This article was posted to Slashdot when it was released. While the Aruba stuff does make use of linux in some ways, you certainly aren't going to find a shell on it. It is one of thousands of devices that have linux inside for some functions. No one cares. Let it die.
The moron above that thought it was all that expensive must have been comparing it to his linksys at home too. The stuff is pennies on the dollar compared to cisco.
It's just you in a bubble. When you're a 286.14 BILLION dollar company (larger then many countries) - there are a whole lot more people out in the world that feed off the Microsoft economy then there are technically frustrated people that are venting on slashdot. Something may be happening, but when you count the slient millions of people that are reliant upon Microsoft to be successful; you realize that they will handily dismiss any threat against their livelihood that is introduced and prolong their Microsoft dominated world.
It doesn't work that way with Wifi. It just means that stuff like roaming and QoS over wireless are going to work with Aruba first and the rest of the world will catch up. This has nothing to do with Winmodems (that analogy doesn't even make sense) and 802.11 is still a standard for any platform.
Cisco will never really be good at wifi since it canabalizes their core business of forcing customers to guy their 6500s every couple of years and put in additional capacity that they don't need. One great example of this is that to have any wireless functionality on a 6500, you must upgrade your supervisor module to the latest Sup 720. With 90% profit margains they are runing a pretty good scam. I imagine it won't last forever. They will have a wake-up call soon much like IBM did.
The University cannot restrict wireless APs, but they can restrict what gets connected to their network. I can say from personal testing that baby monitors, microwaves, and 2.4 Ghz phones interfere with wireless much more then other APs, but that isn't the point. It is a security issue for dumbasskids to leave their APs wide open and insecured.
I have been looking, but still cannot determine what the release date is. It is pretty cool that they already have 802.11i working. This really appears to be a quality update, especially for wireless.
I have been thinking of a way to deal with complex passwords for simple users lately and it has lead me to keyboard patterns. For instance, if you look at the password 12qwas!@QWAS, it is a 12 character password that includes 2 numbers, 4 lowercase letters, 4 uppercase letters and two punctuation. It would take forever and a day to break it...but look how easy it is to type.
This leads me to the conclusion though that there are probably much fewer intuituve keyboard patterns then there are characters in the passwords. If someone created a dictionary based on keyboard patterns, I expect that it would be a significant way to overcome a lot of complex passwords.
Any of the next gen wireless platforms provide this functionality quite handily. They are completely centralized, user aware, include per-user firewalls, heavy duty encryption (2 Gbps IPSEC) and allow policies to be set based on location and time of day. When you are an organization that needs to manage more then 10 APs, you get a big boy system to do it. Let the small guys roll their own.
Disclaimer: I'm guilty of rolling my own as much as anyone, but there is such a thing as using the right tool for the job and I have decided this is the way to go in regards to wireless.
It occurs to me though that Baystar could secretly sell all of their stock to IBM as part of IBM's plan to conduct a hostile takeover of SCOX. I'm not sure how many outstanding shares there are (and how many Daryl has) or the poison pill policies, but it is concievable they could still be bought out at a highly reduced rate (because no one wants to see Daryl get paid off) which would cease litigation and preserve the code, copyright violation or not, forever.
It's like watching Darth Vader turn evil and become the dark side as it reveals its true intentions. Soon they will become another geek household name to focus angst and hate against like MS and SCO.
I remember reading the Lovecraft stories as a youngster and even procurring the Necronomicon itself (you had to be 18 to buy it) and the mystery and fantasy that it provided for me. I was one of just a handful of kids that knew anything about the obscure writings at the time (and we were all rejects). Not that I'm exactly on the cutting edge of the next generation, but I wonder how many have heard of or read Lovecraft. It isn't like a major movie has been made recently to clue them all in. Should be interesting...
I do love my Tivo, but I turned off the personal viewing feature long ago when I realized it had a twisted personality. It kept recording porn and cartoons...
This is a test. Part of fitting in (and it appears you realize this or you wouldn't have asked the question) is realizing it is a test. This is your chance to step up and show your a leader that can deliver results. If you're not, then you had no business applying for a position three levels up. You threw down the gauntlet.
If you have the balls and know how to turn this team around, regardless of what it may take (gutting the team, refining the goal), then step up and get the damn job done. If not, then you spoke out of turn, and should resign to being left behind in your current position since you couldn't deliver when called upon. In fact, if you turn this down, you may want to start planning to leave the company since you will be sending a message that you don't understand the game or where it is you want to go.
Management is not fun, it is work, and it is harder work then being a cog in the machine. This is why the big bucks come at the top. Good luck.
The Aruba stuff I described is designed for that and supports stuff like a captive portal like you see in a hotel to ensure only people that pay get to play.
The world of wireless is moving away from the unmanagable Fat AP model purveyed by Best Buy networks and even Cisco. The new kids in town are pushing centralized wireless with built in RF Site Survey tools, authentication, firewalls, IDS's and hardware-based encryption. The APs are really just dumb radios that download their configs from the switch when it boots. If you want some big boy toys (that will fit into your budget) take a look at Aruba Networks. We have used them in many apartment buildings and couldn't be any happier.
The fraud questions occurred to me as well. The conclusion I came to was that these enterprises that are paying for the "licenses" are doing so just to be safe, but ptobably with the full idea that soon SCO will be proven wrong and then the tables are turned. They will be dragged into court civilally by everyone of the organizations that paid, if not prosecuted full out for fraud and sent to jail. There is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.
It was more tedious then that. There were about 8 drivers for variations of the NIC that differed by a plus at the end or by a single number. And none of them seem to work. It seems the drivers for the NIC I had didn't actually make it onto the CD, but did make it into the install. And the website was useless.
The reboot (and complete remote control functionality) is part of their chat program. When you click "I Trust Gateway", it loads everything. It was a new system without anything interesting on it, and I wanted an answer. I didn't much care at that point.
As someone with personal knowledge of Vernier's products, let's just say there are much better products out there (under the hood especially) that do a whole lot more.
A wireless switch you ask? Isn't that an oxymoron? A wireless god box may be a better description. Using a system such as this, you too can provide, or prevent, secure wireless access.
The switch has all inline power ports to power the APs, which may or may not be directly connected. Each AP automatically creates an IPSEC tunnel back to the switch. The switch supports every auth method under the sun (EAP-TTLS being generally most secure) when combined with 802.1x (which includes dynamic WEP/WPA 2.0). The switch itself supports a per-user firewall, integrated, signature-based IDS (that detects things like monkeyjack and netstumbler), and terminates 2 Gbps of IPSEC (which includes the IPSEC client running on each user's machine.
All of this for a couple of grand. Secure wireless is possible, the market is demanding it, and vendors have come to meet that demand.
Slashdot Mirror
This article was posted to Slashdot when it was released. While the Aruba stuff does make use of linux in some ways, you certainly aren't going to find a shell on it. It is one of thousands of devices that have linux inside for some functions. No one cares. Let it die. The moron above that thought it was all that expensive must have been comparing it to his linksys at home too. The stuff is pennies on the dollar compared to cisco.
It's just you in a bubble. When you're a 286.14 BILLION dollar company (larger then many countries) - there are a whole lot more people out in the world that feed off the Microsoft economy then there are technically frustrated people that are venting on slashdot. Something may be happening, but when you count the slient millions of people that are reliant upon Microsoft to be successful; you realize that they will handily dismiss any threat against their livelihood that is introduced and prolong their Microsoft dominated world.
It doesn't work that way with Wifi. It just means that stuff like roaming and QoS over wireless are going to work with Aruba first and the rest of the world will catch up. This has nothing to do with Winmodems (that analogy doesn't even make sense) and 802.11 is still a standard for any platform.
Cisco will never really be good at wifi since it canabalizes their core business of forcing customers to guy their 6500s every couple of years and put in additional capacity that they don't need. One great example of this is that to have any wireless functionality on a 6500, you must upgrade your supervisor module to the latest Sup 720. With 90% profit margains they are runing a pretty good scam. I imagine it won't last forever. They will have a wake-up call soon much like IBM did.
Ahh, but the system they installed automatically works around interference and will find the best channels for the APs to live on. This is how the big boys do it. http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/casestudies/ dartmouth.php
You really are a shmuck I guess since they ripped out all their Cisco stuff and put in Aruba: http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/casestudies/ dartmouth.php
They chose the anti-Cisco - Aruba. Cisco pretty well sucks at wireless if you ever have to deploy a real network. http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/casestudies/ dartmouth.php
The University cannot restrict wireless APs, but they can restrict what gets connected to their network. I can say from personal testing that baby monitors, microwaves, and 2.4 Ghz phones interfere with wireless much more then other APs, but that isn't the point. It is a security issue for dumbasskids to leave their APs wide open and insecured.
I have been looking, but still cannot determine what the release date is. It is pretty cool that they already have 802.11i working. This really appears to be a quality update, especially for wireless.
This leads me to the conclusion though that there are probably much fewer intuituve keyboard patterns then there are characters in the passwords. If someone created a dictionary based on keyboard patterns, I expect that it would be a significant way to overcome a lot of complex passwords.
Disclaimer: I'm guilty of rolling my own as much as anyone, but there is such a thing as using the right tool for the job and I have decided this is the way to go in regards to wireless.
It occurs to me though that Baystar could secretly sell all of their stock to IBM as part of IBM's plan to conduct a hostile takeover of SCOX. I'm not sure how many outstanding shares there are (and how many Daryl has) or the poison pill policies, but it is concievable they could still be bought out at a highly reduced rate (because no one wants to see Daryl get paid off) which would cease litigation and preserve the code, copyright violation or not, forever.
It's like watching Darth Vader turn evil and become the dark side as it reveals its true intentions. Soon they will become another geek household name to focus angst and hate against like MS and SCO.
I remember reading the Lovecraft stories as a youngster and even procurring the Necronomicon itself (you had to be 18 to buy it) and the mystery and fantasy that it provided for me. I was one of just a handful of kids that knew anything about the obscure writings at the time (and we were all rejects). Not that I'm exactly on the cutting edge of the next generation, but I wonder how many have heard of or read Lovecraft. It isn't like a major movie has been made recently to clue them all in. Should be interesting...
I do love my Tivo, but I turned off the personal viewing feature long ago when I realized it had a twisted personality. It kept recording porn and cartoons...
That's a lot of canoes...
If you have the balls and know how to turn this team around, regardless of what it may take (gutting the team, refining the goal), then step up and get the damn job done. If not, then you spoke out of turn, and should resign to being left behind in your current position since you couldn't deliver when called upon. In fact, if you turn this down, you may want to start planning to leave the company since you will be sending a message that you don't understand the game or where it is you want to go.
Management is not fun, it is work, and it is harder work then being a cog in the machine. This is why the big bucks come at the top. Good luck.
The Aruba stuff I described is designed for that and supports stuff like a captive portal like you see in a hotel to ensure only people that pay get to play.
The world of wireless is moving away from the unmanagable Fat AP model purveyed by Best Buy networks and even Cisco. The new kids in town are pushing centralized wireless with built in RF Site Survey tools, authentication, firewalls, IDS's and hardware-based encryption. The APs are really just dumb radios that download their configs from the switch when it boots. If you want some big boy toys (that will fit into your budget) take a look at Aruba Networks. We have used them in many apartment buildings and couldn't be any happier.
I'm sorry, you incorrectly assumed you had two hands free in this exercise to make your point. I believe one of those would be occupied...
The fraud questions occurred to me as well. The conclusion I came to was that these enterprises that are paying for the "licenses" are doing so just to be safe, but ptobably with the full idea that soon SCO will be proven wrong and then the tables are turned. They will be dragged into court civilally by everyone of the organizations that paid, if not prosecuted full out for fraud and sent to jail. There is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.
It was more tedious then that. There were about 8 drivers for variations of the NIC that differed by a plus at the end or by a single number. And none of them seem to work. It seems the drivers for the NIC I had didn't actually make it onto the CD, but did make it into the install. And the website was useless.
The reboot (and complete remote control functionality) is part of their chat program. When you click "I Trust Gateway", it loads everything. It was a new system without anything interesting on it, and I wanted an answer. I didn't much care at that point.
As someone with personal knowledge of Vernier's products, let's just say there are much better products out there (under the hood especially) that do a whole lot more.
The switch has all inline power ports to power the APs, which may or may not be directly connected. Each AP automatically creates an IPSEC tunnel back to the switch. The switch supports every auth method under the sun (EAP-TTLS being generally most secure) when combined with 802.1x (which includes dynamic WEP/WPA 2.0). The switch itself supports a per-user firewall, integrated, signature-based IDS (that detects things like monkeyjack and netstumbler), and terminates 2 Gbps of IPSEC (which includes the IPSEC client running on each user's machine.
All of this for a couple of grand. Secure wireless is possible, the market is demanding it, and vendors have come to meet that demand.