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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."
When Centrinos are commonplace and WiFi hotspots are provided and subsidized by Intel and the like around the country, those lucky bastards who bought iBooks and PowerBooks w/ AirPort YEARS ago will have a nice little windfall of free bandwidth as they roam around the landscape.
... for instance, Macs have had built-in ethernet since 1991, and the first true a/v models that features composite and s-video input and output w/a second DSP chip specifically for the heavy a/v lifting, debuted in 1993.
Being ahead of the curve has always been good for Apple users - sometimes you find that the industry sort of settles around what you've been doing/using for years
I feel like a Boy Scout w/ my Mac - always prepared. And not in the hot entree type of prepared - I mean the "ready for anything" type of prepared.
'ta
But it would be nice if we could see wifi hotspots in other smaller cities like Seattle Wireless has set up in their town. I think if ISP's could lower the equipment costs for their WI-FI equipment down from 600 dollars to about 100, or 200 more people would catch on. That and someone needs to come up with a way for the Wireless Providers to be able to shoot over the hilly and rocky mountains like we have in Southeast Idaho. And if we could fix the speed barrier, get the bottle neck up from 11mbps to 54 or even higher, that would rock!
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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 week seem to have got a really good tech section. Check out some of the articles in the "recent tech features" sidebar on the left.
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.
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!
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I think you'll find WiFi slowly fazed out for different technologies, namely ones that are...proprietary.
Interference and crowding may prove to become too much of an issue as everyone hops on the bandwagon.
This being said, WiFi is a great technology to pave the way in wireless.
Colossians 2:8
and the manufacturers will continue to ship Wi-Fi access enabled routers for home use that are wide open. So truly everyone can access the internet from anywhere! (and do anything they want since there is no way to track them down...) Isn't that a threat for national security? haha....
and I was utterly disappointed to read, "This transfers at a rate of 11mbps, that's roughly equivalent to 10 minutes of digital music or 500 single page word documents every second."
.WAV or other lossless format, 11mbits a second transfers what... a minute, if that a second? Nevermind the lack of understanding of big-B vs. little-B.
I really wish people would stop using this "roughly equivalent" analogy. What type of digital music are we talking? It doesn't answer anything really. If we're talking about a
This is off-topic, just something I read and wanted to bitch about.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
'ta
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.
The Economist has a set of related articles in this week's edition.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
The only real stop gap solution at this point is to have a VPN server on the other side of the wireless connection. That way, your packets can be sniffed all day and would be crackers have to deal with breaking VPN crypto.
I suspect that in the end, that will be the way to go regardless of new advancements in WEP that may or may not come about.
The bottom line is that somewhere, the day will have to be encrypted in some way because it is open in the air for anyone to grab. If you put the burden of the horsepower required to encrypt/decrypt on your WAP, then your ability to serve large numbers of clients diminishes.
In other words, leave the WAP duties up to the WAP and leave the encryption duties up to a VPN server. No changes to current technologies required.
Operating positive means that your operating expenses are less than your operating income. Free-cash-flow positive means that you basically always have a positive cash-flow situation -- you always have cash on-hand. Net-income-profitable means that after taxes, overhead, and direct expenses, yada yada, you have a positive net income... Err...IOW you made money after you paid everything out, including taxes.
My journal has hot
The limitations causing hills to be a problem are built into the 2.4 ghz frequency. Physics is to blame and cannot be changed. Signals such as FM radio have a much better ability to penetrate uneven terrain.
The way to get around the problem of obstruction of signal, multiple repeater sites are necessary. There is a cost associated that makes it hard to justify if there isn't significant population density to cover an area.
As far as upping speed to 54 mbps in the 2.4 ghz range, 802.11g will make that a reality. It is already here with 802.11a. 802.11a technology is a little more expensive currently though.
Still, it doesn't matter because the further away from a WAP you are, the lower your data throughput will be. If your WAP is getting interference from another WAP, your maximum data throughput will be much lower than 54mbps anyway.
Do not look for current wireless technologies to replace wired ones with equivalent functionality anytime soon. The best they can do is fill in broadband gaps by serving up a 128/256/512/1024K connections to those willing to pay for it.
It's interesting to notice that none of the articles mentions anything about the Personal Telco wireless project in Portland, Oregon. This is a grass roots effort to provide limited free access to wireless
internet in parts of Portland, Oregon.
I also know that there are similar efforts going
on in other cities.
I also did not notice (it could be there as I only
skimmed the articles) anything about the war-chalking that goes on in some areas to identify places where one can get a wireless session.
Mark
Cleara
'ta
#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.
WiFi stands for "Wireless Fidelity"
= 2
More info + propaganda available at:
See http://www.weca.net/OpenSection/why_Wi-Fi.asp?TID
Rushfan