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« May 2004 | Main | July 2004 »
Ricochet Networks is now part of YDI Wireless: This article traces the history of the network as it passes into its fourth set of hands. Nonetheless, YDI is well positioned through its existing business to make use of Ricochet as an adjunct to higher-speed and fixed offerings.
Posted by Glennf at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Apriso and AeroScout are partnering to offer companies a logistics platform that marries RFID and Wi-Fi for sophisticated asset tracking applications: AeroScout’s Wi-Fi location tracking offering can be used by companies to track items that have RFID tags. Apriso offers the backend logistics software. The solution can be used to track resources such as equipment, people, and containers around the globe.
Posted by nancyg at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Danish hotspot provider Hotspot Networks is offering Wi-Fi access in many of Copenhagen’s central squares and parks: Hotspot Networks has deals with iPass and Boingo, so those subscribers will have access to the network. The release should be available here eventually.
Posted by nancyg at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Orange France will have 4,500 hotspots by the end of 2004, but still charges excessive fees: The company has 3,000 locations already, and is continuing to expand its network. While paying 17 centimes a minute, 10 euros an hour, or 30 euros a day isn’t out of line with most other European Wi-Fi operator fees, it’s not a sustainable price to drive adoption and use.
Posted by Glennf at 9:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yahoo BB’s 636 Wi-Fi hotspots in Japan will be available to GoRemote, iPass, Boingo customers: The joint venture of Softbank and Yahoo Japan will expand to 5,000 locations by March 2005, the article says. While the hotspots are currently free on a trial basis, Yahoo BB customers will pay 40 yen or 37 cents per minute to use locations outside the network, an enormously higher rate than NTT’s competing domestic service. It’s also unclear how Yahoo BB customers will gain access to iPass aggregated locations, for instance.
Posted by Glennf at 9:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NetNearU shifts its business model slightly to gain some former Cometa locations, including Tully’s: NetNearU’s business to date has been entirely focused on building an authentication and accounting platform that they can license to venues and network builders such as Cafe.com and CEDX.
The company today tweaked its model to incorporate some former Cometa hotspot locations, according to a note from NetNearU’s president and COO Cody Catalena. NetNearU didn’t want to compete with its platforms licensees, but it had an opportunity to expand the network in a way that benefits them: the Tully’s and similar managed services locations that they take over will allow free roaming from existing NetNearU partner networks’ customers.
The president’s letter states unequivocally that NetNearU isn’t establishing a separately branded managed services business. The Tully’s locations will be labeled with the coffee vendor’s identity.
Posted by Glennf at 8:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Indian Railways has installed Internet access via Wi-Fi on the Delhi-Amritsar and Delhi-Bhopal runs: Service is available via Wi-Fi and is initially free. Kiosks will be available in luxury coaches.
Posted by Glennf at 6:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Apple lowers the price on its 802.11g equipment: Bowing to market necessity, Apple has made only the second price cut in its history of selling Wi-Fi equipment. The original AirPort Base Station (802.11b) cost $300 and AirPort Card $100. Both remained at those prices until Jan. 2003—while other makers raced to the bottom—when Apple introduced one of the first 802.11g gateways, the AirPort Extreme Base Station ($200 or $250 depending on features) and its accompanying $100 card.
The Extreme Base station came in two models, later expanded to three: a basic unit ($200); one with a built-in modem and antenna jack ($250); and most recently, a plenum-rated fire-safety version that supports Power over Ethernet ($250).
Today, Apple dropped its card priced to $80, still well above comparable PC Cards from other companies using the same chips; formally eliminated the basic $200 base station model; and dropped its modem/jack base station price to $200. The plenum/PoE unit remains at a $250 retail price, although schools typically pay $25 to $50 less for that model in single units and quantity.
Apple’s AirPort Extreme equipment does have a few unique features. It’s almost impossible to get a modem in a gateway these days; the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi interaction in Apple’s gear is managed at a firmware level to reduce interference; and the AirPort Extreme Card works in all Apple models, avoiding taking up a PC Card or PCI Card slot in machines that have them.
The AirPort Express Base Station at $130 is due to ship in mid-July, and its price might have caused Apple to trim their incredibly healthy margins.
Posted by Glennf at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NetGear’s WGR101 lacks a fancy name, but its compact size might make it a good companion: NetGear hops on the underexploited portable access point market with its sub-$90 802.11g portable device. Its unique feature is an external switch for changing between a single user mode, multi-user shared mode, and configuration. It lacks WPA at the moment, but support is promised. The price and features compare favorably with Apple’s upcoming AirPort Express, which retails for $129 and includes USB printer sharing and streaming music, which aren’t critical features for a road warrior.
Posted by Glennf at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Broadcom’s latest 802.11g system puts the whole megillah on a single chip: While we don’t highlight every chip announcement, this is another roadpost on the way to the inclusion of higher-speed Wi-Fi in any product that could benefit from it. A single chip is easier to integrate, reduces the overall cost of materials, and decreases power consumption.
Posted by Glennf at 6:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Truckstop.net offered Landstar a special program that offers Landstar drivers a discounted subscription rate: Trucking company Landstar has thousands of drivers who can now sign up to use Truckstop.net hotspots at a discount. The drivers can use the networks to email delivery confirmations and look for new loads on Landstar’s board.
The deal doesn’t have any sort of figure associated with it for how many drivers will sign up and signing up is totally voluntary so it’s not clear how significant of an agreement this is. But, it’s a smart idea for Truckstop.net to go after large trucking companies or other organizations that have workers who are on the highways often as a way to load its network. Truckstop.net currently has just over 400 hotspots and has plans for 3,000.
Posted by nancyg at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Manchester, New Hampshire, plans to announce in mid-July that a hotspot will be available downtown for anyone to use free for one hour: It appears that the city decided it wanted a network and put out a request for proposal. Signull Technologies offered to fund and build the network and then offer one free hour per day per user. An hour a day might be useful for folks who may want to check email during their lunch break or for visitors to town. The agreement sounds like a good way for Signull to pull in potential customers and for the city to offer a useful service for visitors and residents.
Posted by nancyg at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In an amusing instance of a less-than-brilliant criminal mind, a Maryland man is busted for trying to extort a company via emails sent from unsecured hotspots: In an effort to get back at a business that competes with his own, this fellow used unsecured hotspots around town to send threatening emails and demands for $17 million. Apparently he figured that using the unsecured sites would keep him anonymous. The trouble is, he slipped up when he instructed the recipients to write the checks out to him. The FBI had tracked down the emails to the hotspots but seeing as the owners of the hotspots had no connection to the business receiving the emails, they were clearly not involved.
Posted by nancyg at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Netopia joins a handful of other companies offering a hotspot-in-a-box solution: Netopia’s hotspot solution costs $300 for customers that already have a DSL modem and an additional $40 a month for support. Users, which could be a cafe or retail location, are given cards with log on numbers that they can sell or give to end users. Netopia will also sell customers Web site design and maintenance service.
Surf and Sip and AirPath are just two of a handful of other companies that offer hotspot services to venues. These services are aimed at venues that don’t want to deal with supporting a network themselves. It’s unclear yet if the pricing structures set up by these providers will fly in the market.
Posted by nancyg at 10:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The IEEE ratified the 802.16-2004 standard, marking a milestone in the development of the standard: Still, there’s a long way to go. This article doesn’t draw the distinction between 802.16 and WiMax. Now that the IEEE has ratified what had been called 802.16d, the WiMax Forum must still release its final specification for WiMax, which will be essentially a subset of the larger standard. Products built to the WiMax specification that get approved by the WiMax Forum can be assured to be interoperable with other WiMax gear.
The IEEE ratification is an exciting milestone but the reality of a WiMax market in the United States is much farther in the future than some writers and industry followers acknowledge. This article notes that WiMax approved equipment should be available early next year. That’s true, but basically all manufacturers will build their first generation products to operate in frequencies used overseas, not in the United States.
It also remains to be seen how the final specifications—802.16 and WiMax—will affect folks like Alvarion. Alvarion is offering products today that it promises to upgrade to meet the final WiMax specification. Glenn described the whole process a couple weeks ago. Alvarion isn’t taking much of a risk because their customers will pay for any upgrades needed if the customers actually decide to install WiMax standard software or hardware when Alvarion makes it available.
Some analysts have told me that some vendors are feeling a bit of a squeeze as potential customers are deciding to wait for certified WiMax equipment. In the meantime, the vendors aren’t selling any gear. So Alvarion made a reasonable guess at what the final specification would look like. They’re hoping that they are close enough that they don’t have to offer major, expensive upgrades to customers in the future to make the products WiMax compatible.
Posted by nancyg at 9:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The IEEE has ratified 802.11i: what next? The news yesterday that the IEEE had finally approved the 802.11i security standard known slightly tautologically as MAC Enhancements for Enhanced Security produced a number of news reports and a little bit of analysis. The Wi-Fi Alliance stole 802.11i’s thunder in late 2002 by announcing that it would implement and test its own interim version of 802.11i called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) in an effort to shore up an increasingly battered security model that was preventing adoption in the enterprise and made home users nervous.
WPA succeeded wildly in changing the perception of Wi-Fi’s security, even as it took months beyond its initial intended roll-out to make inroads in firmware and driver upgrades, finally appearing widely by fall 2003 in major operating systems and products. WPA repaired faults in the encryption and integrity parts of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) with the intent of providing backward firmware compatibility with older gear. We got the better TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) along with other improvements without having necessarily to upgrade all of our equipment. (Mileage varies: Some cards as old as from 1999 can support WPA; other access points made as recently as 2002 must be replaced.)
802.11i’s substantial change over WPA’s interim rollout involve better handoff and better encryption. The 802.11i standard supports AES key using CCMP which conforms to government security standards. Most silicon made since late 2002 already has the pieces in place to handle the more advanced AES encryption computation and management. For the vast majority of users, AES is an unneeded improvement because it turns an already insoluble problem for all intents and purposes—100 years might be enough time with today’s tech to crack a well-chosen TKIP key from some quadrillions of bytes of ciphertext—into a crack that requires the death of stars to achieve.
Still, governments and critical enterprise operations want orders of magnitude better encryption than what TKIP offers for two reasons: first, flaws that reduce the computational magnitude of cracking a TKIP key might still leave the 802.11i advanced key far beyond reach; second, computation speed improves all the time, meaning that a 100-year crack today could be a 1-day crack in five years.
Robert Moskowitz of ICSA Labs, a veteran cryptography expert, said via email, however, that many in the community believe the underlying algorithm for WEP and TKIP will be broken in the next few years in such a way that even TKIP won’t provide any real protection against a crack. He recommends a complete transition to AES-based keys as soon as the drivers and hardware support it. I haven’t seen the consumer interface to AES yet, so I don’t know how feasible that is.
Other improvements in 802.11i have more immediate benefits, as Eric Griffith of Wi-Fi Planet ably explained: first, it offers key caching to allow quick re-attachment to servers when you return; second, it offers pre-authentication for fast roaming among access points in a network. The former capability reduces irritation for uses; the latter helps support encrypted VoIP over WLAN and retains state for short-lived applications, like streaming media.
The practical upshot of 802.11i’s ratification is that the floodgates will open as firmware upgrades and new products enter the market: companies that held back due to security concerns can couple the availability of AES keys with robust encrypted EAP sessions for 802.1X authentication. The whole security chain for logging in, exchanging credentials, authenticating, and encryption the link layer becomes so much more robust that a network and a session’s integrity just needs to be managed not protected.
The press has been full of reports for years that enterprises were on the verge of adopting WLANs on a widescale basis. A talk I had with Airwave a few days ago indicates that networks with thousands of access points are becoming routine in academia and enterprise. With security beyond reproach available, the switch (pun intended) will be thrown, and the real spending for wide-scale networks will now begin.
Posted by Glennf at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The FCC says landlords, associations can’t regulate Part 15 use: The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology says that the function of regulating and coordinating frequency use is reserved to the FCC itself. It’s a clear refutation of mall owners, airports, and condominium associations to limit use of Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies. (Document as Word, PDF, Text.)
The report says in part, the FCC has exclusive authority to resolve matters involving radio frequency interference [RFI] when unlicensed devices are being used, regardless of venue. We also affirm that the rights that consumers have under our rules to install and operate customer antennas one meter or less in size apply to the operation of unlicensed equipment, such as Wi-Fi access points - just as they do to the use of equipment in connection with fixed wireless services licensed by the FCC.
And it’s hard to put their conclusion any better than they themselves: The rules prohibit homeowner associations, landlords, state and local governments, or any other third parties from placing restrictions that impair a customer antenna user’s ability to install, maintain, or use such customer antennas transmitting and/or receiving commercial nonbroadcast communications signals when the antenna is located “on property within the exclusive use or control” of the user where the user has a “direct or indirect ownership or leasehold interest in the property, except under certain exceptions for safety and historic preservation.”
Dewayne Hendricks notes in his post of this order that airports’ only recourse now is to
appeal this decision to the entire Commission. In other words, airlines, start your (Wi-Fi) engines. [link via Dewayne Hendricks]
Posted by Glennf at 8:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A correspondent notes that Amtrak’s waiting room at Penn Station has AT&T Wireless’s Wi-Fi active: He writes, the splashpage finally arrived at the Amtrak waiting-room at Penn Station. After filling in the personal info ( they have the nerve to ask for the last four digits of your SS number!)… He was on a PDA and the page failed to allow him to purchase a connection. A call to AT&T Wireless Wi-Fi was a waste of time, the lady I talked to was clueless. The funny part is that I got far enough into the process to receive an ‘Thank you for registering for the AT&T Wireless e-Wallet’ e-mail.
The correspondent notes, There’s a Starbucks at the other end of the station (I have an account with them) and hopefully the McDonald’s also in the station will work again soon. And then Verizon which works from the McDonald’s on 7th Ave. if you sit close enough to the front window.
Posted by Glennf at 8:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
World Wide Wardrive finds most access points unprotected: The fourth week-long international wardrive found 288,000 access points in their survey, more than 50 percent of which had no security enabled. Since these were passive scans, it’s impossible to tell whether those access points were inside or outside corporate firewalls, and thus not open portals, but it’s likely that the overwhelming majority were just plain open. Nearly 30 percent had the default SSID or network name set.
Posted by Glennf at 9:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Computer company eats its own dog food in live video chat from Lufthansa flight: Two Apple product managers try out Lufthansa’s version of Connexion by Boeing: Wi-Fi inside a plane relayed to ground by satellite. The quality was good enough, apparently, to conduct a live two-way iChat AV videoconference.
This is just a taste of things to come, of course, as airlines consider in-plane cellular antennas. Voice over IP should also be a snap with a high-speed connection like Connexion’s and next year’s service tweak for Tenzing. The voices, the voices: can we ever escape them? Unlikely.
Posted by Glennf at 2:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bob Brewin dives into three cities that are deploying large-area Wi-Fi networks for public-safety-only and mixed-use purposes: Spokane has unwired 100 city blocks, Rio Rancho claims over a 100 square miles, and Cook County ultimately expects nearly 1,000 square miles of coverage for public safety in Chicago and surrounding areas.
The movement shows that municipal Wi-Fi has moved from a curiosity explored without many concrete goals—let’s bring more people into downtown and see what happens, for instance—into a critical part in managing emergency response for fire, police, and medical personnel. When major incidents hit, the critical question is how well these networks perform, especially compared to cellular, landline, and proprietary (and expensive) public-safety band equipment.
Spokane and Rio Rancho will offer public access to the network, while Cook County is focusing purely on public safety. Cook County’s routers can switch to cellular or satellite networks as needed.
Posted by Glennf at 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
eWeek reports that the IEEE ratified 802.11i, the updated security standard for Wi-Fi: The new 802.11i standard will appear as firmware upgrades to modern equipment—notably almost everything shipped since late 2002 with some exceptions—by September, the article states. 802.11i adds a few key pieces on top of the interim WPA standard, and should allow companies to remove the restriction of putting access points outside of a firewall and using expensive LAN-speed VPNs for wireless users. Combining 802.11i’s AES encryption with 802.1X/EAP-TLS or PEAP and there’s an enormously high degree of security in the authentication process and in Layer 2 communication.
Posted by Glennf at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
WeRoam, which offers authentication, billing, and settlement services to operators, added Ireland’s Bitbuzz to its network: Bitbuzz now has about 30 hotspots but plans to grow. The agreement means that customers of WeRoam’s operator customers, such as Orange of Switzerland, can now roam onto Bitbuzz hotspots. WeRoam mainly touts its ability to do SIM-based authentication but it will support other types of authentication based on the capabilities of the hotspot operator.
We covered WeRoam’s business model and how it compares to other roaming solutions in May.
Posted by nancyg at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The enormous complex La Défense on the outskirts of Paris will become 30 hectares of Wi-Fi coverage: The complex has 150,000 regular workers and 50,000 visitors a day. While it’s a paid service, some information will be available for free, such as traffic details and transportation schedules. Costs weren’t listed.
Update: An alert reader pointed out an earlier story on Wi-Fi Networking News pointing to a park in Lisbon that has a hot zone of 100 hectares. La Défense certainly will have vastly more regular users, but it doesn’t cover more area.
Posted by Glennf at 6:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Project is looking for proposals to build a free Wi-Fi zone in downtown: MuniWireless.com has the RFP (request for proposal).
Posted by Glennf at 6:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Morocco and Spain connect, however temporarily, with a wireless link: In a project that involved many people and organizations and had a political as well as technical goal, a 32-kilometer link between the continents was established from Tarifa, Spain, to Tangiers, Morocco (often spelled Tangier, too). The link has symbolic significance spanning countries, the sea, and hundreds of years.
Spain and Northern Africa have a lengthy shared history dating back 1,000 years and more, through Moorish Spain, the expulsion of Jews (which led to the Sephardic Diaspora), and more recent immigration and cultural conflicts. The empire of the Moors led to a cultural revolution unmatched again until the Renaissance in which algebra was invented, poetry was written, and members of a number of monotheistic religions lived in relative harmony. [link via Slashdot]
Posted by Glennf at 6:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Boston’s Logan airport turns Wi-Fi on for a fee tomorrow: The service will run $7.95 per day and be offered in Terminals B, C, and D; E already had Wi-Fi. A may come later—it’s currently being rebuilt for Delta Airlines. There’s no word on roaming or resale through aggregator networks or bilateral roaming agreements with other operators. [Update thanks to Jason Levine]
Posted by Glennf at 6:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It’s been brewing for years, but Wi-LAN of Canada finally sues a big player: Wi-LAN has alleged for years that it holds patents that cover a variety of issues to do with OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing), the modulation scheme used for 802.11a and g, among other standards.
In fact, at the first 802.11 Planet conference, representatives of Intersil and Texas Instruments traded barbs over the inclusion of OFDM in 802.11g with TI suggesting patent issues could muddy the water. Its own abandoned PBCC (Packet Binary Convolution Code) has an entirely different approach.
Wi-LAN is going after Cisco, and ostensibly hopes that if it can either win in court or get Cisco to settle that it has a basis for collecting royalties from the entire industry. Wi-LAN could collect vast amounts of money, but they are probably poised to offer reasonable terms. Most patent holders want to ensure strong royalties by not encouraging an ultimate migration from their covered rights. If they lose in court, it’s unlikely to cause a ripple.
Posted by Glennf at 5:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ratification nears for 802.11i, the security update for Wi-Fi: 802.11i is the final version of a major security overhaul, parts of which were released based on its interim draft as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) by the Wi-Fi Alliance last year. WPA was an interim measure to improve security in the short-run; 802.11i adds advanced encryption keys that government agencies will require, as well a few other miscellaneous pieces that will improve authentication handoff from one access point to another.
Posted by Glennf at 2:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Boingo Wireless has released their Pocket PC client software for Windows Mobile 2003; Palm version to follow: Boingo has had a Pocket PC beta out for quite a while; their release version appeared today. A version for the Palm Tungsten C is due out this summer.
Posted by Glennf at 1:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Watch out, houseboat dwellers and nearby shore residents: sniffing hits human-powered water vehicles!: In my hometown of Seattle, some intrepid souls pack their gear in plastic bags and kayak around Lake Union, a mid point in the connected bodies of water from Elliot Bay through to Lake Washington. Lake Union is home to high tech and biomed companies around the periphery and houseboats and marinas directly on it. The lake is a little dodgy—I wouldn’t want to swim in it—but it’s a pretty view from the shore or out in it.
Warkayaking is the latest variant in the war- prefix series of sniffing Wi-Fi signals from various places or indicating the presence of Wi-Fi through various means. There’s been warflying, wardriving, warchalking, and even warwalking.
Posted by Glennf at 4:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
If being wrong about the value of fiber-optic cable wasn’t bad enough, Gilder predicts Wi-Fi will be killed by 3G: Gilder’s latest predictions have proven right in the short term, it turns out, according to Forbes, which notes that a service tracking his model portfolio has had high returns. (Let’s remember that great phrase, though, which is that historical returns don’t predict future performance.) Watch the sketchy video linked from the article—shot outdoors with little editing, so it doesn’t do him justice, honestly. I’ve never agreed with parts of what he’s said more.
Gilder specifically says that 1xEvDO will kill Wi-Fi, which can’t be the case because 1xEvDO is too asymmetrical: it has a typical upload speed of 50 kilobits per second (Kbps) and download speeds of 200 to 400 Kbps on average. Compare this with the service being rolled out across the downtown in Salem, Massachusettes, which is deploying three 6 Mbps downstream, 1 Mbps upstream ADSL connections as part of SalemOpen.net for a cost of about $180 per month total. There’s a lot more bandwidth potential in the conventional wireline side using plain copper.
Gilder has a lot to say that’s correct, which is that other countries—he especially notes Korea—have massively more bandwidth available to homes and businesses in the wireline and wireless markets. This is due to something he doesn’t mention: cost. South Korean and Japanese firms particularly have managed to roll out extremely high-speed DSL and cell services often at the same price we pay for tiny pipes in the U.S. I’m still not entirely sure how they pull this off.
Regulation, as he points out, might be one issue, but it’s also the market climate: a lot of money was spent by U.S. companies pursuing Gilder’s last vision, and thus the resources that could have been devoted to pursuing inexpensive DSL were spent in overbuilding competing fiber-optic networks and in messy acquisitions at fraudulent valuations.
Gilder’s observations on the Wi-Fi side show that as a holder of Qualcomm’s stock, he’s not looking closely at the current generation of Wi-Fi and related wireless deployments. He notes in the video for this story, that there is “small coverage and not all that much bandwidth [in] the average Wi-Fi hotspot.” As noted above, DSL service has become cheap enough to offer enormous increases in speed, and a number of cities are deploying partial or complete Wi-Fi service using mesh-based or smart antenna technology. This trend seems to have legs rather than slowing down, implying that the deployments actually work in cities that try it.
Because Wi-Fi service can have many high-speed links and has such an overall local area network capacity, it’s possible to have an enormous number of users of a larger network with injections of bandwidth all over the place rather than relying on the limited spectrum—there’s that regulation again—that cellular operators have to dole out for 2.5G and 3G networks.
Verizon Wireless told me in an interview recently that their rollout isn’t quite an experiment, but they’re chary about offering any exotic services, like a network sharing offering such as the Junxion Box (which I wrote about yesterday). They and other carriers are investing a lot in networks that they’re not entirely sure what the capacity is once users start to sign up in droves. They want a clean network to see what sticks, and it’s clear with so much near-term competition prices will drop.
The capacity is surely quite high, but we get back to the issue of how much bandwidth is needed in different scenarios. 3G will be ubiquitous, which is useful for all kinds of purposes, but most people work only in certain kinds of spaces in which Wi-Fi will be available with higher upload and download speeds than can be relied on in the cellular network over the next two to three years domestically.
Just remember that 50 to maybe 100 Kbps upload limit on an unloaded network on the fastest cell data trunks that will roll out in the next 12 months, and a 512K symmetrical DSL line or, better, a 6 Mbps down/1 Mbps up line doesn’t seem quite so slow. Gilder says that 1xEV-DO offers “up to 3.1 Mbps connection.” Sure, if there’s no one else in your cell and you’re on top of the tower.
Cell operators may be paying Qualcomm large patent royalties, but they’re also building Wi-Fi networks and reselling existing networks. It’s not an either/or: it’s a both. [link via TechDirt]
Posted by Glennf at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
UPS starts its global roll-out of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular systems to speed up package processing: The system will start its rollout in Europe in package sorting centers. Sorts will wear a Bluetooth ring on their middle finger that will scan bar codes. The ring hands data off to a belt-worn Wi-Fi device which communicates with the network. By 2007, UPS will have 55,000 ring scanners deployed in 118 countries. They predict enormous savings in repairs and downtime as well as spare parts inventory. It also provides worker flexibility: there’s no fixed station needed. 73 sites will have the system deployed by the end of 2005.
UPS will install about 12,000 access points across 2,000 facilities as part of this rollout. While they say the resulting network will be one of the largest in the world, a conversation I had with a firm today that builds software to manage large-scale access point deployments indicates that there may be several hundred companies today with thousands of access points across all branches, and that topping 10,000 access points for a worldwide corporation won’t be unusual in a year or two.
In the U.S., UPS is testing its DIAD IV (Delivery Information Acquisition Device) which combines GPS (for positioning), Bluetooth (for scanning), Wi-Fi (for transmission), and GSM/GPRS cellular data (for uplinking). The device even has an acoustic modem for the backroads that UPS finds itself delivering packages to.
Posted by Glennf at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sprint PCS joins the third-generation cellular rush in the U.S. by committing a billion dollars to building a 1xEV-DO network: The company had previously signaled its interest in waiting and then deploying an EVDV (data/voice) network that might have had higher download speeds and integrated voice into the same 3G footprint. Now they say that some markets will have their brand of service year’s end with many more in 2005.
Cingular, meanwhile said today that UMTS could appear as soon as next year. Cingular had recently expressed doubts that with the current available spectrum they could deploy 3G data networks before 2006. Now, they plan a trial of two kinds of UTMS: one operates at 384 Kbps (unclear if this is the rated speed or the typical speed), and another at up to 14.4 Mbps. That’s megabits per second. Trials will start in Atlanta this summer, and extend in 2005 to the rest of the country.
AT&T Wireless, which Cingular is in the middle of acquiring, has reiterated its plans in the last few months to try UMTS’s W-CDMA flavor in a few cities by the end of 2004. T-Mobile’s plans are obscure, but EDGE (2.5G/100 Kbps) should be on its way. Nextel will most likely pursue a private cell data plan with higher speeds but that use none of the popular flavors.
Suddenly, some towns with no-better-than-modem wireless speeds could have four competing cellular data networks with 100 to 400 Kbps average download speeds. (All of these flavors ostensibly have restricted uploads of about 50 Kbps, however.) Expect price competition. At $80 per month flat for Verizon Wireless’s high-speed network, the race to the bottom will start in earnest. Verizon Wireless will still likely have a leg up by offering service first in most competitive cities.
Posted by Glennf at 7:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Every day brings more voice over IP (VoIP) phones with Wi-Fi, and Daily Wireless rounds it up for you: In their usual exhaustive fashion, Daily Wireless integrates the latest news about ZyXel’s Wi-Fi VoIP phone and other related projects, including Skype’s new Linux client—it’s wireless if you’re using a wirelessly connected laptop!
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Almost all 1,100 Kinko’s in the U.S. have T-Mobile’s HotSpot service installed: I’ve never seen a press release that said all locations (almost), so I’m not sure of the timing of this announcement not waiting for the actual completion. Because it’s “nearly all,” you still have to check whether a particular Kinko’s has service before you expect to use it.
Posted by Glennf at 11:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wyndham has long been the mainstay of Wayport’s hotel market, and they’ve re-upped: The new contract will last three years, and comes at a time that Wayport is exploring new business models for providing flat-rate reseller access to their retail partners—hotels and other venues could follow, but not for months. Wyndham has both wired and Wi-Fi service, mostly in-room wired broadband and Wi-Fi in public spaces, and provides free Internet access at its 85 properties to members of its By Request affinity club. Membership in the club is free, but must be completed before checking in.
Posted by Glennf at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
GoRemote presents information about their Wi-Fi hotspot network locations that put them in better light: Two weeks ago, I reported on the inconsistencies I found between the publicly available listings of hotspot locations provided by the three major aggregators of roaming service, Boingo Wireless, iPass, and the newly renamed GoRemote (formerly GRIC, but its acronym remains the same).
Aggregators resell access to other networks that they don’t operate. In exchange for this, they pay the operator a fee for every connection to their network by an aggregator customer. Boingo sells Wi-Fi service only using an unlimited monthly fee model. iPass and GRIC sell to corporations to dial-up, wired, and wireless service on a metered basis with the cost being per usage unit not per user, which can avoid costly monthly subscriptions for users who venture on the road regularly but would never pay back the cost of an individual subscription.
GoRemote came out the worst in the comparison I made, which used Boingo’s public directory, iPass’s iConnectHere software’s directory listing, and GoRemote customer RoadPost’s connection client. GoRemote doesn’t provide their complete list of hotspots on their site in searchable form.
At the time I wrote the article, GoRemote didn’t respond to two queries about how they came up with the numbers they promote on their site. It turns out that they were in the middle of a massive software overhaul as they release their 5.0 connection software to enterprises and reseller customers.
GoRemote wanted to set the record straight about their business’s main thrust and the unique locations they offer.
RoadPost’s list of Wi-Fi hotspots is incomplete. RoadPost is using the previous generation platform, GoRemote said, which has some limits in it. Further, each reseller customer of GoRemote has the option to choose which sets of dial-up, wired, and Wi-Fi locations to include based on the charges that each network offers. RoadPost uses a subset of all locations. Although GoRemote hasn’t made a list of locations available to me, they have provided detailed numbers across their whole network.
My article prompted Robert Fuggetta, the director of worldwide marketing for GoRemote, to work with the global access group within the company to determine the number of unique venues versus the number of access points listed. The company reports 6,906 unique Wi-Fi venues worldwide in their aggregated network which are listed at 7,634 hotspots. iPass reports similar numbers of Wi-Fi-only locations; Boingo reports over 3,300 active locations worldwide.
In the U.S., Fuggetta said, GoRemote was able to determine that they have 1,954 unique Wi-Fi venues represented by 2,550 hotspots. I reported from the RoadPost software that they had just 843 unique locations represented by 1,361 listings. The difference has to do with RoadPost’s choices.
Fuggetta and GoRemote’s Wi-Fi consultant Lumin Yen, who has worked with them on the integration and aggregation of hotspots, explained that the overcount has to do with specific venues that don’t offer complete coverage. Yen said that for one hotel in New York, for instance, they had represented it in their software as a single entry. But only odd-numbered floors and certain areas had service.
“We initially had it just as one hotel, and then some of our users went into these places,” Yen said, and found locations where they couldn’t get any signal
GoRemote went back to Wayport and asked for more detail, which produced an access point list. When hotels have full coverage, they are listed as a single location. The same is true with airports, such as San Jose International, which has 11 covered areas and several without coverage.
To confirm GoRemote’s overall count, since I do not have access to their complete list, I asked for their major hotspot operator network partners, and they listed Wayport, STSN, AirPath, and NetNearU. Wayport and STSN have a mix of Wi-Fi and Ethernet in the hotels they covered, with newer properties increasingly using Wi-Fi only. Nonetheless, these four networks alone represent at least 1,500 service locations, and GoRemote has other partners, making their numbers highly credible.
Fuggetta noted in the interview last Friday that the company’s focus hasn’t been on Wi-Fi as a separate offering, but as part of one branch of their business, and as a result, the company hasn’t spent much time trying to clarify their position. He and Yen discussed ways in which the industry could regularly report on the network sizes for more transparency, and GoRemote may post a summary of the unique and listed locations on a regular basis on their Web site.
“We want to set the standard in the industry for being very open and clear about our Wi-Fi coverage,” Fuggetta said. “We consider our coverage to be really strong, and we think, competitively, if you look at the chart [which GoRemote provided to me], we stack up very nicely.”
Fuggetta explained that GoRemote has three lines of business: providing connectivity for remote offices for corporations, supporting telecommuting workers of all types, and offering connectivity for mobile users. The first two legs of the business have been more significant, but GoRemote finds more of its remote office customers asking for mobile access as well, which has increased GoRemote’s focus on that area.
GoRemote considers itself largely in a different business from iPass and Boingo, the former having a laser-beam attention on mobile access through enterprise integration and the latter selling fixed-rate subscriptions to Wi-Fi networks. GoRemote, by contrast, has clients like Schwan’s, a frozen-food manufacturer, for which they provide remote services for 650 distribution centers around the U.S.
“We’re not an access provider; we don’t position ourselves that way,” Fuggetta said. Fuggetta said their end-user is often an retail manager at a store, a user at home, or users at branch offices. “We’re not competing in the marketplace against Boingo or even iPass,” he said. GoRemote acquired Axcelerant last year to boost their remote office portfolio: Axcelerant handles managed braodband virtual private networks with existing Fortune 500 customers in their client portfolio.
GoRemote isn’t trying to de-emphasize Wi-Fi, but made clear in the interview that as a small but significant factor in their business, they plan to be more transparent about the numbers in the network to remove comparisons as a factor in how they handle their mobile business.
Posted by Glennf at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Junxion Box acts as bridge between growing cellular data networks and the need for ubiquitous, driver-free workgroup access: In today’s Seattle Times, I write about local firm Junxion which will shortly ship its Junxion Box, a small device that uplinks to cellular data networks through a PC Card, and shares the connection via built-in Ethernet and Wi-Fi. Think of it like a portable Internet feed.
The Junxion Box is driver free in the sense that the company handles the software connection for several kinds of PC Cards to several national data networks. Local users connect via the LAN side—they don’t have to install and configure the special PC Card drivers which are available for specific platforms with specific limitations.
Temporary work sites and mobile workgroups will benefit most from the system, which is an effective modem and analog line replacement given current cell data speeds. But as cell networks increase in speed and prices continue to fall, it’s likely that the Junxion Box’s niche will expand as more of a broadband replacement for certain kinds of markets.
I’ve tested a prototype of the Junxion box, and it’s just as easy as the company maintains. You plug it into AC power or a DC car adapter. You wait a few moments for it to train up to the cell data network. You connect.
Will cell operators allow the Junxion Box on their network, and can they do anything to stop its use? The answers seem to be maybe and no.
Posted by Glennf at 5:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Computerworld reports that New York City will build a wireless network to supports 10,000s of public-safety users at speeds of up 70 mph: Bids are expected next month. They’ll start with a three-month pilot project to test with multiple bidders, and then award a five-year contract with the potential for two five-year renewals.
The bid’s spec apparently calls for two Mbps access and simultaneous streaming for 1,000s of users. The first phase would support about 5,000 fire, police, and emergency medical personnel.
The full cost could be $500 million to $1 billion, but the city won’t confirm it. Mesh architecture is practically a necessity, the article quotes experts as saying. Tropos says they could deploy such a network with 600 of their access points in the 2.4 GHz band. More would be needed to use the 4.9 GHz public-safety band. Lucent suggests that EvDo running at 2.4 Mbps in the 1.9 GHz band would be an option as well.
Posted by Glennf at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wi-Fi isn’t just for networking any more: devices hang off home networks for audio, video, voice: Julio Ojeda-Zapata files a round-up of the transformation of a home wireless network from an early adopter’s geeky add-on to a mass-market offering with support from companies like Comcast and Qwest. Remember when cable firms threatened users who shared their network connections with their families?
Ojeda-Zapata notes the increasing variety of devices that can use Wi-Fi networks as their Internet or local network feed, including Apple’s new AirPort Express for beaming music to home stereos, Microsoft’s Media Center Extender for their home entertainment hub, and Gateway’s streaming DVD player.
Posted by Glennf at 8:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Long-delayed drivers for the Palm OS to work with SanDisk’s Wi-Fi SD card arrive with support for a single model: Tom’s Networking reports that the discontinued Zire71 model is the only that will work with a version of the SD card scheduled to ship by early July. The newer Zire72 has a driver problem that Palm hasn’t acknowledged privately or publicly. [link via Engadget]
Posted by Glennf at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Silicon.com reports on BAE Systems’s radio frequency blocking wallpaper: It’s 50 to 100 microns thick and can adhere to most surfaces. It’s a mesh of copper and a polymer created in a manner similar to how circuit boards are laid down. There’s no timeline for commercial availability. Some versions can be switched on and off; others are permanent. [link via TechDirt]
Posted by Glennf at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wi-Fi networks on farms should allow farmers to control and monitor more of their operations remotely: Trial projects attempt to show that with farm-wide Wi-Fi coverage, that irrigation, packing, and other parts of a farm’s business could be handled through remote control. Eventually, tractors and other devices might be run by wire (or by wireless, as it were).
Anthropomorphism abounds: runaway tractors are a risk, but crazy runaway tractors? “What we’re really scared of is killing someone if it goes nuts,” Pocknee said of the robotic tractors.
Likewise, this strange statement needs some explanation: Pocknee can sit in his office and see the position of a 600-foot irrigation system in a nearby field on his computer screen. The system is equipped with a global positioning system to provide its location. A wireless video camera shows how it is operating. Why first thought is “why would an irrigation system move?” and then I realized these are irrigation systems that are rolled over fields.
Of course, this kind of automation helps big agribusiness more than small farmers who may be unable to afford the technology investment upfront on a scale where it makes sense. Labor can be less expensive than technology, as certain countries have taught us. I’d like to also see projects in which open-source-flashed Linksys gateways are hooked together for a few hundred dollars on a 100-acre farm than ever more multi-million dollar research investments that let farms be run from hundreds of miles away. [link via Robert Moskowitz]
Posted by Glennf at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Alvarion VP says that the company’s new platform is ready for WiMax, backed by their promise to upgrade it: A few weeks ago, I wrote about Alvarion’s BreezeMax platform and took the company to task for not spelling out precisely what they were promising customers when saying that BreezeMax was their WiMax platform. WiMax hasn’t reached a final certification stage yet for equipment that complies to IEEE 802.16a: broadband wireless point-to-point service in the 2 GHz to 11 GHz range for licensed and unlicensed bands. That certification standard might not be ready until 2005; likewise, chips designed for it could be that far ahead, too.
I wrote in May that Alvarion should have said We’re not selling WiMax equipment, but something we believe we be so close to it that only firmware upgrades are required. I also wrote, Interestingly, while they say futureproofed on one page, they don’t mention whether purchasers would receive free hardware upgrades if the WiMax standard as deployed is too different to allow firmware changes to this equipment.
Alvarion wanted to clarify what they meant, and I spoke today with Carlton O’Neal, the vice president of marketing for the company. I asked O’Neal if Alvarion is guaranteeing its customers—as a few other firms have apparently done in a limited way—that BreezeMax would be a WiMax upgrade when the final standard was available. He said it would. (Note: An earlier version of this story said it was zero-cost. That is incorrect. Alvarion later clarified that customers would pay a negotiated fee when the WiMax upgrade was available. Cost will depend on the extent of the software or hardware upgrades.)
O’Neal said that the company had built the platform to allow software upgrades, firmware upgrades, and hardware upgrades. They believe that with the current state of the WiMax standard they can entirely rely on software and firmware to handle full WiMax certification: “Our hope, our plan, is that it’s software and firmware,” he said. Their last resort would be hardware, but “we’re prepared to do that.”
Alvarion has been developing the BreezeMax system for three years, and decided that given the state of WiMax and their own readiness, they needed to bring the carrier-grade equipment into the marketplace with a commitment to make this their flagship WiMax platform even though the standard is still under development. What they deploy today works, and some of their customers may choose to stick with it far past when interoperable WiMax hardware and their own upgrades are available.
Alvarion will eventually rely on chips built by Intel to power their WiMax gear, and Intel’s circuits aren’t due until 2005 at this point. But Alvarion is confident that they’ve made the right choice in hitting the market. “Right now, this box is good enough to be WiMax for everything we know, and the closure path from everything we know to certification is small,” O’Neal said.
O’Neal said that as a public company, Alvarion has to pick its promises and its wording carefully, and he has resisted efforts by his staff to put prefixes and suffixes on the term WiMax because he said the company doesn’t want to maintain that their equipment is something it’s not. They eventually decided on calling it “pre-WiMax” because of their knowledge of the standard and their commitment in upgrading to a WiMax-certified system.
O’Neal said that at least a couple of Alvarion competitors, which he declined to name, had declared that their existing equipment was WiMax “like” or WiMax “ready” when it lacks some of the basic commonalities with the 802.16 and in-progress WiMax certification standards.
Thus, O’Neal said, Alvarion is only moving forward with its new platform as a WiMax-based product. “We will not play liar’s poker” in terms of attaching a standards name to products that aren’t close to it or won’t be upgraded to meet the eventual certification.
In the past, I’ve criticized firms that are using the term WiMax to refer to equipment that simply provides point-to-point broadband wireless from a central location to a customer receiver. Just like Wi-Fi isn’t just anything, but it’s a rigidly defined and tested process for interoperable 2.4 and 5 GHz Part 15 data networking gear, so, too, is WiMax not a generic term but a way to create a pool of devices that compete on performance and specs, not on incompatible standards.
More clarification from companies like Alvarion that are promising a WiMax migration with the purchase of existing product lines for fully interoperable and compliant equipment should remove the ability of firms to capitalize on the name but not deliver the goods. Along those lines, it’s surprising that the nascent WiMax Forum isn’t fighting harder against dilution of their trademark.
Posted by Glennf at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Industrial Telecommunications Association (ITA) wants the FCC to declare that airports can’t restrict airlines use of unlicensed spectrum in airports: Airports want to coordinate spectrum, but their networks might not be optimized for the airlines’ needs, and the airlines claim that they can build their own networks more cheaply and quickly, the Computerworld article says. The ITA and members like United Airlines say airports are motivated entirely by revenue, not coordination or utility.
A couple of interesting tidbits emerge about airline deals, too, that might explain why AT&T Wireless charges $70 per month for unlimited access to their Wi-Fi network, including $10 per day for airport usage: they pay Denver International Airport $250,000 per month or $3 million per year for the right to operate the network. Nokia built the network and paid DIA fees until they could exit, and turn off the business to an operator.
AT&T Wireless would need 300,000 sessions a year just to gross enough money in Denver to pay those costs; I can’t imagine who signed off on that decision. Its one of two AT&T Wireless airports (the other is Philadelphia), although both Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and AT&T Wireless said months ago that they would be taking over Seatac’s Wi-Fi network from Wayport—we haven’t heard anything since. AT&T Wireless also resells access to Wayport’s airports.
Boston negotiated a much smaller fee for Logan: a minimum of $200,000 in the first year and $300,000 by the fifth. The article says that the deal calls for 20 percent of gross revenue if it exceeds these amounts and that the company estimates that could eventually be $1 million per year. Maybe. That would require $5,000,000 in gross revenue. Based on the sea change in the market, that might be impossible to achieve.
Logan would need to either get as many as five million sessions a year at a buck a pop to gross that much, or find, say, 50 resellers willing to pay a flat rate of, say, about $8,000 a month each to gain access to Logan as part of a reseller network if they followed the Wayport model. Both seem implausible.
Posted by Glennf at 10:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
eWeek reports that Intel’s new desktop CPU system won’t have Wi-Fi at launch: Intel had been talking up its “Grantsdale” chipset’s ability to act as a Wi-Fi software access point for months, but now won’t be able to include Wi-Fi at all in the shipping version. They expect to provide a separate PCI card late in the year to enable Wi-Fi and this function. The idea that purchasers of a desktop system will have to return to the trough and then install an internal PCI card is, of course, ludicrous for most consumers—including business IT professionals who don’t want to buy a system that lacks a critical function.
Intel’s gap leaves the door wide open for competitors like Broadcom, which already ate Intel’s lunch on the laptop side, and has been a serious provider of integrated modules that include gigabit Ethernet, a 56K modem, and 802.11g Wi-Fi. Will Dell and others who turned to Broadcom for laptop Wi-Fi turn to them for the desktop version, too? At least there will be a flurry of competition among the several chipmakers who can supply the market.
This delay is another major stumble for Intel, which came late to the Wi-Fi party with Centrino, shipping 802.11b-only radios a year ago spring with that laptop system, after having promised 802.11a options. Then, with 802.11a, and a/g radios scheduled for 2003, was unable to provide them. At this writing, the Centrino successor Dothan still hasn’t appeared on the market in a big way, with manufacturers shipping their first models based on it just this week with 802.11g only.
Posted by Glennf at 6:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Proxim and Intel will work together on WiMax, a boon to Proxim: The smaller company’s stock shot up 27 percent today on the news that it would be participating in what Intel has increasingly focused on as the next important wireless market. WiMax has the potential to offer point-to-point and mobile standardized broadband wireless service, but its time to market is still a concern.
If it doesn’t achieve productization quicklly enough—and signs are that we might not see unlicensed WiMax products in the US until 2006—existing somewhat proprietary solutions could commoditize quickly enough for the market. Meanwhile, higher-speed cell data offerings might take the sheen off the necessity of mobile WiMax, although the latter’s potential for using unlicensed bands gives it an edge.
SkyPilot’s announcement today—after a few years of development—of their broadband wireless system adds another player to a tightly focused market that hopes to fill in the home and business broadband market. Their equipment works in the unlicensed 5.8 GHz band.
Although the press release says that Proxim expects to ship fixed broadband equipment in early 2005 and “portable” (not mobile) devices later next year, it doesn’t state whether these will be shipped in the US or overseas, nor which bands will be used.
Posted by Glennf at 4:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A few weeks ago, Buffalo mentioned that their AOSS (AirStation One-Tocuh Secure System) was worth a look in light of security issues: I wasn’t dubious that AOSS worked, but a doubting Thomas wants to press the button himself. The way that AOSS is supposed to work is that you install the Wi-Fi card, install the client software, turn on and configure the base station, and then press a button on the base station for a few seconds. This AOSS button enables the negotiation mode. In the client software on your laptop, you click the Profiles tab and click the AOSS button. Sit back and wait a few minutes, and the connection is negotiated securely so that a mutually agreed upon WPA key can be delivered to the client card. (The drawback: AOSS works only with Buffalo equipment, and only certain devices, though that list keeps growing.)
My problems started immediately, as I was unable to get the client software to properly recognize the Buffalo adapter. I tried installing and uninstalling, disabling Wireless Zero Configuration, and the usual troubleshooting. I even got a Buffalo technical support manager on the phone who walked me through a number of steps. No luck.
It turns out that the eMachines laptop I was using already has a Broadcom-based Wi-Fi adapter built in. I knew this, but I didn’t know that the two sets of drivers would interfere. Possibly something to do with NDIS 5.1, which makes all Wi-Fi adapters look sort of similar to the system.
An officemate brought in his Dell laptop that lacked an internal Wi-Fi device, and I followed Buffalo’s manual. This time, no problem. There are about six steps that take you from start to finish, but it’s really one touch for the security portion.
Posted by Glennf at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Radiuz offers WPA-Enterprise logins to free networks at no charge: Radiuz is a grand experiment in providing enterprise-scale security and encryption to free networks. Any network that wants to use Radiuz’s authentication has to have an access point that handles pass-through 802.1X authentication, which most consumer units do. The access point is configured to talk to Radiuz’s server, and that’s it.
Radiuz is using WPA-Enterprise, as the Wi-Fi Alliance terms it, which is 802.1X port-based authentication coupled with WPA encryption keys. Radiuz further layers PEAP (Protected EAP) on top to provide a secure exchange of credentials with their server.
Radiuz tries to solve four interconnected problems with home and small-business networking.
First, security isn’t tight enough: most home users leave encryption off because it’s annoying to manage.
Second, even users who want to share their network connection are slightly leery of letting anonymous folks onboard. The development of NoCatAuth and LessNetworks’s adaptation of that software are both attempts to provide accountability—in the former case, through a click-through terms of service; and adding user accounts in the latter case, although the accounts are free.
Third, WPA-Personal uses a static key for all users, making it possible for one user with a WPA key to sniff the traffic of any other user. Distributing a WPA-Personal key to “protect” a network doesn’t help protect it in that way. (A WPA key that’s kept private among a home or workgroup does, however.)
Fourth, WPA-Enterprise is beyond affordable for most smaller businesses, although products like Interlink Network’s LucidLink and Wireless Security Corporation’s Wireless Security Guard are steps in that direction.
John Leibovitz is one of the founders of Radiuz, and we spoke recently about the organization’s goals. Leibovitz describes Radiuz as a “cross between Wi-Fi and Friendster in a very kind of loose way.” He and his co-founder Stephen Robinson want to build a community of registered users first and then see how to connect them. “The goal is really to build up that network, and to think creatively beyond that about how to make that economically sustaining,” he said. Authentication will always remain free, however.
People who want to join the Radiuz network sign up and receive information on how to configure their access point to use Radiuz’s servers. Users who want access to Radiuz authenticated networks need to sign up out of band: you can’t connect to the free network you need credentials. When you sign up, you have to confirm via an email message to ensure that you have at least some valid footprint on the Internet that’s trackable for a moment.
Leibovitz said that the time was right to launch Radiuz because native supplicants that support PEAP are available for all major platforms, including Linux (Open1x), Mac OS X (version 10.3 in Internet Connect), and Windows XP. (A Windows 2000 WPA client is free from Wireless Security Corporation.) “Any time you have installable clients, you impose costs and configuration issues on a user,” he noted.
The operators of access points will have the ability to add and remove users who can access their particular network via Web site. The general idea is that all Radiuz users would be able to access all Radiuz networks, but Leibovitz said they’re providing user restriction as an option.
We discussed some of the current limitations to Radiuz’s system that might cause users with less technical expertise to have some pause before switching their access point over. Because Radiuz requires a live Internet connection for users to authenticate, a loss of service at the access point’s source—a DSL line going down—or anywhere between the user and Radiuz would disable all Wi-Fi access to the network. A user would have to connect via a wired port and turn off RADIUS authentication to regain access.
Wireless Security Corporation avoids this problem by having their own client which manages the distribution of a back-end WPA key, and supplying a server that can run locally to handle failover to provide continuous protected access during an Internet disruption.
A secondary problem is that even with each local Wi-Fi user having a unique key and thus protected from other users, the Ethernet segment of the network, even just linking the access point to a broadband modem, allows network sniffing. A feature available in newer Linksys firmware allows you to turn off the LAN segment for Wi-Fi users: they can only “see” and “hear” the Internet feed on the WAN.
Radiuz represents part of an interesting trend towards increased options for WPA authentication. It’s worth watching how this develops for both free and fee networks, and for home and business networks. An ISP could easily offer this service for their home users, just like Radiuz can for all free networks.
Posted by Glennf at 1:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Linksys’s WRE54G is a logical repeater, listening to network traffic and rebroadcasting it; but security options are lacking, advice is odd: The description of this device contains slim information. As far as I can tell, it’s a Wi-Fi only logical repeater, meaning that it’s using networking magic to relay data. It can’t be using Wireless Distribution System (WDS) because Linksys notes it works with any 802.11b or g network. It must attach as a client to an existing network and redistribute access as an access point itself. This function is similar to Linksys’s WET11 and WET54G, which bridge Ethernet networks to any access point by simulating a client and masquerading MAC addresses.
The manual for this range extender mentions multiple times in the first few pages of configuration advice that the range extender is easier to use if you turn off WEP encryption—which is extremely odd advice coming from a Wi-Fi equipment maker at this point in time. The unit only supports WEP as an encryption option, meaning that more secured networks that use WPA can’t take advantage of range extension.
The unit will cost $99, but I’m not sure it’s necessary except for legacy home networks. For about $80 you can purchase a WRT54G, but Linksys has only enabled wireless bridging as a fixed mode: that is, a WRT54G can’t bridge and be an access point at the same time. A similar unit from Buffalo, the WLA2-54G, costs about $100 and like Apple’s AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Stations, can serve clients while bridging to other gateways.
If were building a network from scratch that required bridging and I wanted WPA security now, I’d choose Buffalo’s gateway as the fundamental element.
Update: Tim Higgins received a clarification from Linksys that this device works only with three Linksys 802.11g routers: the WRT54G, the WRT54GS (802.11g with SpeedBooster), and the WAP54G. No other gateways are supported, which would reiterate my recommendation to stick with Buffalo for bridging a network.
Posted by Glennf at 6:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Amtrak and AT&T Wireless put Wi-Fi hotspots in six Northeast train stations: Boston (Router 128), Providence, New York (Penn Station), Philadelphia (30th Street), Wilmington, and Baltimore (Penn Station) have Wi-Fi service starting today, according to the press release. These stations process a million passengers a day. It’s $10 per day per location—unlike T-Mobile’s $10 per day throughout the network fee. They also offer a 5-pack ($30 or $6 a session) and a 10-pack ($50 or $5 a session).
Business subscribers only who already participate in AT&T Wireless’s “Corporate Digital Advantage and Wireless Business Advantage” plans can purchase unlimited monthly service for $40 per month to supplement voice plans or $35 per month to supplement data plans.
Roaming wasn’t mentioned. This pricing is clearly out of whack with the current trends, and should dramatically suppress usage unless AT&T Wireless is also aggressively promoting resale. Given that competitor T-Mobile is offering all you can eat Wi-Fi at $20 per month for all existing voice customers, not just business plan customers, AT&T Wireless may have misgauged the price sensitivity in the field.
Posted by Glennf at 6:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will host the 2004 National Summit for Community Wireless Aug. 20-22: The event is organized by CUWiN (C-U Community Wireless Network) which is working on an open-source mesh project, and Prairienet, with the help of other groups and individuals. Their goal is 100 attendees from across the U.S., and they’re attempting to raise funds for travel stipends for groups that would otherwise be unable to afford to send a representative.
The mission is statement is that the conference will focus on grassroots action, impacting national regulations and policies, and building a coalition of local groups, researchers, policy leaders, decision-makers, and community activists.
The cost is low: $30 for students and low-income; $75 for all others. They’re encouraging press to attend, as well.
Posted by Glennf at 11:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AirWave Wireless’s tool for managing large-scale access point deployments has signed 10 major universities: A little indulgence here, but my alma mater (Yale) and my hometown university (University of Oregon) are both on the list of 10 universities that AirWave will provide their management platform to. AirWave’s approach allows heterogeneous enterprise APs from many major manufacturers to be used on a single network and managed with a single interface.
If you’re all Cisco or all Proxim, you might choose their expensive, exclusive management consoles. Or, you can opt for AirWave and have more flexibility about mixing and matching equipment that can be monitored and configured centrally. A tool like this helps commoditize enterprise hardware by allowing a level playing field for equipment from many vendors—including those that don’t offer a central management system.
Posted by Glennf at 9:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
iPass has demonstrated its client connecting over 802.1X on a hotspot front-end that supports the Generic Interface Specification (GIS) which allows co-exists with browser page logins: This marks a big leap forward in security of local network links in public places. By providing the iPassConnect client with the ability to use secured 802.1X/EAP transactions to gain access to a hotspot network, iPass customers can have a unique key assigned to their network link. This prevents sniffers from using the wireless side of the network to snoop on traffic.
iPass developed GIS as a way of securing an authentication session, but the more generic 802.1X protocol coupled with secured EAP is a simpler and more industry standard way to provide access to a Wi-Fi network. iPass’s demo shows that GIS, 802.1X, and browser-based logins can co-exist which makes it easier for hotspot operators to migrate customers over time to more secure logins and sessions.
The weak link in 802.1X/EAP is that while it provides a unique encryption key to each user in its most useful form, because users are then routed onto a wired network to reach the Internet, if a user can join the network, they can still sniff bridged traffic from the wired side because they’re part of the local area network. Some access points can be configured to disable LAN access and only allow Wi-Fi clients to reach the wide area network or Internet feed.
Posted by Glennf at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Symantec reports on a Bluetooth worm: It spreads itself on Nokia Series 60 phones and tries to install itself on any Bluetooth device it finds, reducing battery life for the infected phone. A recipient has to accept the file, apparently, for it to transmit. It’s hard to delete because it hides itself in a directory that’s not accessible to the average user. [link via Xeni Jardin]
Posted by Glennf at 9:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bits over juice starts to take off in trials, though its future is still uncertain: A Washington state public utility is working with a private Internet provide in an inexpensive 60-day trial to see how well BPL actually works, and whether customers will find it interesting. Nationwide, a few dozen trials have about 2,000 actual customers. The future of the technology depends on the real cost and the real speed when it’s deployed in the field. Unlike unloaded copper wire, which has known properties, the numbers of systems and the distances involved in BPL add variables that need performance testing. Broadband has to avoid truck rolls to houses to keep costs affordable.
Posted by Glennf at 7:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
TechDirt briefly dissects Associated Press story that points out no one (that they talked to) is profitable in the hotspot business: We try not to be defenders of the flame here at Wi-Fi Networking News, but examine news stories and company announcements as well as hardware and software with some degree of objectivity tempered by experience. The AP article isn’t inaccurate, but we’d rather point to TechDirt’s brief dissection of it than the original story because the premise is flawed.
It’s abundantly clear after the events of the last couple of months—not to mention years—that there is no such thing as a standalone Wi-Fi hotspot business. I’ll beat the drum that Sky Dayton first stretched the deer hide over back in Dec. 2001: the business of selling hotspot access is a different business than signing contacts with venues and installing hardware and running a network.
Wayport’s ongoing transformation from 2000 to present from a customer-facing organization into a customer and reseller-facing group into a pure wholesale managed services and network operator demonstrates most clearly that standalone hotspot operators are and were a temporary phenomenon.
The networks that remain will eventually derive the majority of their income from either