of "hackers" could break into all sorts of machines. They even were able to phreak the phone system. And this new fangled email? Thanks to poor implemetaion, I'm told that the very internet itsel was shaken (routers destabilized) by a silly VB script. Can you believe it? Who would use such an insecure media? I'm sure glad no one ever persued those crazy things!

Want security? You can start by tossing out your M$ crap. You might then consider the virtues of encryption routines, such as provided by OpenBSD and used everwhere people have sense. If you really really don't want anyone to see something, don't write it down. In the long run, it would be adventageous to get governments to extend mail fraud and tampering laws to electronic formats. Remember those things that protect your precious documents from those bold enough to rip open an envelope?

Run along and play in traffic now.