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Microsoft Virtually Duplicates Your Wireless Card
akhomerun writes "Microsoft has released version 1.0 of its experimental new VirtualWiFi Software. The free software enables Windows users to use a single wireless card to connect to multiple wireless networks simultaneously. The current build is a very primitive release, with no support for WEP or WPA encryption."
You need two Wifi cards to do some man in the middle attacks..
;)
Will this make it easier
Does this mean we can connect to an AP and then connect using ad-hoc using the same card to another computer? This would result in a relay
The blurb makes it sound like this is essentially a way to quickly switch the hardware from one AP to another, buffering packets until the hardware is connected to the proper AP. I'm curious how efficient this process is, as there's bound to be some switching latency. For low-bandwidth non-latency-bound tasks, I assume it's virtually seamless, but I wonder how non-latency-bound you'd need a task to be before it starts becoming problematic.
Wouldn't a proper software-defined radio be the real solution, allowing connections to 2 APs simultaneously with only one antenna? Obviously Microsoft's working with what they've got, and it's certainly an interesting capability, but I'd rather see real effort on SDRs, particularly the regulatory issues therewith.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Microsoft releasing tech previews with source code ? I mean, what has the world come to ?. Oh, sure it is under Shared Source license - but it raises serious questions about the way MS is dealing with the latest challenge from F/OSS. After all students are the major inflow of talent into F/OSS (starting from Linus Torvalds ...).
The only thing that scares me is that their website has an image that is 960x720 px resized using img tag height and widths - Which looks like it was done in powerpoint using 3DText. I wanted to pull the code and read it to see if it was some kind of trojan or something. All in all, it looks too unprofessional (website mainly) - at least compared to all the open source project sites I've run into.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
The comments on the website indicate that the code buffers traffic meant for another AP between switching networks. This of course is hindered by the time it takes to complete the 802.11 authentication and association exchange as indicated with the suggested timer values for the supported wireless cards.
Intel Centrino cards are well-known in the industry as being particularly aggressive at associating and authentication to an access point after being deauthenticated, thereby shortening the time needed to switch between different networks. It's unfortunately Centrino cards aren't on the supported list yet, they would make for an interesting evaluation target to use this kind of technology in a sort of mesh wireless network.