BusinessWeek on Wi-Fi

ydeepakjois writes "BusinessWeek is running a series of articles on the potential of wireless high-speed access, the Wi-Fi industry and the challenges faced by it. There is also an interesting bit about a business model for wireless carriers."

Comments

What about the Security

[Montgomery Burns III]

I have read several of the recent BW articles lauding the beaty and wonder of WI-FI. I was apalled at the lack of concern about the security issues associated with wireless communications.
While it is great to talk about the productivity gains of the tools, we dare not ignore the threats against:

Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability.

Re:What about the Security

[samhalliday]

the security issues are the same as they are with a hard line connection on a local network... regards snooping and so forth. if you want a secure connection, you dont use telnet, and you dont trust unknown keys in ssh/ssl. if you want your actions recorded for all to see, better use telnet :-/

'nuff said.

Re:What about the Security

[timeOday]

What about the security? The good ole' wired Internet doesn't provide confidentiality or integrity anyways. That's why we have ssl. And supressing WiFi isn't going to increase availability of anything.

Treat a WiFi adapter just like a connection to the Internet, and you can't go far wrong.

Re:What about the Security

[arvindn]

True. Too often a technology rapidly gains popularity and then the world finds that it is missing some vital component which, with hindsight, should have been built into the protocol in the first place. Worse, the extra feature can not be tacked on to it without breaking compatibility. Had SMTP had a better authentication system, spam would probably not exist today. Another example is gnutella - it didn't scale. But there is often no way to provide for the future since it is impossible to know what direction a technology is going to take. Burdening it with too many security related features early on might prove a barrier to adoption. One way out could be to make it extensible at every level (like X window. See how well it has withstood the test of time.)

Re:What about the Security

[Montgomery Burns III]

With all due respect, I am not attempting to stifle or suppress WI-FI technology.
I sincerely believe that the security issues associated with WI-FI are somewhat more challenging than "connectivity to the Internet" in that, many folks are tempted to simply plug WI-FI into their internal corporate network without knowledge that they may be leaking their confidential data to bypassers.

Re:This is going to be a joyous thing

[benjiboo]

Battery life on laptops needs to improve before wireless access is truly a useful thing. You couldn't anticipate being able to pick up a mail or video conference with such a big possibiliy of running out of juice. This is especially important as it's mainly useful to business users - even the most hardcore geek can do without the web for a few hours whilst traveliing etc.

What about free-as-in-beer

[pork_spies]

We really have a chance to make this wave of the 'net' very different from the previous round - and that means taking control and offering an alternative vision (see Consume).
Who care about what Business Week says? It's about as interesting as 3G phones from their end - ie not at all interesting, just another way to part us from our money. Yes, let's all buy wireless cards, but learn the lesson of P2P and make them available to all.

business travelers...

[garcia]

this is my biggest problem w/Wi-Fi "hot-spots". There has to be more people than just "business travelers" that want wireless Internet connections...

This is NOT a good business model people. I do NOT want to have to goto the local airport or downtown coffee shop (not my type of place) in order to get connected while I am out of my house.

I want connections EVERYWHERE and ANYWHERE. I want to goto the local bar, sit down w/my NTN Playmaker, my Budweiser, and my 12 Wild Wings, watching Football, and hop on the net to surf, AIM, ssh, etc.

I am NOT a business traveler. I will probably never be one.

Good business models include a LARGE cross-section.

Re:business travelers...

[Shenkerian]

Good business models include a LARGE cross-section.

If you meant to imply that all good business models include a large cross section, you're absolutely wrong. That mentality fostered the .com business models of "building brand recognition" that ultimately went nowhere. There are many spectacularly successful business models that are very narrowly targeted, but do very well at saturating their target market (think Mercedes-Benz).

Why is this so hard to understand?

[grumpygrodyguy]

There is also an interesting bit about a business model for wireless carriers.

There is no business model for wireless, that's why it's so great!

It's 100% commodity based. Companies build commodity products, and the consumer purchases them to become part of the ISP. Mesh routers, 802X nodes, etc are all self-sufficient "black boxes" purchased by users for users.

The last thing we need is another middle-man sending us a bill for something that's free!

Re:Why is this so hard to understand?

[stripes]

There is no business model for wireless, that's why it's so great!

Yeah, but if there is a business model that includes profit there will be a lot more wireless sites to use (if you are willing to pay), and it shouldn't have a big impact on the number of free ones.

Having a model where some folks "give it away" is great, the lack of a for-profit model isn't great.

Re:Why is this so hard to understand?

[div_2n]

Someone has to pay the costs for keeping up the equipment and the high speed connection everyone is using.

How do you figure that my T1/T3/etc is free? What about the $500-800 bucks for a quality WAP/Router that dies and has to be replaced?

Look, I am all for free services. But the bottom line is that somewhere in the chain someone has to pay. Are you suggesting mass mooching?

The only way this would be a truly free endeavor is if the idea of a structured network went out the door and everything was truly meshed down to the web pages you want to visit. No more copper or fiber lines because all data is flowing over the air to and from each device like one gigantic peer to peer network.

I don't want to think about how ineffecient that would be or how security would cease to exist.

Re:This is going to be a joyous thing

[Surak]

At the risk of sounding somewhat like the Mac fanboy the parent poster is (as I am not a Mac fanboy myself), I'll point out that iBooks are supposed to get something like 5 hours of battery life in real-life use. Centrinos are supposed to get 5-7, I'm guessing 4-5 in real-life use. Personally I'd like to see notebooks that can do 8-10 hours -- IOW, a full day's work.

I personally don't see anyway for battery life to improve unless people are willing to compromise on performance and whizbang features. Battery capacity itself is as perfected as it's going to get...the key is to cut down consumption. But everytime someone figures out how to cut consumption on one component, the laptop mfrs stuff more features in rather than focusing on a laptop that has the longest possible battery life.

Unfortunately, too many people will buy laptop "X" with 17" display, DVD+R+RW/CD/R/RW combo superdrive, ultrawhizzy 300 GB hard drive, with the latest and greatest ultrawhizzy superfast processor and 1.5 hours of battery life rather than laptop "Y" which only has a 13.1" or 14" display, a relatively slow-clocked processor, with a somewhat slow, but powersaving hard drive, no removable storage and 7 hours of battery life.

That's because they've bought into the marketing hype and have forgotten that the number 1 advantage of a laptop is to be able to work anywhere, anytime. Laptops don't NEED to be desktop replacements, they should be thought of as desktop complements, rather than replacements.

Wi-Fi.. great for what it is

[Fnkmaster]

I mean, it's great that Wi-Fi hardware is so cheap and commoditized and everything, but what people keep seem to be missing is that A) the cheap commodity hardware is designed for small local area coverage, which is fabulous for business LANs and easy home networking, but bad for a general mobile wireless service B) hotspot-only coverage just doesn't provide a strong enough value proposition C) the purely commoditized nature of the hardware makes for a zero barriers to entry business. Anybody can build a network of hotspots on one payment system. But even if everybody used the same payment system, there would certainly be some value from it, but not at such a striking level that it is likely to happen. D) The only businesses that really have a striking imperative to need hotspots there are coffee shops, hotels and other places that make a living off of having people linger. McDonalds wireless - bad idea (I know they are experimenting with it), they want to get you in and out as soon as possible.

The fact is, 3G wireless networks are going to win out in the long run. Being able to open your laptop in the coffee shop and surf the web is great, but the bigger "wireless" market is vehicular embedded communications devices, fully connected PDAs, email-on-the-go, web browsing from where-ever you want. And no, futzing with my fucking cellphone keypad to send a stupid SMS message just doesn't count, I want it all on my Palm Pilot/Windows CE device, I want it seemless, I want it universal, I want it affordable.

Re:Wi-Fi.. great for what it is

[Locutus]

That's it guys, WiFi isn't going to enable the PDA and handheld. It's too power hungry and please don't try to tell me you can use WiFi on your existing handheld just fine. 1 hour of use and then back to the charger is NOT useful and only allows snake oil salesmen like Bill Gates to do demos. It's not usable in the business market or at home IMHO.

Bluetooth has alot of the answers. It enables PDAs, handhelds, laptops, etc to have internet connectivity on the road via Bluetooth -> mobile phone connections. Using a Bluetooth WAP, you can get the connectivity at the office or home.

In a class 2( 10meter ) configuration, you'll typically get 4x longer runtime than WiFi. Security becomes less of a problem because it's security-by-proximity( you can see who's trying to break in ). Heck, you want a secure meeting with wireless connectivity? Put a Class 3( 1-3meter) WAP in the middle of the meeting table.

IMHO, WiFi should be the secondary wireless system and Bluetooth the primary one.

LoB

WEP = worthless equivalent privacy

[div_2n]

#1: Exactly what I was getting at. The first stop data should travel through to be secure is a VPN/Firewall before it gets anywhere else.

#2: Not a bad idea. I assume you mean authenticate via RADIUS to get access to the WAP and then VPN to access the other side.

#3: Absolutely. This is the ONLY way currently to guarantee security of data.

#4 I disagree with completely.

WEP is clearly and easily breakable. It can be a pain to keep up with WEP keys.

At best it keeps complete beginners from viewing data packets.

At worst it adds overhead to WAP's that doesn't need to be there with a VPN solution filling the void.

The issue of additonal overhead is especially important if you are trying to serve greater than 50 clients per WAP. Actually many manufacturers currently recommend no more than 30 to 50 clients per WAP. If you throttle bandwidth and don't use WEP, you can get more without too much of an issue though.

The quick, easy and practical solution to securing wireless is:

1) Securely authenticate with an encrypted password (not WEP).

2) Encrypt data via VPN once authenticated.

Anything else is added overhead. The above two step process is EXACTLY what happens when using VPN over the wires. No WEP present there.

Re:This is going to be a joyous thing

[ePhil_One]

That's because they've bought into the marketing hype and have forgotten that the number 1 advantage of a laptop is to be able to work anywhere, anytime. Laptops don't NEED to be desktop replacements, they should be thought of as desktop complements, rather than replacements.

Nonsense. While a laptop doesn't NEED to be a desktop replacement, if its a "desktop companion" it radically changes the function. If I chose a desktop companion laptop, it would be and "ultraportable", the biggest I'd consider would be the new 12" powerbook. I could carry it into wiring closets to attach to network equipment, keep documentaion handy, check website, and test network functionality.

But I couldn't pop it open an work on spreadsheets and the like, update my resume, etc., even though technically its capable?

Why?

Version control. A while ago, I juggled three computers, home computer, work computer, and a laptop. Could never tell where the latest document was, and would often fork my own documents constantly, or not have the info I thought I had because it had been done on one of the other systems. Which one? Who knows.

With a "desktop replacement", I use the same computer everywhere. Sure, maybe the battery only lasts two hours (I've never seen a laptop go much further than this except when brand new), but how often am I that far away from a power outlet?

Actually, My palm does a really good job at being a desktop companion. Keeps my contacts, schedule, etc., stays in sync with my desktop (even key spreadsheets and documentation with its 256MB SD card) and has some handy games for keeping me entertained. Now only if it had a serial port for managing the network equipment...