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No WiFi In 'Grantsdale' Chipset
bizpile writes "A company spokesman confirmed Friday, Intel has decided not to enable the wireless access-point functionality in its 'Grantsdale" chipset. Intel decided not to include this feature because of the proliferation of cheap wireless access points. Spokesman Dan Snyder said, 'So many wireless APs are out there, and they're essentially free" when purchased in conjunction with DSL or cable service from an ISP. The company may still develop a custom chipset to re-enable the WiFi functionality if a large customer requests it. Also, their Centrino plans and production will be unchanged."
It seems to me that it was more of a nonessential feature getting cut in order to ship ontime. They do have a point though that WAPs are cheap, but more often than not they suck. Why else would people turn certain WiFi network cards into WAPs (perhaps on a Linux server)? If there was some sort of awesome "do everything" WAP and for cheap, maybe then you'd have a valid excuse to cut this feature out.
How much would it cost Intel to enable the WiFi? I mean... if it's a small cost, then they'd get their wireless access points into computers instantly so people don't have to go out and buy wireless APs. I mean, if my computer came with a wireless access point, then I certainly wouldn't go out and buy another one (unless it was terrible). It's the same deal with firewire. Most people don't use it, but it's sure a lot more convenient if it was there when you needed it.
Hate to be suggesting monopolistic marketing ideas, but Intel can really get a lot of their wireless AP into computers by bundling it.
Intel made a 486SX chip which was a 486 with the math co-processor disabled and it was slightly cheaper than the 486DX. They also sold a 487SX which they called the co-processor, but in truth it was just a 486 with a working co-pro, and when you used the 487SX, it completely disabled the 486SX and took over as the only CPU in the system.
The whole thing seemed like a test of how gullible their customers were. It looks like they're doing the same thing again.
Jason
ProfQuotes
that maybe someone who's more familiar with Intel's recent chips could answer...
When Intel says they're "disabling" this, do they mean they're going to be physically leaving it out, or permanently disabling it, or just deactivating a jumper or something? By which I mean, could overclockers re-enable the feature on chips they possessed themselves if they really, really wanted to?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Yes, I read the article.
And even the article is unclear about being either the Access Point component or the 802.11x in the chipset.
My guess is that they are leaving a feature connector attached for a third party WIFI card, and disabling the Access Point features.
Which means absolutly nothing. The third party WIFI card can act as an Access Point.
Can a daughter card providing WIFI be considered part of the chipset (ala Centrino)?
I really wish article authors could show an attempt to clarify ideas.
Perhaps this is Intel's first steps toward their own secure implementation of the wireless WEP protection. As any bearded terminal hacker knows, WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) is insecure in it's use of shifting between key frames, so perhaps Intel has come up with a solution for this that is more secure than the hacks that Cisco and Lucent have put into place so far.
Normally I would agree with you.
I work out of my home for a company a couple provinces away. They have provided me with a high-end nortel VoIP phone which works great when my laptop is wired into my network.
If I try and make the connection travel over the WAP, it introduces quite a lot of popping and dropped words due to lost/out-of-order packets.
So in some cases wired does make the difference.
Thing is, that netgear thing (I have one) sucks.
The first thing, is that the device is unable to keep a tcp connection open, and drops it (which is a pain in the rear end if you're remotely hacking something on a box behind said gateway)
The web interface to the firewall is braindead at best, doesn't even do SSL (so that anyone can look at the gateway's admin password, there supposedly is a telnet interface (riiiight, telnet...) and no SSH into the thing.
The firewall setup itself is so braindead that it doesn't handle the load (look for "problem [netgear|linksys|whatever]" on google) and hangs itself after a few hours. This is due to the ridiculously small (as in under-powered) processor and the lack of onboard ram.
Furthermore, there's no way to get the thing to run IPSEC, which is the only way to get a secure wireless gateway (WEP has been broken from the start, being RC4).
My soekris net 4801 based router, on the other hand, has been working for a couple months now (bought it in august), without the need for rebooting, runs IPsec, has a sensible firewall interface (iptables) that can be hacked to death, has already seen about 100G of traffic, without clinching at any time.
Granted, the soekris is not inexpensive (about 240 EUR) but has given me much more bang for my bucks than what the netgear ever gave me.
There's a problem with your analogy. This is a new processor and chipset, so likely it would not be compatible with that old hardware you have lying around. So if you wanted to make use of this technology, you would have to buy a new computer, or a new motherboard too at the very least (and then possibly new RAM as well).
Within a few years this new hardware you buy now would be back to that near-zero market value. But by then Wifi APs will likely be much cheaper than $100. Also the power consumption of the newer processors coming out of Intel and AMD these days is significantly higher than that of the 2 older machines you cited.