Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UK to get Public Wireless LAN

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the start-running-ethereal dept.

shanksd1 writes "The IEE Review for May reports that BT is announcing the UK's first public access wireless LAN, with a little help from Motorola and Cisco. 400 wireless hotspots of range 100m should be implemented by June 2003, and 4000 by June 2005. These 500 kb/s access points will be located in hotels, railway stations, airports, bars and coffee shops."

2 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. We already have this in sweden...kinda by huhmz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In Stockholm if you have a laptop with a wlan card you can sniff for open access points from wlans used by companys.
    Quite a lot of them don't use encryption or locked down MAC addresses so you can leech bandwidth from about half a dussin open networks while sipping coffee at a nice cosy coffee shop.

    I imagine this must be ten times worse in big cities like NY.

  2. Security Considerations by Hornsby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Every time I hear about this type of thing, the exact same question springs into my mind. How is user accountability enforced in this type of "wide open" network enviroment. Normally, people can be back-tracked to their ISP, and a name can be connected to an IP for a given time frame. What's to stop someone from using these public networks as a means to perform malicious behaviour anonymously? In a setup like I'm picturing, there wouldn't even be a need to spoof your IP address.

    --
    A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.