Wireless Year in Review 36
Irish writes "The wireless world had some surprises last year. WLANs, with easy but unsecure bandwidth, may disrupt the adoption of regulated/limited 3G networks. DoCoMo's iMode surprised many gaining 27 million users while Europe was disappointing. This developerWorks article takes a look at the big wireless security stories of 2001 and tries to offer some predictions on the future."
Security in a wireless network (Score:3, Insightful)
Once people are on the wireless network, they come up against a firewall. They must use a VPN client to connect their computers to the network on the other side of the firewall. Any communications between clients also goes through the firewall.
Then and only then are you even close to safe. And some brainiac is probably already figuring out a way through both layers of encryption.
Re:Security in a wireless network (Score:1)
The people that want to watch me watch porn, those are the crazy ones...
Re:Security in a wireless network (Score:1)
New palm thingy coming out Monday (Score:4, Informative)
The source of all this are the talking heads over at cnet radio. since they do a lot of repeats over the weekend you might be able to catch more details there. (anchor desk radio show, etc. especially the friday broadcast)
ah, here's the link to the story [com.com], reasonably detailed.
[cnet radio recently started broadcasting full time in Boston at 890 am, along with their usual broadcasts in the bay area. it is kinda funny listening to san jose traffic reports while cruising route 128]
[shrug]
Re:New palm thingy coming out Monday (Score:2)
For more information about this and some good pictures of the device, go here [palminfocenter.com].
Re:New palm thingy coming out Monday (Score:2)
well the talking heads on the radio show were talking a color display, so maybe this is a new wrinkle. although it could just be an unfounded rumor. After all these guys are not always completely objective.
Interesting, but misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
1) SMS do not cost on average 30 cents USD. More like 10 cents EURO. This is by looking at the big carriers in Europe. But SMS is catching on because people thinking it is trendy and cool and IT KILLS TIME.
2) Imode is popular in Japan because of the problems with Internet in general. In Japan land lines are expensive and take a long time to get installed. Hence landline Internet access is not a viable solution. However IMode was priced right and the Japanese mentality "small is beautiful" works. Try that in Europe and North America and it will flop on its face. Europe and North America has cheap Internet and hence wants the full experience.
3) They are all missing the real reason why some wireless works and not others. It is COST and only COST. SMS is cheap in contrast to other wireless. IMode is cheap in contrast to others. WLan is cheap in contrast to 3-G or GPRS.
Hence all of the solutions have nothing to do with security, or coolness of the factors, but COST. If two wireless technologies beside each other were cheap then there is a different story to tell. But in wireless it is basically either cheap or expensive and the people go to droves to the cheap one.
Re:Interesting, but misleading (Score:2, Interesting)
Coolness sell, but only when their price range is accpectable.
Price must come down where services are cheap enough (like a penny a mintue) in order for it to strive.
I guess we will just have to wait since I like wireless, but it's useless when nobody has it or uses it.
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
I would suppose that says something about wireless security.
Wireless Things (Score:2, Interesting)
In reading this article, what I noticed first off was the complete non-mention of the 802.11g first draft. Basically 802.11g is the application of all the technology advances of a over b, but in 2.4gig and not 5gig. G was referred for a first draft by the IEEE at their Austin meeting. What spurned this on was the Chipset manufacturers were scared that Intel would push A and they would be out major R&D dollars on G.
And A is going to be a real real tough sell now, that G is on the horizon and will most likely be a firmware upgrade to the existing 2.4GHz radios, instead of a full truck roll out replacement.
Kim also fails to mention (could this be because they don't want to push a competing technology???) the development of WEP2 using AES. Most vendors are chomping on the bit to get a finalized standard for WEP using AES. In the meantime they're stuck using some sort of key rotation technology, which basically generates random WEP keys and changes the WEP key automatically every seconds. This technology was specifically designed into 802.1x, which is probably the best thing out there for Wireless lan security.
Until AES based WEP is deployed, 802.1x is the savior of wireless security. She doesn't mention the specs of it, but with 802.1x you get the WEP key rotation, MAC level authentication, smart card / certificate based authentication (or MD5 challenge username/passwords), all thru RADIUS. 802.1x pushes authentication before association, so one can't even associate with the AP unless they've authenticated first. Pretty nice.
Re:Wireless Things (Score:1)
It's truely amazing what you find when you go up on a roof which already has 5+ carriers on it.
3G is on it's way.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Anywho... AT&T is currently in the process of a MAJOR 3G buildout/expansion. I am not sure what technology they are using for the 3G expansion, maybe someone else has more information on that. If memory serves me right they use IS-195 with is TDMA based on the voice side. It will also be interesting to see how they integrate that with the analog voice channels they have in the A and B cell bands.
Also I think Verizon is about to pop. They have been building a few new switches and I've heard rumors of a major buildout from the Midwest all the way to the West coast. It would not supprise me if they were also going to do an upgrade to 3G while they are at it, or that they might put 3G into their PCS bands they got through the merger. I would love to hear more.
I've also heard that Nextel and Cingular are about to also buildout. I've heard that Nextel is going to implement Wide CDMA with like 15khz of bandwidth... if this is true then it sounds kinda broken...
Wireless... home of some truely interesting shtuff