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6 Burning Questions About Wireless Networks
alphadogg writes "Answers to wireless network questions such as: What impact will 802.11n have? Which wireless security threats are scariest? What of wireless VoIP? Will your organization need to change to support enterprise mobility? How do you control costs in an expanding mobile and wireless environment? What can you do to stop wireless denial-of-service attacks?"
1) all the vendors that I've seen have WPA turned on by default. They didn't use to, but then cars didn't have seat belts years ago, either.
2) you can find lots of information about bandwidth. The same site as the article cited has product reviews on ftp throughput; it's about a max of 3/5ths stated bandwidth or less.
3) this already happens. Use 802.11a instead. There are tons of non-interfering channels and you can get double-data-rate schemes with them.
4) someone using your wifi might be legal, but it depends strictly on where you live and what laws apply there. Generally, it's not legal in the US, but there have been few prosecutions. 'Hotspots' are generally thought to be legal to use if they self-identify as 'free wifi' or 'hotspot' etc.
5) use free WiFi sources where you find them. Go to muniwireless.com to understand how muni-wifi projects are tougher than they seem. Nice idea. Expensive and tough to do, and to manage (low) expectations.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The article mentions VoWiFi quality as poor, which makes me believe that the writer is handling the truth somewhat irresponsibly.
I work for one leading VoWiFi company that currently installs a lot of systems at US hospitals. Do you think the hospital administrations should accept anything than perfect performance?
A MOS of 4.2 using ETSI's own measurements and seamless handover is what we are talking about. Not FUD about dropped calls etc. Our i75 passed Cisco's own certification program before their own product and has won a number of prices for best product.
Y.T.
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
This is antecdotal at best and coming twice removed from the source, but I will offer it up anyway. A client of mine is in a business that involves running trucks from southern California up into the central valley as far north as Madera/Dinuba. They wanted constant radio communication with the trucks but realized that they couldn't do it with what was publicly available. What they had to do was license a portion of the spectrum from the FCC. Now they are allowed to broadcast on that spectrum over most of southern California and out to the channel islands (Catalina, etc). To offset part of the cost of owning the spectrum they are selling wireless internet to boats. They are also getting real time data feeds from the trucks. They are using Motorola radios and the guys who are building out the infrastructure for them are a big government contractor who also happen to do radio stuff for oil companies down in Africa. So the technology is there to do long distance, high speed wireless if you have the money. It's just slowly trickling down into the public sector via 802.11n and what not.
Think it out. How are vendors going to require users to use WPA? By having it turned on by default? Then, for interoperability, all the vendors would have to use the same session Id and keys? That's not security, that's the illusion of it. My equipment is old enough, I only have WEP, which I don't use. I rely on the OS tools, (SSH, firewalls, and my own DHCP server) to secure the link. Of course, I don't use Microsoft software to begin with.
> Yes, but when you start Windows for the first time, it asks you to set a password. When you plug in your router, it does not ask > you to set up wireless encryption. You can always leave the password blank for Windows, but you were at least given a prompt to set > one.
Yes, but by default the Adminstrator password is left blank, with the username "Administrator".
While interesting, a much friendlier suggestion would be to use that paint/wallpaper that blocks wireless signals. Put it on your exterior walls and ceiling. Encourage your apartment company to do it in all suites. Or at least your downstairs neighbour so you can be fairly insulated. Not only do you free up your air space for your wireless access point so you can get good speed to the device, you also reduce the interference on any 2.4 GHz phones you might have/want to use.
Don't buy a residential device? If you want to do advanced set up, pony up the bucks and go purchase a device to do it.
As mentioned FON is a cheap solution to do that, it puts out 2 SSIDs, a shared one and a private encrypted on, and you can use the web interface I believe to rate limit people on your open shared line.
Otherwise go buy a high quality business device with more than one available AP and set it up to do whatever you want. Cisco has tons of devices that can deliver you that kind of setup. So the answer is, its already there. Go nuts.
Riiiiight.
Because the "WAP is open" defense works so well.
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
Yeah, all those people at Starbucks with laptops 'seeking out anonymity by piggybacking on their WiFi ' are scary. Or, they could just be regular folks who take advantage of easy access to the internet to check their mail, read CNN, etc.
Our University also provides open wireless access to the local community. Do you think they are doing it secretly to support thousands of local pedophiles? They claim it is to support openness, ease-of-use, education, and to benefit some of the poor in the local area who might not be able to afford their own internet access.
Nah, you are right. They are scary. I'm sure it's a secret plot to let terrorist sleeper cells have access to destroy the country. Be a good little neo-cons, give up all your freedoms to stay safe from all the evil terrorists/pedophiles/pirates out there!
"regardless of how bad WEP is, for any random house in any random neighborhood it's good enough" :-)
I know a handful of people within a couple blocks of me that LOVE the way you think
WEP = breakable within about a min(about 5max) with tools that my 10yr old daughter could find and use.
Not only that but once the wireless is compromised, so is the wired side.