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Inexpensive 11megabit Wireless LAN
x mani x writes "Due to recent Apple postings, I noticed something new on their site no one has mentioned yet: 11mbit radio-based NICs and hubs. Of course, something clever like this could only have been developed by Lucent. Oh, they don't cost an arm and a leg either. "
I don't see an x86 version, but we need Linux drivers. My
2mbit ZoomAir lan is addictive, but 11mbs will make my mp3s
stream in so much quicker :) (Unrelated: This page actually
has pics of the new iBook macs too)
I found a page for a company called No Wires Needed that supports IEEE 802.11 DSSS for PC's. They have an Open Source Linux driver for one of their cards. Both Apple and No Wires Needed claim their products work (and play well with others) with other IEEE 802.11 DSSS equipment.
URL for No Wires Needed is:
http://www.nwn.com/
Yeah, but the AirCards themselves won't work in a PC notebook -- they can just interchange data with any IEEE 802.11 compliant card in an x86.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Drive by shootings in Quake anyone.
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
--Terry Pratchett
Of course, I have seen > 1.25MB (megaBYTEs, 1.25 of them being the theorhetical limit) on a 10bt hub, so :P
For an example of what you can do with Aironet, check out sflan.org.
sflan currently covers the Presidio in San Francisco, and is spreading into other neighborhoods in SF. It's a grass-roots *public* *free* wireless network. 11Mb/s.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Uh, Aironet released full programming information to the developer responsible for the Linux driver. Any problems you're having with the Linux Aironet driver are due to the driver basically sucking, which is an entirely separate issue.
Posted by Sylvar:
Nope, they haven't fixed it yet. I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who did a double take.
...and being RF based, it won't be licenced in the UK.....sigh
Just intrested to know has anyone tested how the wireless equipment responds to cellphone interference, afterall, your average cellphone transmits at output of 8 watts, which isnt very weak output....
Packet errors, anyone?
Here is some more info on what this thing can do: http://www.macintouch.com/ny1999wirel ess.html.
* No encryption scheme is mentioned. If multiple base stations are in close proximity - say in apartments, dorms, etc. - I wonder how performance will be affected and who might decide to listen in.
-- I beleive it mentions that it uses 40-bit encryption. (no details on what scheme however). Not great, but good enough for non confidential work.
Ok, I have been a Mac user since about age 4 and I have NEVER, i repeat NEVER, tried to plug my ethernet into a phone plug. I'm sure it happens, but it happens to peecee users as much as anyone else.
Tim
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
I'm working on a project that runs on NT (as an "embedded" OS, no less... =:O ) and it needs a wireless peer-to-peer LAN. So far, so bad -- nothing seems to work. Any ideas? (No, Linux is not an option at this point, sadly.)
From http://www.apple.com/airport/faq2.html
Q. What kind of security does AirPort provide?A. AirPort offers password access control and encryption to deliver security equivalent to that of a physical network cable. Users are required to enter a password to log on to the AirPort network--and, optionally, an additional password for access to any other computer on the network. When transmitting information, AirPort uses 40-bit encryption to scramble data, rendering it useless to eavesdroppers
The FAQ says 150 feet
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
10 users on a 10BaseT network won't all see 10Mbit/s.
Not sure what you mean "ethernet over token ring". Ethernet and Token Ring are both media layers. Perhaps you were meant to say "IP over token ring".
I could really use a pair of those base units to connect my (10-base-T) LAN to my mother's (obsolete - a.k.a. not supported) Mac, since she insists that the cabel dissapear into the walls (without me tearing up the walls to do this)... Just that $600 for a wireless 10-base-T Point-to-Point connection is too rich for my blood... Any suggestions?
Loren Osborn
You take about a 35% degragation in performance if you setup a repeater... per repeater.
I wish I had a picture of mine. It's look more like a datascope with a keyboard, handle, and two 5.25 floppy drives. I don't know how a handle makes a 40 lbs. boat anchor a "portable" machine, but what do you expect of a Trash-80?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
From your profile and the messeges you have posted here and in the past, it appears you tend to like to post items in a very flaimbaitish mannor. You may want to employ intellegence and courtesy in future postings.
Other articles do a good job of discussing the claims of the AirPort, so I'm not going to repeat them here.
- Sig
I watched the MacWorld keynote speech live. If you saw them plug it in, you lift up the keyboard, slide the card into what looks like an internal PCMCIA slot (odd that), and then you attach wires from the antenna inside the machine to the card.
This COULD be just a relabled card. You would have to attach a seperate antenna to the PC version too, right? It depends on whether or not I'm right about the slot it plugs into..
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The whole candy-colored iMac thing has been more about form than content from the start... if these things work, it'd be a big step towards Dilbertdom taking Apple seriously instead of treating them as toys for the nose-ring brigade. Hell, I might even start buying Apple stuff myself.
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
You are correct, it is backward. I sent the webmaster email about it.
- Sig
Though you can receive signals with just about any type/length of antenna (though antennas tuned for specific frequencies are usually better at it, though few people seem to notice), TRANSMITTING signals is something entirely different. If you attach antennas of the wrong type/length to a transmitter expecting a tuned antenna (usually the antenna that comes with the equipment), you will eventually fry the transmitter.
Basically radio waves are exactly that: waves. They have a measurable wavelength. Tuned antennas are "tuned" by matching the end of the antenna with the ends of those wavelengths (or some nice fraction thereof). When you transmit, the wave basically travels along the length of the antenna and when it hits the end, *reflects* back (and, as I understand it, a similar effect happens on the opposite end, where the antenna is attached). If everything is nice and in phase, the wave looks and acts really nice and you get a nice strong signal radiated without much of it being reflected back into the equipment. However, with an improperly tuned antenna (for example a TV antenna), you will not get a nice, in-phase reflection and you'll get a significant amount of the signal reflected back into the equipment, which fries it.
It may not happen immediately, but it will certainly decrease the lifetime of the equipment.
Bottom line: If you have equipment that transmits RF, don't fuck around with the antenna if you value the equipment.
Perhaps they mean it's up to 10 *percent* faster... At 11 Mbps, I can't imagine it being 10 times faster than anything still in common use.
Anyway, it sounds perfect to me. I just moved into a new house and I really, really don't want to cable it!
Geeky modern art T-shirts
yeah, I was thinking that $300 was a good deal for a 56K modem, and a router that will do NAT, even without considering that I may want to get a wireless setup later on. See, my NeXT box doesn't do NAT, my Macs aren't stable enough to be my network access point, and PCs are way too ugly for me to buy one just for a router. I did consider a QUBE-2, but $1000 is too much since I don't need to server aspect of it.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
if I had an Apple.. or one of those bright little iBooks. But seeing as how I don't, and I'm assuming that, it being on Apple's site and all, it works with Apples only. Therefore, I'm wondering, when will the rest of us get one?
Insert mind here.
If someone other than my neighbors wanted to do it, there are plenty of places within that 150 ft. radius that someone could place equipment to monitor the relevant portion of the spectrum and forward the data elsewhere.
That was my whole point. I was replying to someone who essentially claimed that 40-bit encryption is good enough. It isn't. Easier, definitely. But more likely to be detected. And with a higher risk of legal recourse.Nowhere did I say that compromising the AirPort (or any other 802.11 system) would be easy. In the case of AirPort it would probably involve reverse engineering their firmware and using a hacked version to monitor the broadcast data stream (since presumably a standard AirPort won't provide direct access to the encrypted bits). If you think there aren't people out there capable of doing such a thing, you're very much mistaken.
It's not necessary for the attacker to personally have the skill to do this kind of stuff. All it takes is for one clever person to do it, and for the attacker to buy (or otherwise obtain) the resulting device.
Am I being paranoid? Yes, of course I am. How can you have any hope of maintaining a secure network unless you are paranoid about possible threat scenarios?
Take a look at the picture in that article.
b 40ad97/www.apple.com/airport/images/airpor tbasestation.jpg
http://a1020.g.akamaitech.net/7/1020/51/feb0d0d
Can anyone find something a little WRONG here? No wonder all the Maccies try to plug an ethernet cable into their modem port...
- ECHELON
- DICTONARY
oh, crap, i probably just set off what i was talking about. oh well.cygnus
"i feel like a quote out of context."
Just raise the taxes on crack.
does anyone know of any other cheap solutions currently available for the x86 line? Me and my friends were thinking of setting up a neigborhood lan...man that would be great.
After seeing the Apple product I decided to explore things from a Linux/Robotics perspective. I can see where it would be great to have a Linux PC based robot WLAN linked development and control purposes. Check out my WLAN notes for further information. I put the notes together for myself, but am making them available to all.
Looks like a pretty cool piece of technology...
But let's step back from that for a minute and look at Apple on a whole...why do all of thier products look like something out of a cartoon?
The iMac I understand...attracts customers who don't know much about computers other then "point & click"...but who among them is going to get a hub?
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
...a toilet seat cover on an airplane.
Anyone notice the hub? Last time I checked, Ethernet was RJ-45 and modems were RJ-11.
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
--Terry Pratchett
If the frequency is known, you could easily build a simple beam antenna. This would perhaps be quite illegal as the beam would be concentrated, but very effective in long distances of a mile or more away. If its in the gigahertz range, one could make a small horn antenna.
It's 2.4 GHz. As others have said, the max distance is 150 feet. Basically, it's running on the same base frequency as the high-end phones (they are generally 2.4GHz receive and 900MHz send, but there are exceptions).
- Vincit qui patitur.
This is great technology, and at $300 for a hub and $100 for a card for an iBook, its damn cheap too. This isn't *new* exactly, the IEEE 802.11 standard has been out for a while, but not this cheap, or this fast. I really hope Apple will give this cool tech a kick start into the home market. :-(, at sub 10mbps speeds it doesn't matter I guess) The FAQ says that 11mbps will be available *soon*, I guess that means now, because Apple is releasing theirs, the web page is just not quite up to date.
The iBook has a built in antenna, to make this work with a PC or a G3 PowerBook, its going to require an external antena, which doesn't appear to be on the card Apple is selling for the iBook. Here is a card that does have it. As well as some cards for desktops (ISA, yuck
I imagine that it wouldn't be *too* difficult for someone to hack up a driver for Linux, especially if its for the ISA card Lucent offers, for those of you who want to network their home without running wires. At $300 for a 10 user hub, its probably cheaper then running wires, unless you REALLY enjoy that sort of thing.
Spyky
what does the word "Kaypro" mean to you?
There are drivers.
:)
I have stability problems with 'em, but maybe you'll fare better.
http://www.komacke.com/distribution.html
I have used a 2Mb wireless LAN at work for the last year. Not for day-to-day use, but mostly just for bringing laptops to meetings, ocassionally working outside the building, etc. Our wireless LAN is pretty slow, the best transfer rates I've gotten were more along the lines of 500-700kbps (about 60-90KB/sec). I've always wanted to set one up at home, but the costs were prohibitive. Our Netwave hub cost around $1000 and each PC card is around $250. So this new Apple/Lucent setup looks great, I might just buy one.
Well I don't think you have to worry *too* much about encryption for these puppies. Since they use digital spread spectrum, they inherently have some protection against prying eyes. Each unit will have its own "Chipping" code. (kinda like a MAC address or a ESN) Each unit will then use the chipping code to encrypt and transmit the message, any units not listening *specifically* for a message encrypted with that code will simply not "hear" it...
This is the same technology that the military used to use for secure wireless communications. They can actually transmit messages in the baseband noise... totally undetected. cool.
later.
P.S. Don't blame me if I'm wrong... I learned all of this in a lecture a few years ago and things have gotten hazy since then.
As far as encryption goes, there are some
:)
02.11 compliant things that use 40bit RC4. But really, its not that big a deal under most settings - as its about as secure as ethernet itself. The intelligent, paranoid consumer will be using encrypted channels (ssh) anyway.
As far as lectures, etc. At CMU they have an extensive wireless system (wireless andrew, see wavelan.com for a link to an article about it) which will soon be finished being deployed throughout the campus. Already though, one of the large CS lecturehalls has WavePOINT IIs. This, as well as (and a replacement for) a NetBar system that romes your IP.
But yes, there are nice things about being able to surf during a lecture. And some classrooms being built now (campuses across the country) do have networking infastructures being built in such that teachers can start to take advantage. But wireless stuff is a much better choice, if it does (which it should) become prevalent.
Glad it uses 802.11. Good stuff. We're probably going to see a heck of a lot of these iBooks on campus in the fall as the network is released...
Still wouldn't trade my vaio for one, though
For what I have seen so far Apple's base is about half the price of existing bases for this technology... So this is a good thing...
You can buy and Apple base station but just have to buy the PC card (I saw some at 300$, ok.. it is more expensive than the 99$ Apple ones but eh!)
No really.. this is very very good stuff...
299$ for the base, 100$ for a card...
If you got two computers it is up to 500$...
It is expensive... just get a crossover ethernet cable... Or make yourself one.. it's easy...
Since there are wavelan cards for standard PCI slots and hubs for eithernet available from lucent, all we need is a driver (or at least the specs from lucent) to make it work. Does anyone have a source for either?
Confined though we are, infinity dwells within.
well for older macs (ones with serial ports) you can piggyback a localtalk connection over regular phone wires. the phone system only uses 2 of the 4 wires. the other 2 can be used by a localtalk network using phonenet adapters from farallon. they're about $8 a piece and all you have to do is get a 4 conductor cable splitter for your phone jacks.
"Understanding is a three-edged sword"--Kosh
Hello All,
:).
I have been looking at Zooms HomeLan PCI (1Mhz, pretty much their radio lan speed without the radio, works through phone lines...diamond has them too as does hp and 3com), what chipset does it use and does it work with linux? One end will be windows 98, but the gateway is of course linux. So I would like to know if its worth $50/card to put these in my house (and I can have access to laptop hookup via pcmcia or usb version. The other question is does it effect cordless (900Mhz) phones. Again I am only interested in a PCI or isa version that works in linux, preferably pci. If it don't I guess I can run that darn cable 100 feet and get a real network card...its just the phoneline thing for the laptop makes me want it (I have phone jacks in every room) and radiolan is spensive
thanks for any insight
Anyone remember Spinal Tap? "But it goes to 11".
I imagine the signals are sent in a similar manner to any bus system (like ethernet). This means collisions when the bandwidth is saturated. If you are streaming all the mp3s from the same server, then it shouldn't be too big a problem. Even so, if you actually stream all 47 at the same time, and traffic from the clients (and there will be some) will cause collisions.
I would estimate that you can only realistically get about half that amount, or 23 or so streams.
Still, it's pretty good.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
I think I'll just wait for one of my neighbors to get one and then I can use his bandwidth... I would think in an apartment building or small office complex this could be a real problem. I didn't see any mention of how 2 or more of these devices in close proximity would keep from talking to each other. In any case I bet it won't like vhf/uhf ham gear at all.
Haha. Well, they are a corporation, with heavy competetion...so, I am sure money does matter if they want to survive. I doubt everything they do revolves around profits and such, maybe less so than MS. MS has more man power (because of more money) to work on their OSs, and Apple has finally gotten around to updating/rebuilding theirs. I am sure if all they were concerned about was money, they could use other tricks than pleasing a certain audience they want to appeal to. Cutting production costs, third world labor, massive marketing campaigns, fake grassroots campaigns, buying out columnists, etc...all of the nice dirty deeds of a successful major corporation.
http://www.farallon.com/ products/wireless/skylinespec.html. It's Mac & PC compatible, doesn't say anything about linux or price. Then again, I didn't look very hard.
Actually, widely separating the frequencies is good. It simplifies the filtering necessary to do full-duplex.
Approximately three-to-one frequency split lets you use the same antenna, too. A quarter-wave for the lower frequency is about three-quarters for the higher, and will load up reasonably well - especially with a the odd loading coil or capacitor here and there - which just might fall out as a side-effect of the band splitter.
You want the talk channel to be better than the listen channel, so you don't keep yattering away at somebody that YOU can hear just fine but who can't hear you.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
someone might have mentioned it, but last time i bought cable, my 10baseT was RJ-45 and my phone cord was RJ-11, not the other way around.... so what's up with the ethernet port and modem port on the diagram? (or did they fix the picture yet?)
No, Aironet does not have Linux drivers.
Some Linux drivers have been written for Aironet devices, but these only work on certain devices.
There are several flavors of hardware and Aironet has not documented them, so the Linux drivers cannot be adjusted to work on all devices.
I've tried. The network stack in my MS DOS boxes dies several times a day. Dozens of boxes hanging several times a day is not fun. I can't upgrade to other MS OS or Linux because only one MS driver is supported for my Aironet interface.
Since in Italy (and in more than half European Countries) we still have state-monopoly-controlled telecoms that charges you OUTRAGEOUS fares to connect a building to the one across the street, they are quite popular here. :), frequency is 2.4x GHz. Power is around 10 mW at 1 meter from antenna (or less, otherwise they won't be allowed here).
I'm looking to use 2 Lucent units (that comes as PCMCIA cards only) to connect our HQ to a satellite building nearby.
Max range is about 5Km (2.5 miles, I think
The modulation should be a slight variaton of Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum, that is very well known by your 'friend' at the Pentagon, since it's very hard to intercept (on a single frequency the signal level is only a few mW above noise level) and works well even with a lot of unit in the same area.
And yes, if you buy the 'concentrator' unit, you could simply plug it into your ethernet network and have it working as a bridge.
Ciao,
Rob!
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
Linux Drivers are available for Lucent Wavelan!
n / LINUX/
Take a look at:
http://www.fasta.fh-dortmund.de/users/andy/wvla
(complete source)
ftp://ftp.wavelan.com/pub/SOFTWARE/IEEE/PC_CARD
(mostly source, but contains binary-only library)
c'ya haegar
Actually, using a yagi instead of an omni to increase directional gain does *not* violate ISM band rules (2.4Ghz). Regulation on power output are based on an omnidirectional source. If the beam is 'focused', higher gain is very much permitted.
Example.
a 2.4Ghz ISM band wireless router that I have.
It operates up to about 150 feet with an small omni.
With a pair of yagi antennae, we can use them to create a link over 5km long. And this is still within regulations.
Standard Speed being equivalent to 2Mbps, this indicates to me that this Turbo card maxes out at 6Mbps. This falls short of the 11Mbps promised from the AirPort product.
So I wonder if they are really the same product after all. I'd love it if they were; I'd buy 3 in a heartbeat at $99 a pop. But the lack of any 11 Mbps option on the WaveLAN page makes me wonder.
The ISA card is only a simple one-slot PCMCIA-controller for a desktop pc, controllable with the standard linux pcmcia-tools.
e lan2_cs-3.10.tar.gz
n /
The cards for the desktop-version are the same pcmcia-cards as for laptops, and for them exists even two differnent drivers:
one from lucent direct, but it's not full source (contains a binary-only library):
ftp://hyper.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia/contrib/wav
(neuer version is available somewhere on ftp.wavelan.com, but I don't want to search now)
and a second-one (full source) from some third-party-programmers (based on an alpha-version from lucent and extended):
http://www.fasta.fh-dortmund.de/users/andy/wvla
The cards even work with linux in peer-to-peer mode, so that you don't need an access-point to connect 2-3 machines.
c'ya
sven
c'ya haegar
The AirPort base station unit appears to be just a IEEE 802.11 "wireless hub". I wonder how many "ports" (client pc connections) it can handle simultaneously...... (I'm thinking in terms of comparing it to an ethernet hub here)
Hey, all. Check this out-
:-)
A company called Aironet, which FYI is going public this week (!), has had an 11 Mbps system out for the past few months! According to their website (http://www.aironet.com), their stuff runs under DOS, Windows 95/98/NT, Macintosh, Windows CE (lots of handhelds have the Aironet drivers built in), and [drumroll please] Linux!
I've actually seen Aironet transmitters and receivers, and they're pretty neat. They make 'em for laptops, desktops, network adapters (so you can have wireless access to an existing Ethernet network, for example), etc. The laptop card (PCMCIA) has an algorithm whereby the card goes into sleep mode when the laptop does, so it's only drawing 5mA of power from your laptop battery- the best out of any of the wireless systems I've looked into.
Also, Aironet makes stuff for *both* FH (frequency hopping) and DS (direct sequence) spread-spectrum systems, and their 11 Mbps system uses DS- just like Apple's new AirPort system. And since both Aironet's and AirPort's systems are IEEE 802.11-compliant, they'll be able to work together.
Contrast that to companies like Proxim, which is FH-only (and very gung-ho about it, too- check out their website for their "why we hate DS" rants, most of which have little basis in reality), only has 1 and 2 Mbps systems available (and a 5 Mbps system that's not shipping until 2000, and no announced plans for an 11 Mbps system at all). Not only does Proxim solely use FH, but it uses its own proprietary system and usually is *NOT* compatible with IEEE 802.11 systems like AirPort and Aironet- and wouldn't be compatible with AirPort anyway, because AirPort is solely DS, not FH.
Some more spec's from Aironet's website... At 1 Mbps, one Aironet AP4800 cell covers 260,000 sq. ft. (!), and at its maximum of 11 Mbps it covers 60,000 sq. ft. So, if you're only sharing a 56.6 K modem or something, and you don't need the full data rate, you can crank up the coverage to a really large area and wire your whole neighborhood! (FYI, data rates can be set to 1, 2, 5.5 and/or 11 Mbps per channel, and you can run up to three different channels simultaneously over the same system- meaning, you and your sister can share an Internet connection over one channel, and your brother and your neighbor can play Quake over another one without screwing each other's connections up. Aironet, and other DS systems, can technically run five channels at a time, but the FCC limits it to three. I'm sure some enterprising Slashdot folks out there could figure out hot-wire an Aironet system to run five channels, but you didn't here it from me.)
In short, Aironet's system is really nice, not too pricey, the fastest available, has a very large range, and will hook up any just about any system you've got, including Linux. Verrrrrrry nice!
Now if only this summer job paid more, I'd get one myself...
Anyone know if this supports ad hoc mode, like the Baystack AirSurfer Pros do?
2.4Ghz receive and 900Mhz send? That wouldn't make a lot of sense.. you would need two different antennae, and two different radios.
And the two different bands have wildly different radio properties.
2.4Ghz does not penetrate anywhere near as well as 900Mhz does.
Also, most 2.4Ghz stuff is ISM band, and uses spread spectrum techniques.
All tech companies are guilty of hype. I think you would be very hard pressed to demonstrate that Apple's hype is worse than anybody else's, or that Apple is less truthful. Please, do enlighten us. How has Apple lied?
As far as Bytemarks are concerned, why don't you just bite the bullet and admit that the Pentium is not the best at everything? Given that the PPC does have some multi-operation instructions (eg, MAC) that the Pentium lacks, it is entirely credible that a benchmark that uses this sort of math runs twice as fast on the PPC. And it's not just benchmarks either, you know. It's real-world (albeit niche use) calculations like Photoshop filters. IIRC, some of those go 10x as fast.
Your snide implication that PPC compilers are either better at optimizing or more benchmark aware is pretty laughable too, given the relative amounts of money thrown at Pentium and PPC compilers. I would assume x86 compilers are the most heavily optimized that you will find anywhere.
DSSS refers to Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum.
So, can anyone point me to a picture of a portable even uglier than the iBook?
802.11 NICs should be able to talk to each other without a hub. This means your cost is the price of two NICs.
Folks, this is simply Lucent's WaveLAN product, which has been working with Linux for quite a while. I've been using it at home for 3 years. (Used to work at ATT... Old demo equipment headed for the scrap heap... No way would I have picked it up at List Price.) As for getting the ISA card to work, if you look at the WaveLAN pages, you'll notice that they have gone to a PCMCIA ISA card, with a PCMCIA WaveLAN adapter plugged into it. Card Services should handle this like any other PCMCIA device. To be certain, just add a genuine PC Card controller to your PC, and just buy the PC Card version of the product.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
See also Aironet for these as well (PC Cards,
PCI/ISA cards and Access Points). Note that
the 802.11 standard only defines 1 and 2 Mbit/sec
at this time. The 11 Mbit standard is still
in draft form as far as I know.
Also, Aironet has Linux drivers for these.
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
Like the subject line says, Aironet (http://www.aironet.com) has a great product line, not too expensive (relatively speaking), that offers 11 Mbps and *is* compatible with Apple's AirPort system, since Aironet and AirPort are both Direct Sequence IEEE 802.11 compliant (i.e. they run on the same standards).
...yes, it could technically be considered stealing Internet access, but assuming you're not running a website off your computer or runing massive uploads/downloads, you're not damaging anything...
But why use it just to interface with AirPort? Aironet works with everything from Mac's to Linux (yay!) to Windows to DOS-based stuff, and can even patch into an existing Ethernet network or phoneline modem or DSL or cable modem.
Just a thought: if you live near a University with wireless access, but you don't live in a dorm and you wish you had access to their Resnet or Ethernet system, maybe get some kind soul with a decent line-of-sight to you (though Aironet has a pretty good range) to set up a system with you so that you can use the University's network
The 802.11 cards that I've seen all have very short antenni (2 of them) that are cut/tuned to a specific frequency range.
Just a guess, but taking off the antenna tuned for Ghz range, and replacing it with one tuned for FM/TV wouldn't help.
Hardware in both the hubs and NICs are nearly identical. (one has PCMCIA interface, the other an RJ-45 and 2-port bridge chip).
Aironet stuff supports Windows NT...and runs at *11* Mbps.
Plus, it's got a decent range and isn't too expensive- well, actually, all of the wireless systems are a little expensive for my wallet, but relatively speaking, Aironet's not bad at all.
Plus you can hook up Aironet to Linux and/or any existing network you've got directly (Ethernet, etc.).
> I suspect this will put some price pressure on PC cards. Expect a price drop shortly.
This seems to be rather Mac-specific, as the antenna for the card is hidden inside the iBook itself, rather than being part of the card. The PC cardmakers may assume that most Windows users are too bigoted to go to the Mac side, and may therefore keep their prices up.
On the other hand, they probably will dip a bit.
SO has anyone seen one close enough to see if there is a way to hack an external antenna on to it? (email me if you have!)
Posted by Reitzel:
Wireless LAN's were developed long ago, under the auspices of the University of Hawaii. They were the first examples of CSMA networks (can you say, Ethernet...), and predate PC's, ARPA, nearly everything. Including, it seems, most SlashDot members.
Just remember, if it's new and cool, it's probably been done a long time ago.
I would buy one of these things if:
-Linux support. Duh.
-Sell it in a case that doesn't look like it belongs at SU R SYOT. Barney and Big Bird poping out when connected to the network may be cool to some...
No, Aironet not nice products. Only a few work with Linux because Aironet does not release programming info for their products. The few Linux drivers only work with a few Aironet modules. I know because I suffer daily crashes on expensive Aironet products on DOS.
No, the Linux Aironet drivers only work for a few devices. Non-Aironet people created a few drivers, but Aironet is keeping secrets from customers so we can't make software for all the devices. I tried to make the existing Linux drivers work with my expensive pile of Aironet stuff and they won't work with my versions. Get something from a manufacturer which supports Linux.
Yes, stealing wireless Internet access can be technically considered theft and damaging their network. Steal a few hundred dollars worth so you're at the felony level and you'll find how little Internet access your local prison has...and remember that the time and expenses by network staff checking if your intrusion has damaged any network servers can be added to your charges.
I seem to remember that ethernet NICs listens on the line and sends packages when its not busy, hence sometimes two or more NICs decides to send at the same time, thats when the collision led lights up.
Token Ring on the other hand passes a token around and a NIC can send only when they have it.
Just my understanging of it though =)
Im sure there are lots of people here who can tell me if Im to far of base.
Nope, not Linux. Some non-Aironet people have written some Linux drivers but those do not work with all Aironet modules. My expensive Aironet system cannot use Linux. And the Microsoft DOS TCP stack crashes daily.
I wonder what kind of distance this thing has? It never mentions what level of frequency or intensity it uses, just that it uses radio waves. If I could use this to set up a network in the apartment complex I live in... ahhh!
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
I work at an ISP and have used these wireless 11MB things before. They work generally well once you get them going. They may say 11MB but once you get three or more connected it goes down to about 3-5MB. Not that that is all that bad but it's not 11. It works like ethernet over token ring. The main unit polls each of the clients about 1500 times per second. If they don't have anything to send then it goes to the next client... If you start playing TF on these radios they go to shit. The UDP packets go way too fast for the polling system and things get laggy. But if you just want to transfer files it'll do the job. It really shouldn't need any drivers so all you should have to do is plug yer nic into it. Good Luck if you buy one.
Thanks,
Loren Osborn
Man, with 40-bit encryption, this thing could take *minutes* to crack.
Now, if they cycle that 40 bit key every 4 seconds or so, then it might be acceptable.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Interesting that you can buy a whole Apple base station for the price of a PC plug-in card, and an apple plug-in card for a third of that.
I suspect this will put some price pressure on PC cards. Expect a price drop shortly.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
- A Mac Performa 631CD (w/ 10-base-T LC-com NIC)... which is all but impossible to get cards for and
- a small LAN centered around a small Linux Server ('486 40MHZ) that currently has no free slots connected via an 8-port hub (w/ many ports unused)
If I could just stick a card in either end, that would be great, but I'm close to positive that I won't be able to find a LC-com 802.11 NIC for the Mac, and I don't have a slot necessarily availible on the server, so Ideally I would like to just plug in RJ-45 at either end and be done with it. I am open to other possibilities, but the above would be the ideal case.Given that, the only products listed that claim 10-base-T connections, are the base units (at $300 a pop) which I would want at either end of this point-to-point connection.
Loren Osborn
The card only works with iBooks (since it makes use of the built-in antenna embedded in the lid of the iBook).
The card and the hub can communicate with other 802.11 DSSS compatible cards...
- I have a firewall between my ADSL and my home network. But with AirPort, there's only 40-bit encryption (weak) preventing an attacker from becoming part of my network. With my current wired Ethernet, the attacker would have to either physically break into my home, or subvert my firewall. It's always possible that the firewall has weaknesses that I'm unaware of, but unless the attacker knows or finds those weaknesses, he has to break a 168-bit triple DES key to attack it.
- Even if an attacker doesn't want to break into my personal network, he can get free access to my ADSL internet connection. Again, assuming only that he breaks a 40-bit key.
I'm not saying that AirPort is a bad product. I'm only pointing out that you do have to worry about the encryption, and that 40 bits is pathetic. Obviously they wanted to avoid the stupid US crypto export regs. I'd be much more inclined to buy a unit with strong crypto, if some company starts selling them.Not because I really think random people are trying to attack my network (although my firewall logs do show some script-kiddie attacks), but more as a matter of principle.
So the diamond one should work
http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/Ftaprfhss.html
if you're interested in a slower albeit longer range spread spectrum radio, check out the TAPR ham radio groups work. They have some very good RealAudio files describing the design decisions behind the RF and the digital/networking environment. Currently they only have two volunteers working on the project so progress is slow.
The site also has good information on spread spectrum in general which will help you understand the controversy between dsss and fhss techniques. (Hint: the hams picked fhss because it has better noise resistance)
--- eric (esj@harvee.billerica.ma.us)
Yeah, but notice that I specifically picked the example of a student at a University, where (usually) Internet access is free to all students. You live in a dorm, you get free Net access. You go to the library and use their computers, you get free Net access. You're given the modem pool phone number if you live off-campus, you get free Net access.
In a specific example where you're a student who would otherwise have access to the school's network, but are living off-campus, it would be unclear whether or not the situation described would be a crime; if you took your computer down the street to the library, it would be free, but not if you managed to use the Net from your own house?
Net access is an itemized part of your tuition; you *do* pay for it, regardless of whether or not you live on campus. So how is this theft? Unauthorized use, maybe, if it puts a drain on the network. But, as the example stated, we're assuming you're just browsing the web, not doing something to hog bandwidth.
stealing a few mb's per second from the neighbors...i can just see it now.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Can i connect 2 LANS with the base units by connecting a base unit to each hub? :)
That would really save my butt
Hi,
There are many companies working on a 11Mbps
LAN solution. I believe the standard has yet
to be ratified (though I might be wrong in this).
I heard that a company called Aironet (www.aironet.com) has a
fairly extensive line of 11Mbps wireless products,
including PCMCIA cards, for the x86 line.
I don't know if linux drivers are available,
though.
Lets assume that we have high quality mp3s. This means above 128kbps (god forbid 112kbps).. lets say its not the 160, but 190kbps..
11mb is the theoretical speed.. lets say we loose 10% for packet encapsulation, and another 10% for poor quality of ether.. that is around:
11mb = 11 * 1024 kbps = 11264kbps..
loose 20% = 11264 * 0.8 = 9011.2
now that means we will be able to stream
streams = 9011.2 / 190 = 47.427
but we cant have half the stream.. so we have full 47 or so streams...
so if you were to use this ONLY for mp3s, youshould be able to get 45 streams easly of High quality and over 70 streams at 128kbps..
I dont know what else is going there in the geek complex, but this is enough... Mp3s take so little bandwidth that a single speed cdrom is few times too fast (
cdrom = 150kbytes/s,
each highq stream is 24k/s
and normal stream is 16k/s)
Anyone eager to speculate what else is taking all the bandwidth at geek complex?
Not that i really have a clue of what i'm talking about, but, I don't suppose these base stations could talk to each other, and just plug a nic into the RJ-45 jack... and then pop off the pretty plasic case and add leads to a television antenna and suddenly have cheap wireless with some decent range for the neighborhood LAN? You buy a T1 and have all of the neighbors help pay? I like that..... Just speculation.... It probably wouldn't be too hard for those Lucent engineers to get something like that working....
;)
Just a Thought.....
Who needs the FCC anyway??
If you go to the Airport faq it says specifically that this will be compatible with both PCs and existing IEEE 802.11 DSSS devices.
Also, I dont know anything about that standard, but I found this:
The 802.11 DSSS standard currently supports a data rate of 2 Mbps with collision avoidance. Future generations of standards-compatible DSSS
products from Zoom are expected to have data rates up to 11 Mbps with backward compatibility to 2
Mbps products.
on the Zoomtel website. I guess that means that were going to see other devices that can perform the same way as Apple's Airport
Steve Jobs was on MSNBC within the last couple hours, talking about this very thing. After praising it's 'innovative nature', he basically spent the last four or five minutes of the interview repeating the Apple-Mantra of "We only want to make the best computers in the world and the best software for our customers. We don't think about the money".
---
seumas.com
The FAQ makes several interesting points:
* The signal uses radio frequencies instead of IR. It will therefore pass through walls and other obstacles.
* No encryption scheme is mentioned. If multiple base stations are in close proximity - say in apartments, dorms, etc. - I wonder how performance will be affected and who might decide to listen in.
* Two iBooks with AirPort cards can communicate without any base station. Imagine playing Quake during lectures? I also wonder about the broadcast capabilities. Sending lecture notes, applets, and homeworks assignments to the audience could be quite convenient in academic settings.
In conclusion, this makes the IR on the Palm V look quite primitive.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
There have been a slew of recent announcements
from Telxon, Symbol, et al. concerning
10+Mb 802.11 compiliant devices - including
VoIP phones and the like.
While these are geared more for the business market than the home market currently, you *know* they have to be eyeing that playground as well.
And they have nifty-neato bridges, for instances,
to hook their access points to analog phone bridges. VoIP to POTS! POTS to VoIP! Dogs and cats living together....
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th Ed., Vol 2
Something Apple didn't hype yet but is buried deep in the FAQ is that you don't need the hub to communicate between Airport hosts:
What is the AirPort Software Access Point?
This special software allows you to use a second iBook computer as a wireless base station to connect to the Internet instead of using an AirPort Base Station. The software works similarly to the hardware access point, except that it uses the modem of the iBook as its Internet connection.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
The website for this stuff says that you can
connect several (10) iBooks in the same house to
the same ISP through the same bridge. Does that
mean that this "hub" also does IP Masquerading
(aka Network Address Translation) in hardware?
Can you disable that if you want to give the
iBooks real IPs, or what?
let's see, breaking 40 bit encryption on the fly from an area 150 ft. from my transmitter. I really don't think that's a huge security risk, myself. Especially, b/c if you're doing something very sensitive, you can add extra encryption in the application layer. I think it would prolly be easier to physically break into your network than reliably and consistantly capture and decrypt AirPort transmissions.
Anyway, if you've got the AirPort thing in your home, a cracker would likely have to be on your property if ot in your house to compromise it. I'd go for tapping into someone's ethernet any day over AirPort snooping. Assuming, of course, that I did such annoying things.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
Yep. wireless was my biggest disappointment of 1999 ;) I bought proxim symphony, greedily reading and re-reading the 1.6mb/s speed, and dreaming of a cable free den and reading the sunday online papers in bed on sunday morning.. on a laptop.
Anyway I digress. It sucked. Even for file transfer, one third to a half of the bandwidth disappeared, and transfer was curiously asymmetric, ie a desktop to a laptop was twice as fast as vice versa. Worse, ping time was terrible, and games unplayable. So in the end you have a wireless network for chugging thru ftps.. I dont see the point.
This one will be better, but still I think stay away from it until it really can perform like a 10mbit hub in terms of responsiveness.. and reliability. I dont want to watch connections go down just because someone turns on a coffee grinder in the other room.
Anyone want to buy my symphony? or does the damn ISA board thing have linux drivers yet?
-Justin
Do they have a version of this adaptor that includes an external antenna connector? It would be interesting to use these cards in a wireless router. The cards used in the Wireless Router Howto http://www.rage.net/wireless/wireless_howto.html are price at ~$800 each. Does anyone know of a cheap wireless network card that has an external antenna and works with linux?
Just because we geeks use the stuff does NOT mean that the average joe user wants to string things like coax or cat-5 UTP all throughout their house (Though I'm working on that for my house! :-). And many of the "home" networking solutions out there for $$$ are only 1-2Mb at most; the Intel system (that uses phone wiring), the Diamond wireless system, etc. are ALL 1Mb systems. This thing's definitely 10 times faster- and appears to NOT need special cards to rock and roll.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas