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Intel's 802.11A Wireless: 5x Faster 209

Posted by CmdrTaco from the guess-i-spoke-too-soon-dad dept.
Jaben writes: "Intel today released the first 802.11A wireless LAN devices which offer more than a fivefold increase in speed over the current 802.11B. as soon as more devices get onto the market this new technology will really make wireless a possible alternative instead of a neat item to play with."
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Intel's 802.11A Wireless: 5x Faster More

Intel's 802.11A Wireless: 5x Faster

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  • COST!!! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by clinko ( 232501 )
    I keep saying it, if one company would make this cheap it wouldn't be just a toy. Cost is the main problem with wireless, and why I haven't adopted it.

    *YET*

    :)
    • On the other hand, 802.11a is not that much more expensive than 802.11b.

      And you can use the gigahertz cordless phones and microwaves without worying about it messing with your wireless connectivity, even though you mostly just have to wory about the gigahertz phones.

      Which means that I have another few months to wait, so that I don't get the early-adopter tax on the 802.11a units, before I go out and see about picking up Wireless Ethernet kit. ;)
      • And you can use the gigahertz cordless phones and microwaves without worying about it messing with your wireless connectivity, even though you mostly just have to wory about the gigahertz phones.

        Does this information come from anything reliable or perhaps your own experience? I just ask because I've been using 802.11b hub/cards for months in my house (and at work) and I've never noticed any issues with my connection.
        • I do know that the Microwave one is more along the lines where if you have interference from it, you probably should be worying about getting baked by standing in front of it instead of dropping packets.

          But the last time it came up on Slashdot, people were chiming in that certain brands of phones really suck when used in conjunction with Wireless Ethernet. Which makes sense. They are using the exact same band, which will degrade the signal to varying extents.

          Of course, consumer reports found that the gigahertz phones tend to perform worse than the equivelently featured 900MHz phone. But the manufacturers have their hearts set on the gigahertz phones, so they are making sure that the 900MHz ones suck.
        • Something reliable - the frequencies used. 802.11b uses the same 2.4Ghz freq. space used by high-end portable phones. 802.11a, in contrast, uses the 5Ghz band.

    • Re:COST!!! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cost is NOT the main problem with wireless, esp. wireless networking. A $200 one time cost for the access point with $100 NICs is nothing for a lot of networks.

      Don't talk about Joe Public--he don't care about no stinkin wireless even if it was cheap. It's the folks that want to play with the stuff that are all excited by it.

      The main problem? It's the line of sight requirement, or, to put it another way, the limited area of coverage.

      I'd love to set up cells of networks with friends in the neighborhood, but the few hundred feet limitation sucks. And if I want to direct it to a friend's tower or another location, I need line of site, which is not common in surburbia or even many rural locations between two networks who want to hook up.

      Solve those issues, and I would have been an adopter. My neighborhood is entirely DLC'd. No DSL. No cable modem. Satellite--well, bleh. Meanwhile, I have 2 T1 equivalent connections 1.5 miles away. Hell, they're even on a hill. But it's on the crest on the wrong side to where they need to go. Zoning laws prevent towers of the height necessary (and it be damn ugly if it was allowed.)

      I would have been a long-time adopter of wireless products. Everyone in my neighborhood would be as well. I could set up VPNs with adjacent neighborhoods. Use cell technology to bypass providers. But the thing is, the range is fine if you focus and direct the antennae, but with too many common interruptions, like trees, roads, hills, squirrels, you get big problems.

      I'm still waiting on Cisco's VOFDM or whatever that was on /. a while back that did not require line of site. Unfortunately, when I read the info that was available back then, it sounded like it was targetted at ISPs and businesses, not the home market.

      Solve the line of site issue and you'd get big adoption, since you can then bypass providers almost regardless of the characteristics of the land that you live on (well, unless you live on the side of a mountain).

    • Have you actively priced this? Cheap access points are in the sub- $100 on pricewatch. PCMCIA cards are down to half that. As a hobbyist, this is well within your reach... as an IT guy for some business or another, if the price is stopping you, I'd bail out now, they're going under. Businesses should see something as cheap when it's still 20 times too expensive for me to buy/consider.

      And don't try to tell me that you need more than one cardbus nic... that's BS too. Certainly 802.11 is cool for networking your laptop so you can surf while watching TV in the living room, or even to give the PDA some real connectivity. But if you're saying it's too expensive to network your house with it, the time you spent whining was enough to wire it properly in cat5... the way things oughtta be done.
      • I've found that the best way to create a network is to have your laptop systems use wireless and your desktops use the wired "backbone".

        Our three laptops and print server are all wireless but our desktops are all hardwired.
    • "I keep saying it, if one company would make this cheap it wouldn't be just a toy. Cost is the main problem with wireless, and why I haven't adopted it. "

      Well, 802.11b stuff from Linksys is DIRT cheap right now at Staples. Their AP's with the built in DSL/Cable router are $100.00 cheaper than last month! I'm buying as many as possible. I'm posting right now, using my ap, and I must say I love it, worth every penny! Besides, there's nothing like reading /. while on the can. ;)

  • 5x more secure? (Score:4, Funny)

    by DaveBarr ( 35447 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @05:59PM (#2556035) Journal
    When are we going to get a technology that's 5x more secure?
    • Secure? Dont you know? We can make every 802.11 to be public access [slashdot.org] now. It's all about being neighborly, and using a cool perl script to manage your firewall dynamically.

      Letting everyone in to your house makes them less likely to steal.

    • they have a product that is 5x more secure its called cat 5

    • When are we going to get a technology that's 5x more secure?

      The trick is to know your technology - if you want security, use a secure medium!

      Even if your physical layer is insecure (which will invariably be the case with this sort of technology), you can always implement security at higher layers. Don't want someone to know you're transmitting pr0n? Then encrypt it at both ends at the transport layer (ever heard of https??).

      Please, someone enlighten me as to why, exactly, 802.11 in itself has to be secure!

      • Then encrypt it at both ends at the transport layer (ever heard of https??). Oh, and to do the encryption on servers makes it a bit harder to scale them - since most news sites

        Fine if you own the servers and can get them to use https... but if you don't?

        Please, someone enlighten me as to why, exactly, 802.11 in itself has to be secure!

        It doesn't have to be secure (think IPsec), but I'm sure that everyone can see major benfits of making a technology that openly broadcasts data more secure.

        • Re:5x more secure? (Score:5, Informative)

          by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Monday November 12, 2001 @08:16PM (#2556590)
          It doesn't have to be secure (think IPsec), but I'm sure that everyone can see major benfits of making a technology that openly broadcasts data more secure.

          I don't.

          Picture this:

          I have an incoming connection, a router, and a wireless network. I have several hosts on the wireless network. The router uses IPsec to communicate with the internal hosts, accepts only hosts with known keys, and ignores all other connections.

          What is the advantage of having the wireless protocol itself have the overhead of a separate, redundant security layer? Why would you want the separate software complexity of configuring and tracking allowed-host lists for two protocol layers instead of one?

          Down that path lies having every last protocol layer being complicated by trying to do a job which is handled satisfactorily by every other one. Far better to have a single layer which does security and Does It Right than to complicate 802.11 (or any other low-level protocol) by adding complex functionality which can be handled somewhere else.

          Further, consider: If 802.11 has security built into it, then whenever that security is broken, 802.11 (and the hardware that uses it) needs to be changed; same for every other low-level layer. Much better to have only one higher-level layer to keep current/secure (and have to swap out the router and install new endpoint drivers in my theoretical example, but not have to replace the wireless hardware).

    • Re:5x more secure? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cymen ( 8178 ) <cymenvig@gmail. c o m> on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:44PM (#2556238) Homepage
      IPSec. Why waste your time with anything else? I really want a guide for getting Linux with FreeSwan to talk to FreeBSDs IPSec (using racoon?). There are a number of guides to getting IPSec working on Windows 2000, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc... Here are a few links:
      [uni-erlangen.de]

      How to setup IPsec interoperable for Linux, OpenBSD and PGPNet
      Replacing WEP With IPsec [rt.fm]

      Why does IPSec with Linux seem like such a hack? FreeSwan is pretty annoying - why don't they just get IPSec into the kernel and go from there? Instead there appears to be a megapatch. It just makes me nervous. It's probably ok but man... Also, while I'm bitching, IPSec is a bit of a pain - or at least the implementations are. It doesn't need to be this complicated.

      • Re:5x more secure? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DaveBarr ( 35447 )
        IPSec. Why waste your time with anything else?
        • Because Joe Home User has no hope of being able to set up and use IPsec securely anytime soon
        • Because IPsec does almost nothing to help protect your system or network from attack. (so what you have no cleartext data for someone to sniff? Someone can still hack your lan and your system)
        • Because there's an immense installed base of devices and systems with no IPsec support
        • Because there's more to the world than IP
        Joe Home user shouldn't have to be a network security export in order to use wireless technology safely. We need technologies that you can turn on and are safe out of the box. Has years of unsecure crap out of the box from Microsoft so warped our sense of reality and truth?

        • Re:5x more secure? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cymen ( 8178 )
          Because Joe Home User has no hope of being able to set up and use IPsec securely anytime soon

          Good point. But...

          Because IPsec does almost nothing to help protect your system or network from attack. (so what you have no cleartext data for someone to sniff? Someone can still hack your lan and your system)

          How exactly are they going to be hacking the LAN? Grabbing IP addresses? That can be fixed... Nothing will be 100% but at least it'll be much much better than it is now.

          Because there's an immense installed base of devices and systems with no IPsec support

          Sure is... But...

          Because there's more to the world than IP

          No there isn't. Least not anything that I care about... But seriously - what other protocols do you think are important today?

          Of course Joe Home User is going to be screwed but IPSec can be simplified extensively it shouldn't be a problem. The devices that don't support IPSec are almost worthless to Joe Home User so just toss 'em. Have an Ad-Hoc network using IPSec with Windows and they should be fine. Sure people without any brains or interest will have problems but what else is new? If they get hacked and their data is important they'll pay someone to fix it.

          As I understand it IPSec can solve most of the security problems. Sure it would be nice if the specs were updated for 802.11b and new firmware was released to fix this security prolems but *RIGHT NOW* there isn't anything else. What are *YOU* going to do right now to stop people from sniffing your WEP encoded passwords (in my case my password is in cleartext when sent to my UW IMAP server, of course I'm moving to something else but in the meantime)...

          I would agree that 802.11* security needs to be greatly enhanced but in the meantime IPSec is a viable option for many people. And it is a available right now.
        • ...we would all share and enjoy secure communication. Everyone focuses on Tunnel Mode ipsec without paying attention to other possibilities in the specification. Linux FreeS/WAN, the BSD's, and even Win2K all support both Tunnel and Transport Mode ipsec, why don't more people use this stuff? Though, honestly, why the FreeW/AN folks don't use a standard IKE daemon for key exchange is beyond me....

          I guess we'll all have to wait for IPV6 before this stuff becomes ubiquitous. But there's really no reason why an end user need worry about secure communications across the internet. If everyone had the infrastructure (local daemons) for key exchange and ipsec it would be entirely hidden from the user and totally secure point to point. No more need for wrapping various protocols through SSL pipes... which is an obnoxious hack IMO. The ipsec guys have it right. Setting up a secure communication point to point should be completely transparent to the end user, and given ubiquitous support ipsec would be just that simple.

          So your "Average Joe" argument is worthless. Your second argument about securing local systems is beside the point and not relevant to secure communications across an insecure network. Your third point that there is already a huge installed base of IPV4 systems without ipsec support is, unfortunately, the truth. The point that "there is more to the world than IP" is yet another meaningless statement. There is more to the world than a woman, beer, and dinner. But I'm not about to turn down dinner with Guinness and a date anytime soon.

          JMO,
          --Maynard

      • Re:5x more secure? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by psamuels ( 64397 )
        Why does IPSec with Linux seem like such a hack? FreeSwan is pretty annoying - why don't they just get IPSec into the kernel and go from there? Instead there appears to be a megapatch.

        Because Linus lives in the US, and Linux is thus distributed from the US, and until relatively recently, it wasn't legal to put IPsec source on a public FTP server in the US.

        Now it appears to be legal, assuming you follow particular procedures, and kernel.org [kernel.org] does explicitly say that they are hosting crypto software now. I guess the kernel development process hasn't caught up to reality yet.

  • Intel is not the *first* (Score:3, Informative)

    by supz ( 77173 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:01PM (#2556041) Homepage
    I was looking around SMC's [smc.com] site a few weeks ago and they had already released an 802.11a wireless access point [smc.com].
    • Their web site says that they've announced that ALPS will be using their chipset; I don't remember who else will be using it.
    • Didn't /. post another article on proxim releasing the first of the 802.11a products like a month ago? I remember reading it here, because I called their company and got a kit from them to try out at work. I think it was about ~$450 for two cards and ~$860 for the AP. They said the AP won't ship till the end of this month though. I received the cards today and gave it a test try. I transfered a ~730Mb divx movie from laptop to laptop through sftp connection between them in adhoc mode. I think it topped out at about ~800Kbps transfer rate and the laptops were about 3 feet from each other. I had the 2x software compression technology on as well to try and boost the speed, but considering it was a) a compressed movie b) ssh compression and c) using 2x compression from proxim, it's hard to tell how much it would help. They claim they can get 108Mbps with optimal compression on files sent. If anyone wants to learn more about how proxim's stack up, let me know and I'll let you know how well it works through their APs when they arrive.
      • Try it without SSH, it slows down significantly. 800 Kbps is very dissappointing..

      • Laptop speeds limited (Score:4, Interesting)

        by BarefootClown ( 267581 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @07:47PM (#2556473) Homepage

        Glad somebody else has noticed this. I have an 802.11b network at home, and another at work; I use them to keep my (and my roommates') laptop(s) on the network without having to drag 100+ feet of Cat5 around the place. Do I feel limited by using "only" 11Mbps? Hell, no! I rarely break 1Mbps--on any network. I used to use a 100Mbps wired network, with a decent NIC in my laptop (3Com hardware NIC, not a WinNIC), a decent 100MBps switch, and still rarely broke 1Mbps, even with my desktop machines running closer to 50 Mbps. Why? In short, laptops suck. Seriously--when you're looking for performance, you don't look at laptops. The hard drives are much slower than anything in a desktop, the bus speeds are slower (my laptop has a 66MHz FSB; my desktop has a 133, with DDR RAM); everything is slower and scaled back. 11Mbps is no limit to a laptop, in my experience. It would be a limit to a desktop terminal connected to the WLAN, but most people/companies don't use wireless for desktops.

        Granted, we could probably saturate the WLAN if we had twenty or so people all trying to pull large files, but that condition has its own flaws: 1) how often does the situation occur--even in a meeting, with 30 people attending, how many of them are trying to pull big files at a given time (usually none...), and 2) how many clients can an access point actually handle? Most of the ones with which I'm familiar (consumer equipment, admittedly) get flaky around 20-30 people; any more, and you need another AP--add another AP, and you effectively double the bandwitdh, as you're splitting the load across two different AP's, each on a different channels. Also remember than many networks are still only 10 Mbps, because of the high infrastructure cost of upgrading a major network (particularly if recabling is required); on such a network, the bit behind the AP is already the bottleneck, so it's not that big of a deal if the WLAN is only 11Mbps.

        In short, yeah, it's neat, it's cool, but it's not that big of a deal, as long as laptops don't get a major bus upgrade. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

    • One more note: the only thing that would make 802.11a catch on even quicker is if the cards were backwards compatible with 802.11b networks. This would provide the ultimate in compatibility for places that just spent millions in wireless infrastructure. Alas though the technology is not compatible which means the screw to consumers and a heavier purse for the companies. Maybe sometime soon the technology will be able to co-exist in one card...but as soon as that happens, there will be a newer faster cheaper card out...It's a never ending battle that is fun to fight.
    • Actually they say that Intel is the first to release a "suite" of products.. as far as I know the existing products only consist of the PCMCIA cards. Tricky wording, but it looks like it fooled the brilliant, sleuthy, /. editors.. and you.

      Brett

  • what the ??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spike666 ( 170947 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:02PM (#2556045) Journal
    oh, so the 802.11B that i'm using at home now is not real? excuse me, but... it works. its good. and even if i do have to be a wireless nazi about who gets in, it is a working feasible technology.

    and cost wise... since i'm using an apple powerbook, the card is only $99

    oh and by the way, the airport cards they're shipping now are 128bit capable. (no software yet...)

    but it works just fine for me.
    • I agree. 802.11B is more than a net toy, my company has hundreds of people using this technology. It's far more preferable for laptop users than having to have a cat5 cable handy. For the vast majority of users, the current standard is plenty fast enough.
  • because, as I see it, its not just the corporate sector that's primarily hooked onto the wireless network, but also the universities that thrive on it. So, even though a 5x speed increase may look promising, convincing entire hordes of the traditionally sluggish-to-growth universities to shift from IEEE 802.11b to 802.11a will take a while.

  • Speed isn't why wireless is still a "toy!" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NickV ( 30252 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:03PM (#2556057)
    It's not speed that makes wireless a toy. It's the cost! I don't consider an 11mbps wireless connection a "toy" and if it wasn't for the costs associated, I'd jump on right now.

    Come on, seriously... alot of us are still on 10mbps connections to the Internet. 11mbps is far from a toy, and the speed bump will be nice but that's NOT the issue. 54mbps, 11mbps... who cares! what about the cost!?
    • 802.11b card: $59.95 [yahoo.com] (2x$59.95 + $12.95 shipped: $132.85)
      ISA to PCMCIA adapter: $24 [ebay.com] ($24 + $8 shipped: = $32)

      $164.85

      So maybe a bit pricey compared to two good PCI 10/100 NICs but it isn't all that bad...

      note: I have no relation to the eBay deal for the PCMCIA to ISA adapters but I did buy two and they work great with freebsd (haven't tried it with linux yet but it should be fine, will try soon). Also the eBay sale is $24 buy it now with 200 there, it isn't an auction. That guy also seems to sell some interesting 802.11 antennas (see his ebay store).
      • A few more details:

        The idea is put the ISA to PCMCIA adapter in a computer running some sort of *nix (mine is in a FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE server) and put one of the 802.11b cards in there. Then put the other card in the laptop (in my case the laptop is running Debian unstable). It works great in IBSS Ad-Hoc mode. I happen to be using Dell TrueMobile cards (rebranded Orinoco) with 128 bit WEP but knowing what I know about WEP now and how cheap the 64 bit WEP Orinoco cards are, I would simply buy the 64 bit WEP ones and run a secure protocol like IPSec on top. I'm planning to do this but I have to find the time to figure out how to get Linux w/ FreeSwan to talk to FreeBSD's IPSec (or find a nice easy HOWTO, links appreciated).

        Also it is nice to have the real Orinoco cards instead of the rebranded ones because the Orinoco firmware flasher won't flash cards not branded as Orinoco. So I can't flash my Dell TrueMobile cards to the lastest Orinoco firmware. Hopefully someone will come out with a hack...
      • 802.11b card: $59.95 [yahoo.com] (2x$59.95 + $12.95 shipped: $132.85) ISA to PCMCIA adapter: $24 [ebay.com] ($24 + $8 shipped: = $32)

        $164.85

        Checking in bug fixes from the hot tub: priceless.

    • I think this is similar to broadband: at first I was the only one who wanted it, but now no one in my familly would think of using dial-up. I started my (wired) LAN a few months ago with 10Mbps, but now I'm on a 100Mbps segment - I just transfered the 30MB fullscreen lord of the rings trailed in 3 seconds (after downloading it to my server while I ate). Also, with wireless all stations in range will get all the packets - that's nice if you want to sniff the network, but I would really like to have a switch instead of hubs to get the maximal bandwidth out of my network. With wireless you can't get anything equivalent to switches.
    • It's not speed that makes wireless a toy. It's the cost! I don't consider an 11mbps wireless connection a "toy" and if it wasn't for the costs associated, I'd jump on right now.

      I believe that Intel and whoever enters this newly expanded area will first be looking at the business sector as customers. From that viewpoint, 11mbmps is rather slow. Most of these guys are running 100mbps, if not gigabit in some newer places.

      At work I can set systems up doing parallel builds, all drawing sources from one or more other computers, and blasting others that are used for testing GUIs. This causes my 100mb hub to hit max capacity frequently. As the manufacturers of these devices try and sell more and more businesses on the "convenience" and "no-wire-maintenance" aspect of these devices, speed becomes more important. Sure, noone cares at home sharing 2-3 machines on their broadband link, but 50 or 500 people working together with T1 access to the world can push a lot of bits around.

    • Sure, if you're trying to connect a couple of machines in the same room at home, $200 and even $100 card are a toy, though connecting machines on different floors of a house may or may not be easy.

      But offices are much different - wiring cubicles for Cat5 and running it back to a phone closet costs money, and hubs that can provide management services (for lots of users) as opposed to simple dumb hubs also costs money, and reconnecting the things every time you play the Shrinking Cubicle Space Game costs money. Especially now that wireless cards are $100 heading for ~$50, and good laptop 100baseT cards are $40, if you're not loading your network heavily, wireless is a big win.

      It's not as strong a case if you're in a file-server-intensive environment, but for typical corporate use, 10 Mbps is enough for a lot of users doing email, printing, and web browsing plus their desktop-based apps. (Of course you'd run 100Mbps for a wired network, now that it's as cheap as 10Mbps.)

      Wireless is also a really convenient approach for office telephones, as long as they don't interfere with wireless data connections, cell phones, microwave ovens, .... Eliminating Moves/Adds/Changes for phones is a big win.

      • But offices are much different - wiring cubicles for Cat5 and running it back to a phone closet costs money,

        But every business has already bitten that cost, and loosing uptime & performance because there is a loose connection in the elevator motor costs an enormous amount of time. To my mind

  • better solution: same hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frothy Walrus ( 534163 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:03PM (#2556059)
    i agree that 802.11a, at 54Mbps, is quite powerful, but i think the consumer would prefer an easier upgrade path: 802.11a requires entirely different hardware from 802.11 because it uses 5GHz instead of 2.5GHz. seeing as 99% of us cannot hose a 10Mbps ethernet for more than a few minutes at a time, i don't think the extra speed is going to justify to the consumer the cost of re-buying all the expensive hardware (new base station, new cards, new range-extender antennas, etc).

    who knows, the market will decide. but i don't see it catching on in the next two years, at least.

    • Re:better solution: same hardware (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:11PM (#2556105) Homepage
      I think you are going to be seeing business users going for this first, not consumers.

      This way, you can have 20 people in a conference room get decent bandwidth and response time while they are all participating in a meeting/training session/etc and still leave bandwidth free for Ed, who's network port was acting up this morning.

      I'm all for 54Mbps because I /can/ hose a 10MBs connection. Well, that, and I don't have the stuff purchased yet, so I'll just wait a little bit and get the 54Mbps gear when I have the cash ready. Maybe they'll have WEP fixed by then, too. ;)

    • Anti-soltution.. and rationale (Score:5, Insightful)

      by d.valued ( 150022 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @07:08PM (#2556329) Journal
      Unless you happen to be some kind of alien (or corporate) super-genius, you can't just take a 5 GHz antenna, slap it onto a 2.4 GHz transmitter, repackage it, and call it 802.11a.

      First off, the componants for a 5GHz transmitter need to be (and are) smaller than the componants for a 2.4GHz system. This is why 2.4GHz phones and 802.11b cards have effective antennas within such a small form factor, and this is also why 11a cards have greater range. The antenna that can be fit into a Type II or CF slot would provide approx. a 10 dB gain (or double the effective radiated power) of the 2.4 antenna. (Besides that, a 5 GHz signal can be sent from a 2.4 GHz antenna with a little shrinking for that gain.)

      The reason the transmitter is smaller is that the signal is much more easily affected by the environment, and by shrinking the distances between componants (and the componants themselves) one reduces that possibility.

      In addition, the hardware has to be capable of handling the increased thoroughput. If you put a 100baseTX card on a Cat4 based network, it ain't gonna get you full bandwidth; likewise, a 10baseT on a Gigabit Ethernet connection can't do squat. 11a's guts are different from 11b's.

      Also... about security in wireless: Let's make this clear. Any form of broadcast-based system, be it wired (like Ethernet) or wireless (802.11x), IS VULNERABLE TO EAVESDROPPING. Security has to be made application-level, like IPsec, SSL, SSH, and not hardware level. Especially if everyone has access to (sufficiently similar) hardware.
      • Excuse me, but any antenna on a PC board in a pcmcia slot can only hope for unity gain. a 5/8 wave antenna is only 3DB gain and anything eles like a colinear or other advanced omnidirectional designs cannot be etched onto a pc board.

        The lucent wavelan cards have a -5DB gain antenna on them... you actually lose signal strength in them.
    • But then some people who are broadband-for-life users may not have the average throughput of an ISDN connection. I occasionally sent a few gigs over my LAN, and at 100Mbps half-duplex I find it a bit slow. In plus, wireless has nothing comparable to a switch: every station in range gets all the packets, which slows the connection.

      If I was buying wireless hardware I wouldn't expect to be able to upgrade the speed cheaply, but I think anyone who's using it for something more than consumer internet connection sharing will see speed differences between the two common speeds of wired and wireless networks. Whether they will find it worth upgrading is another question...
    • I don't think the Slashdot crowd realizes what 11Mbps means with this wireless stuff because they haven't used it, tested it and played with it.

      11Mbps is the optimum 'media' transport speed. As these things operate in half-duplex mode, effective is half that. Add your overhead and error correcting and you have an effective rate of closer to 3 or 4 Mbps. When you're close to the Access Point. Move a little farther, find a wall or microwave oven and it is even lower.

      A proper 10Mbps LAN does feel faster than these cards unless you're using them as a gateway to your 1.5 Mbps cablemodem. Corporations (the ones that are surviving these tough times anyway) are going to be happier with the higher speed stuff(until they realize security should be an option).

      But thats all the better for those at home that want to chill on the couch and net-surf with the laptop. Prices on the 'slow' stuff are going to drop further and in the end, you're right, they are perfectly useable speeds as is.

  • 5x faster (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 )
    to hack [usethesource.com] : doesn't 802.11a use RC4 like 802.11b ?

    • to hack [usethesource.com] : doesn't 802.11a use RC4 like 802.11b ?

      Yep. And the time to hack is directly related to the number of packets seen, so 5x faster is 5x faster to hack, assuming saturation.

      BTW, just in case WEP is giving RC4 a bad name, it should be pointed out that RC4 is a very good, very secure stream cipher, when used correctly. WEP just violates the cardinal rule of RC4 which is "Thou shalt discard the first n bytes after rekeying". The 'n' in question varies over time as attacks improve, but RC4 is fast enough that most systems that use it set n=1024. Massive overkill, but that's okay; RC4 is so fast, it's almost free.

  • not actually first?? (Score:2, Informative)

    by sr105 ( 229540 )
    Wasn't there an article [slashdot.org] on here a while back about another company that was delivering 802.11a "first"?

  • Since when (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    was /. a PR news site?

  • microwave (Score:2, Funny)

    by frantzen ( 137260 )
    but does it interfere with my microwave? faster net versus no programming food. thats a hard one.
    • If you run your feedline through a sufficiently hefty amplifier, I'm sure you could cook while surfing eliminating the need for a microwave! Fixing dinner would require at least an email check or two. :-) (Just don't stand to close...)

  • 802.11b isn't a toy (Score:5, Informative)

    by tonyc.com ( 520592 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:07PM (#2556085) Homepage
    "[T]his new technology will really make wireless a possible alternative instead of a neat item to play with."

    Excuse me, but an 11 megabit wireless connection isn't quite worthless just yet. How many home users, even with DSL or cable modems, are pushing this limit? And how many offices are still using 10baseT LANs, or 10baseT hubs on even faster LANs? To all these users, 802.11b is still 10% overkill. Will 400% overkill make us any happier or more productive?

    Plus, 802.11a is much more power-hungry, making it a decidedly unattractive choice for wireless PDAs. What say ye?
    • Ahh, but the rub is that because of the shared nature of the wireless medium. You only really get about 4-5mb out of an 11mb wireless connection. You don't get full "wire speed" (ironic, isn't it) because you can't switch wireless like you can a wired system. Thus there is a "is the medium clear?" kind of traffic.
      • If a company has multiple access points, though, the wireless systems roam between access points and there end up being fewer clients associated per AP. Also, some access points (like the Dell AP-1000) have two wireless cards with each acting as an antenna. This also segregates the client base.

  • Not the first (Score:5, Informative)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:08PM (#2556091) Homepage
    Despite what this article says, Intel is not the first company to release 802.11a devices. Proxim [proxim.com] has the Harmony line of 802.11a devices, and has for some time.

    Slashdot needs a fact checker.

    • Re:Not the first (Score:2, Informative)

      by CaseyHaxor ( 323376 )
      For those of you interested, I wrote a review a while back on Proxim's 802.11a / 2X cards. These are the radios that are 802.11a compatible and also claim a blazing 108mbps bitrate.

      http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/ProximR ev iew

  • What nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by benploni ( 125649 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:09PM (#2556095) Journal
    The whole premise of this story is wrong. 802.11b is NOT a toy; it a very useful technology. 11Mb/s is not to be sneezed at. Who are you kidding? 99% of network apps are thrilled to run at that speed.

    Second, 802.11a has issues of its own. Most importantly, it is WAY shorter range, and can be blocked by a wet piece of paper. 802.11b is so robust, people have run over several miles (with special antennas).

    More importantly, networking is *infrastucture* and displacing infrastructure is hard. All those laptops with builtin 802.11b arent going away. Neither are all those deployed Access points.

    I forsee 802.11b having continued success, at even cheaper prices.

    • Re:What nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cmowire ( 254489 )
      Last I heard, the 802.11a gear had less range in paper, i.e. you can't get the 5x speed at especially good range, but the range within which you can get a decent signal in the multi-megabit range is actually at least as good as 802.11b. As in, it has more bandwidth to degrade over.

      Of course, what could also happen is we see dual 802.11a/b gear. Which is fine for a number of reasons, including the multi-mile range with antenas, the lowered power consumption (If that is, in fact the case) for PDA usage, and upgradability.
    • Second, 802.11a has issues of its own. Most importantly, it is WAY shorter range, and can be blocked by a wet piece of paper. 802.11b is so robust, people have run over several miles (with special antennas).

      Short range prevents network leakage and enhances security, which can be a good thing.


  • Lets hope it brings prices on 802.11b gear down a little. I'm looking forward to doing some Wardriving [netstumbler.com] in Chicago next summer. :)

    Cheers,

  • Proxima also has an 802.11a product (Score:3, Informative)

    by hackman ( 18896 ) <[bretthall] [at] [ieee.org]> on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:12PM (#2556112) Homepage
    Proxim also has a line of 802.11a stuff, possibly a little further along. They have an Access Point that should be available at the end of November roughly, but the cards are available now supposedly. There is a company called Luna Communications handling the early release stuff.. Lunacom.com [lunacom.com]

    Here's the link to Proxim [proxim.com]

    We're planning on getting a setup soon, the claim of 54Mbit/s from the x2 technology sounds way too good to be true! Anyone have experience on actual speeds that they get? I've never even gotten close to 1/2 of the 802.11b bandwitdh maximum (11Mbit/s).

    Brett

  • Intel Not 1st to Market with 802.11a (Score:3, Informative)

    by PhotonSphere ( 193108 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:12PM (#2556114) Homepage Journal
    Proxim [proxim.com] has had 802.11a wireless gear out for a little while now. Their Harmony 802.11a FastWireless Kit [proxim.com] is a prime example. In fact, we have an 802.11a wireless node up in our community wireless freenet.

    While the improvement in throughput is excellent, it comes at a cost of range. The 5.4GHz spectrum does not carry as far as the 2.4GHz band, used in 802.11b. This difference will be felt the most in long-range applications, whether it be a directional long-shot or the more omni-directional community wireless networks such as BAWUG [bawug.org] or Houston-Wireless [www.houston-wireless].

    --
    The Sphere Guerilla Net [photonsphere.com]
    Space City, TX

  • 802.11b wasn't much of a problem for Linux - the cards look about like an Ethernet card, with some extra frobs you can tweak if you want to (e.g. the so-called security features, and features that tell you how the RF sections are doing.) I'm told that 802.11a is much different - it expects much more driver support from the operating system, somewhat the same way that Winmodems do. Some of the chip and card makers are working on Linux driver support, but before using 802.11a you'll need to find out how much you really get from them, and when - they've got an obvious market priority to get Windows working first.

  • Bandwidth isn't what we need (Score:4, Insightful)

    by melanarchy ( 109486 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @06:16PM (#2556127) Homepage
    "wireless a possible alternative instead of a neat item to play with."
    I feel that the biggest downside to current wireless is not the speed, which even at the 6.0mbps that I was getting in a lecture hall this morning while I was in #coverage in slashnet being obsessive about today's crash, but the range. Just under 500ft away I was getting 0% reception. Most people use very little bandwidth the majority of the time they are using any sort of networking and in most cases it is reliability rather then speed that is the limiting factor. Intel's site doesn't say anything about an increase in range only in speed, and as nice it will be to be able to stream audio, video, and serve a webpage over a wireless connection I do not really see the need for 55mbps over 11mbps.

    When we start to see antenna's that are more then just useless screens and reliability without line of site is when you'll see more of a push to wireless.
    • Well, of course you're right. The reason to choose 55Mbs over 11mbs is that you might need it because it's shared. If you're in a lecture hall (like you were) and everybody was connected you can easily use up 11Mbs.

      Anyway, this probably isn't news to you and I agree, *I* need more range, not bandwidth.
  • hmmm... how far will this standard trasmit with a reliable connection... my school doesnt like it as it is that theres a network cable connected to my laptop in my locker... will i be albe to set up a webcam connected to my laptop connect to the lab computers with 802.11a so i can see whos in my locker...? those stupid mexicans are really buggin me... what about the worlds first 802.11a controlled paintball gun operated via the web... hmm....
  • Proxim has been really hot on 802.11a technology because, even though they were the first with the old 1.5Mbps tech, they were last with 802.11b.

    The big question: Does anyone know? Is Intel just an OEM for Proxim's 802.11a product? (Proxim also had new product announcements today) Intel OEMs other wireless stuff from Proxim.

    Maybe Proxim will be the big player in 802.11a.
    BOTH Intel's and Proxim's new products are based on the ATHEROS 802.11a chipset.
    • no - but most of the cards have been based on the same chipsets: Prism line, and the Hermes line. The prism-based chipset is quite mature, however, each manufacturer adds custom extensions to each card. Hermes is the much more pricey version - - All (most?) of the lucent/cisco/aironet/orionco cards are based on this.

      Proxim has done some really wacky stuff with 802.11a - - They have an "overdrive" version of 802.11a, called x2. It's able to operatate at 100mbits, in a lab. This is not a standard, and I would stay away from proxim based cards. I don't know what chipset the new intel based cards are using, but I'd bet it's not something they made.
  • Can anyone recommend a NIC with a decent range to conduct war driving? I'm looking at the vulnerability assessment angle here. Ideally I'd like a NIC supported by Linux and Windows 2000. AirSnort [sourceforge.net], supports only a handful of cards (AirSnort uses the Prism2 chipset). No card listed seems to win praise for its range, based on user reviews I've read. Can anyone comment on this?

    Helevius

  • Intel has had these out for months. THey just had some promo stuff going on at comdex. Here at seattle wireless, we've been looking at these from september on...


    http://www.seattlewireless.net/archive/ezmlm.cgi?m ss:3330:200109:jmocpdnheipoknihcbpa [seattlewireless.net]
  • I submitted/posted a link to Proxim's site about this a while ago.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/16/132122 4 [slashdot.org]

  • One of the big trade offs though is that in using 5ghz instead of 2.4ghz the range for the same output power is cut to about 1/4 that of 802.11b

    Speed is great when inside your house for long hauls we need to be looking forward to 802.11g and such... 802.11g is targeted at only 20mbs but the range stays the same with the lower frequency range.
  • Unless 802.11a fixes the totally broken WEP security used with "better" 802.11b products, I don't view this as an improvement. I'm pissed that I spent so many $$ on wireless products with "128 bit encryption", only for that encryption standard to be found practically useless due to fundamental implementation flaws. I sincerely hope a new generation of wireless users aren't faced with the same bogus problems. The link to the Intel site provides no useful info on this subject, nor do any of the articles on the web that I dug up.

    Even if 802.11a fixes those problems, I'll still be pissed if they don't come out with a new standard for 802.11b (and a firmware upgrade for my Lucent wireless cards that implements the fix). I don't feel like throwing my expensive wireless hardware in the trash just yet.
    • You can't assume that ***ANY*** wireless connectivity will be secure - - - Even with things like WEP, you should use SSH/ssl/etc. Also, it takes over 1 million packets to get a 128bit key on 802.11b. If you change your key once a day (or once a month even), then you are safe. There are tools for automaticly updating the keys, and it's a good idea anyway. If you are worried about security, take your head out of your $#$@ and get it setup right. Don't blame the vendors/protocol because you have only one layer of security. It's just like you left a cat5 cable hanging out of your office, and blaming the hub manufacturer that it's their fault when you get hacked. Gimmie a break.

  • what a stupid thing to say (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this new technology will really make wireless a possible alternative instead of a neat item to play with.

    What a stupid thing to say. I use wireless on a regular basis, and I don't consider it a neat toy at all. It's a very real, very effective tool. Similarly, I could pretend that all your "fast ethernet" is just a toy in comparison to myrinet.
  • 1 megabyte pdf on the range of 802.11a [atheros.com] This pdf talks about the range of 802.11a and how they tested it, and it also includes some cool charts comparing it to 802.11b. It turns out the farther your computer is away from the base station the slower the connection is.

  • Mercedes-Benz rolls out drive-by Ethernet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by A Commentor ( 459578 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @07:24PM (#2556392) Homepage
    From infoworld: Mercedes-Benz has 802.11a in a car [infoworld.com]... Interesting article even though it was 'rejected' by /.

    Mercedes-Benz showcases a car of the near future with a built-in wireless Ethernet 802.11a connection that will capture high-speed bursts of data from roadside transceivers as the car hurtles down the highway.

  • "possible alternative"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sfe_software ( 220870 ) on Monday November 12, 2001 @09:07PM (#2556744) Homepage
    I never thought 802.11b was that slow. I've been using it for my laptop since February, and at 11 megabits, it's plenty fast enough IMO. Sure, it's not 100 MB/sec but it is wireless...

    If you're refering to range issues (eg, an alternative for more broad coverage), then I'll agree. But for home and office intranet usage, 802.11b is more than suitable. Even with cable/xDSL/T1, it's considerably faster than your external connection anyway...

    The one really good thing that might come of this IMO is that 802.11b products may go way down in price once the faster alternative is made available...

  • This is news? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Luminous Coward ( 445673 )
    Nevermind I've had several legitimate wireless submissions rejected. How is an Intel press release news? (I am now a sour geek).

    If you dig PR, then head to 802.11 Planet [80211-planet.com]. You'll get all the corporate lubing you could ever hope for.

    802.11a is not new, it's been around since 1999. Check the IEEE [ieee.org] website. They have the document available for free download [ieee.org].

  • I run VNC, MP3, video streams, games, and backups over 802.11b. If wireless gets faster, that's nice. But I don't really have a desparate need for it, and I suspect few other peopled do either.
  • 802.11a is not as great as it seems. The range at which you can get 54Mpbs is only 10-15 meters. It's only great if you use it within those distances. 802.11a only offers 11Mbps in the 30-40m range which is half the range of 802.11b @ 11Mbps.

    Many people will want to stick with 802.11b because it will still cost less even if the 802.11a nics are no more expensive. 802.11a means many more access points for the same amount of coverage as a 802.11b network.

    Beware the marketing hype!
  • "11 Mbps should be enough for anyone, forget 802.11a." -- Slashdot posts, 2001.
  • 802.11b is plenty fast enough... for me anyways.
    Hopefully it drives the 802.11 equipment prices way down so I can expand my public wireless node coverage. and possibly set up more point-2-point wireless links. (486 laprops are basically free but 2 wireless cards is danged expensive, then mods for external antennas, etc...)

    Hopefully I'll see some Sub $50.00USD wireless cards available sometime soon... or maybe a native PCI wireless card with Rf connector that is actually supported in linux.

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