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Intel Putting Wi-Fi into Future Chipsets
Ridgelift writes "Wired's got the story on Intel's plan to incorporate Wi-Fi into the motherboard chipset. "The chipset, however, will not include an actual Wi-Fi radio, so users will still need a wireless add-on card. Intel has said it eventually intends build a Wi-Fi radio into its microprocessors." This would make setting up a wireless network a lot simpler."
They will probably promise to provide Linux driver like with the centrino chipset and then not even make specs available.
You will get all kind of lame excuses:
- We are working on a driver.... (For half a year already)
- We can't tell you how to operate it because the FCC won't let us (Complete bullshit but sounds nice: 'linux hackers want to interfere with police radio')
- They might release some binary only modules... (Redhat version bla.bla, kernel version bla.bla and nothing else)
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Building more functionality into the motherboard is an ongoing trend, but adding a radio cannot be a good thing. Due to potential interferance, you cannot go into a hospital or airplane without being told to turn off your cellphone.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
It is not on the cpu, but the chipset and the RF part is not there. It will just be something like the 802.11 asic dealing with the the protocol not with power up/down conventers or anything like that.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
I think it should be integrated into the motherboard (like regular ethernet) but not the chipset.
Or is intel upset that sales of centrino are so poor? To be an "official" centrino laptop, you have to offer intel's 802.11b wireless. Not surprisingly, many people want faster (802.11b/g or 802.11a/b/g) wireless cards.
Broadcom has been eating intel's lunch in the oem ethernet (wireless & wired) card market. Sounds like anticompetitive monopolist activity to me.
What about security issues?
I like my router (at home, I share a cable internet connection between two desktop PCs and, occasionally, my laptop). It has an inbuilt firewall according to the manufacturer, and I know if I ever do have a serious problem which I suspect originates from the internet, I can physically disconnect it. Sure, cables are archaic, but they're cheaper and more secure than wireless networks - especially for the novice (like myself).
But if you enable a CPU to act as a wireless hub - or, eventually, if WiFi comes as a full onboard feature (rather like many motherboards now have onboard sound and graphics) - would that not open up your PC and network to security issues? My parents would not be best pleased if someone warchalked on the fence, but since they have little idea of technology or computer security, I think if they bought a new machine enabled with this kind of tech, every l33t hax0r in a two mile radius would be camping out to leech their access.
Any other thoughts, opinions or predictions?
"It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." -- Zork
You guys are not looking at the big picture, here. Adding this on board allows OEMs to specify a motherboard platform with this, and then buy the cards at cheaper prices than full implementations on cards would cost. It's just following the trend of AMR slots and onboard video, and, in the last couple of years, wired NICs.
Early hard drive and floppy controllers used to only be on cards, too.
Get off my launchpad!
But why!
Onboard soundcards (chips?) are rubbish, onboard NICs are quite often crap (not always), onboard modems are a joke and onboard video is nasty. Apart from some specific cases (VIA's mini-itx stuff) I think manufacturers should be moving away from this onboard-everything obsession.
PCI was invented for a reason! Customisability is what set the PC apart from the Amiga or similar machines!
Personally, I'm not really convinced all these integrated parts do us any favors.
Just last week, for example, I installed a new Pentium 4 motherboard and CPU in a standard ATX case that was formerly running a PII system. This was done for a law firm, and was upgraded on-site, because they couldn't afford to have much downtime.
Well, as luck would have it, the integrated EIDE controller was faulty. I kept getting "data corrupt" type messages when it tried to boot Win2K on the drive that just worked in the other system. I tried a different hard drive with a fresh format, and had the same issue. Even the secondary channel had problems.
If it hadn't been intergated, I could have simply swapped a $15 or $20 controller card and gotten everything back up and running for them.
The more devices Intel can integrate into motherboards using their chipsets, the more often they get to sell people an entire new board when they only need one small part.
On-board video has been a disaster since day 1, for both PC and Mac users. What seems "high end" when a machine is new turns into "mediocre" within a year or two. Then come all the conflicts trying to get the on-board video disabled when you add a new, add-in video card. (I'm sure many long-time Mac users can remember the dislike for the "Performa" towers like the 6400/6500, largely due to the on-board video only allowing up to 2MB of video RAM.)
Integrated NICs may work fine when they work, but again - I've seen many a blown NIC card due to power surges/spikes. I'd rather swap a card and have a fully functional machine again than have a dead port permanently soldered onto the back of my computer....
I, for one, do not like this trend of integrating wireless into everything.
As a security conscious individual, I want to be able to physically choose whether or not I want wireless when I want wireless.
I like to be able to physically pull out the wireless card in my laptop because then I know I can't be h4x0r3d via my WLAN card.
Fine. Call me paranoid. I don't mind.
(Yeah, I know they said the RF part would still be an add-on... I'm just talking in general that I want add-ons and not fully integrated wireless stuff that I can't pull out without desoldering chips.)
Would you people please think before posting?
This includes a chipset, not a radio. Therefore, it won't be sending out your world control schemes to everyone in existence. Yes, Intel will at some point in the nebulous future include a radio. As will many manufacturers. At that point, we go to the next paragraph:
Every integrated soundcard/videocard/ethernet controller/serial port/etc. I've ever seen has a setting in the BIOS. If you don't want the location of your laser embedded sharks known to the black helicopter people, switch it off.
Finally, when is the last time your built in ethernet card just randomly spewed data out the port to the CIA? Oh, last week? Then you have more problems than just a wireless AP built into your motherboard.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'd say the number is higher than 99%, but its exactly that few percent that are the kicker. With modprobe, I can type "modprobe i810_audio" and the thing just starts working. If something goes wrong, I can check the dmesg output, and ahve a range of debugging options. With Windows, if something goes wrong, you're screwed. I've been trying to debug persistent wonkiness in the wireless card of one of my Windows machines. After months, I've just given up and take to reinstalling the drivers every month. It doesn't help that there are two competing wireless managers (the one that came with the card, and the one that comes with Windows) and I really don't think I can reproduce the exact steps I took to disable one and keep the two from interfering with each other.
Of course, that's largely a moot point --- current distros use something like hotplug or kudzu, so you don't have to use modprobe anyway. But the advanced troubleshooting options are still there if you need them.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I work in a fairly large hospital (200+ beds) and I can tell you from alot of experance that this is no longer the case for hospitals with modern equipment. The hospital I work for just had Nextel come in and install signal multiple repeaters on every floor and building of our entire campus and put a cell tower on top of our main building that houses all patent rooms / OR's with no problems what so ever. There are certain areas where we are advised not to have our Cell phones on but that is due more to respect of patent famlies and not becuase of any interferance issues.
You can talk to someone in Bangladesh but can't get the football game commentary on WIP? What's up with that!
This is my sig.
The solution is simple, however; Don't buy the systems with wifi in them, or be sure to configure them with a software image, unattended install, or similar feature to configure the card out of the box, or disable it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, yeah, and I did try to get Jon Anderson to include IPv6 in his first major release of LocustWorld's MeshAP for precisely that reason. To no avail however. He thinks the ability to set up private subnets, local to the mesh, is adequate to the problem at hand. He may be right if the problem at hand is simply getting out to a lot of MANs rapidly.
As for my professional involvement, I am responsible for deployment and mantainence of a mesh network in a small metro area so yes to that extent I'm professionally involved. I'll probably do a computer simulation of the described algorithm before building any actual devices but yes testing of these ideas is important.
Seastead this.
Why do I read about this on Slashdot, instead of an article about Intel declining to provide drivers or specifications for their wireless part of Centrino?