Wireless [base "]Security[per thou]
Sadly, people keep talking about how wireless networks are [base "]insecure[per thou] and [base "]open to attack[per thou] and how we should secure them, to keep people out. In fact, we should do just the opposite: we should secure them to let people in.
When you ask someone why they don[base ']t like you using your network, they[base ']re usually concerned about people doing one of three things:
[apple] breaking into their computers
[apple] eavesdropping on what they do
[apple] or preventing them from using the Internet
I don[base ']t think anyone really wants to keep people from the Internet; they just want to protect themselves. The funny thing is that base stations could be built that did securely protect their owners from these things.
Base stations could be configured to talk only to the router, and not let public users access the Ethernet network or specially-permitted users. Base stations could use real public-key cryptography to identify users that are specially-permitted and protect their conversations from eavesdropping. And base stations could use automatic traffic shaping to prevent the traffic from public users from interfering with that of specially permitted users.
I hope that future base stations contain strong, secure, easy-to-use solutions to these problems soon. No one should have to choose between being friendly and being safe.
8:30:03 PM 
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