[OCCalWUG] News that's changing the Wireless World! Monday, April 05, 2004 Source: Wi-Fi Networking News Evaluating Wireless Security Needs Adam Engst discusses how to evaluate your rational risk when running a wireless network: My co-author on The Wireless Networking Starter Kit spells out a methodology by which you can determine whether or not you should have high concerns in securing and operating a wireless network. Adam divides his evaluation into Likelihood, Liability, and Lost Opportunity: how likely is your network to be tapped into or cracked? how liable are you by having your wireless data exposed? and what are you putting yourself through by over-protecting a network? It's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to secure a network at the highest level when your actual needs are extremely low. While we rail against WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) all the time on this site, noting how weak it is as a first line of defense, for home users with few nearby neighbors and relatively little traffic WEP is perfectly reasonable.... Source Link 9:17:17 PM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Networking News Tropos Spells Out 3G, Wi-Fi Strengths Extremely interesting white paper from Tropos Networks pushes their model, yes, but lays out their view of 3G speeds, weaknesses, coverage, and tolerances compared to Wi-Fi (downloadable PDF): This is the clearest presentation I've seen yet that explains precisely how fast we can expect to see early 3G implementations, and how dense 3G cells have to be to provide the kinds of speeds that a T-1 plus a Wi-Fi access point can achieve. Tropos's model is, of course, Wi-Fi clouds of service using Wi-Fi for mesh connections among units for non-line-of-sight and cloud coverage performance with a minimal amount of wireline support. However, their white paper reveals this bias quite clearly without diminishing the technical factors they address for 3G's limits. If there are 3G experts reading this site who can rebut or extend the white paper's arguments, there's a large audience for this kind of explication, and Wi-Fi Networking News would be happy to publish it. I, for one, didn't understand the asymmetrical nature of Ev-DO and other 3G models in terms of upload and download speeds. I wouldn't have expected to see full throttle uploads but Tropos analysis says that even with 300 to 500 Kbps downloads speeds, users will have only 10 to 50 Kbps upload. Can any users confirm? A wireline T-1 circuit, by comparison, offers 1.544 Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth up to the full speed in both locations. ADSL (Asymmetric DSL) typically offers 512 Kbps to 3 Mbps down and 128 to 384 Kbps up.... Source Link 4:50:07 PM    comment [] Source: eWEEK Technology News Intellisync Mobile Suite Covers Business Gamut The software lets operators offer wireless data services that include push-based e-mail, basic calendar information and file access for devices running on various platforms. Source Link 3:58:47 PM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Networking News Intel Stands Firm Against Chinese Wi-Fi Encryption Intel's CEO will be in Beijing later this week; says Intel still opposed to WAPI: Intel continues to say that it cannot offer WAPI, a Chinese proprietary Wi-Fi encryption standard controlled by a handful of state-appointed businesses, as part of Centrino by June 1, but hasn't ruled out later support. Barrett could address this during his trip, but the article gives no indications. Intel doesn't want to have to share its intellectual property as part of the process as demanded by the Chinese regulations. You could read this as backpedaling from earlier statements, except that Barrett reiterates wanting to stick with internationally accepted common standards. Meanwhile, Information Week notes that China's WTO membership could be an issue with their Wi-Fi stance: If China wants the benefits of WTO membership, they have to play by WTO rules. The author also suggests that China should engage the IEEE on the issues if they want changes. A quick look at the January 2004 interim meeting of the IEEE 802.11 working group (minutes in PDF format) shows no ".cn" email addresses and no easily recognizable mainland China firms attending.... Source Link 3:49:28 PM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Networking News San Francisco Has Most Hotspots Intel plans to release tomorrow its annual list of cities with the most hotspots: This year, San Francisco beat out Portland for the city with the most hotspots. But Portland still wins for the most free hotspots. I was surprised to see Orange County as number two overall and Washington, D.C. as third in line. Those two cities don't make headlines often for their hotspots.... Source Link 3:48:09 PM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Networking News Aruba Chases Voice Market Aruba is the latest WLAN switch maker to add support for voice over WLAN: It introduced new software that is offered as a free upgrade on Aruba switches. The software offers security by restricting where traffic from voice devices can go. The platform enables handoff between access points in under 50 milliseconds to support voice. Aruba can also locate user devices so voice service on its platform complies with E911 requirements. Aruba also said it is working with SpectraLink, TeleSym, and Vocera to support products from those companies. WLAN switch vendors are increasingly adding voice capabilities to their products. While few mainstream enterprises are offering voice over WLANs today, they may be making purchase decisions based on products that have the capability in case they want to add it in the future.... Source Link 11:26:38 AM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Networking News Engim Spotlights Slowdowns Engim hired independent tester the Tolly Group to demonstrate how dramatically the performance of Wi-Fi networks decreases when a low performing device is within range: The study included eight different scenarios, each involving a different mix of client devices. In most cases, the average throughput of any user dropped to the lowest common denominator. So for example, nearby 802.11g clients would only connect as high as 3 Mbps but more often closer to 1 Mbps when an 802.11b client was set to connect to the access point at 1 Mbps. While it's no secret that this happens in Wi-Fi networks, Engim found that few enterprises were aware of it. "If you're sharing a network among b and g users, they associate at different rates so that the 54 Mbps guy gets incredibly penalized," said Scott Lindsay, vice president of marketing for Engim. "This is something IT managers didn't know about." Engim says its chips can help solve the problem. Its chips can support multiple channels simultaneously. This Network World story offers a good overview of how the Engim chips work. Products with the chips can deliver three times as much capacity, but they can also allow users to separate traffic. For example, an OEM could write software that instructs the chip to place all voice calls onto one specific channel. The access point would know that a device associating with it is a voice over IP phone by its MAC address. Or, an OEM could write software that enables the access point to note the rate at which a client is connecting and if it's slow, relegate that user to a channel that is reserved for slow traffic.... Source Link 11:05:29 AM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Planet Bay Area Lands "Most Unwired" Title Intel's yearly rundown of 'Most Unwired Cities' pegs San Francisco and its suburbs as this years top spot, plus the survey rates the most unwired airports and colleges. Source Link 10:12:58 AM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Planet The Crippling Effect of Mixed Mode Tests show that running a variety of products mixing 802.11b and 11g on a single channel could be severely restricting overall wireless network throughput. Source Link 9:09:38 AM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Planet Targeting the Flyers Hotspot access has opened in seven mid-sized airports around the United States including El Paso, Omaha, Anchorage and others. Source Link 7:07:10 AM    comment [] Source: Wi-Fi Planet Talking about Securing VoWLAN Aruba comes out swinging into the voice over Wi-Fi market, claiming security is the issue and announcing plenty of partners to back them up. Source Link 7:07:09 AM    comment [] Source: eWEEK Technology News Support Is Growing for Wireless Voice, Security As enterprise wireless LANs mature, Aruba Wireless Networks Inc. and Gateway Inc. are preparing products that address increasing user interest in VOIP, as well as network security and management. Source Link 5:54:48 AM    comment [] Source: C|Net VoIP's broadband bottleneck Broadband Net-phoning services are facing an obstacle as they try to expand in the U.S.: The third-party broadband networks they rely on can't guarantee glitch-free calls. Source Link 4:11:48 AM    comment [] © 2004 [OCCalWUG] Last Update: 5/14/2004; 9:02:55 PM

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