Tom’s Hardware Guide Networking: Need-To-Know: Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) – Introduction

Tom’s Hardware Guide takes an in-depth look at all that’s new in the WiFi Alliances WPA (WiFi Protected Access) ‘Standard’.

There’s a new kid in town. This time it’s a wireless standard emant specifically for long-haulm (or backbone) links. The standard is called IEEE 802.16, but the popular name seesm to be WiMAX.

The idea is to create a technology that is designed for longer (up to 70 Km’s?) wireless links. Essentially the type of point-to-point links that we’ve all been forcing 802.11b into.

Tim Swanson has a brief write-up and there’s this article from The Inguirer which pretty much cover’s all there is to say:
WiMAX set to overshadow wi-fi

McDonald’s® Wireless

MCD Wireless is the new wireless service from McDonalds in select restaurants in the US and Canda. No Comment

One of the things I really like about a PDA with built-in WiFi, is that you can carry it in your pocket, and have it sniff for wireless networks. When travelling, and wanting to avoid the huge costs of cell-phone based connections, or even commercial HotSpot sertvices, this is a nice way to find a place to connect.

My Palm Tungsten C, will even vibrate in my pocket, when it comes across an open network, thanks to the excellent NetChaser software. The problem with that is of course, that WiFi tends to drain the battery of a PDA pretty quickly, and also that the Tungsten C is a bit expensive if all you’re going to use it for is identify networks, before opening up your laptop for some real work

Enter Kensington
Kensington and their newest product the WiFi Finder. It is a small pocket-sized device that has 3 LEDs that will indicate the presence of a wireless network, and show it’s signal strength. Of course, you’d still have to open up your PDA or Laptop to find out whether i is actually possible to connect to the internet through a given wireless network, but it does save you a lot of battery power innthe meantime.

I just got back from a 9-day trip to Vienna. I was there visiting my grandparents, attending a few family get-togethers including grandad’s 85th birthday. So since this wasn’t a business trip and there were no presentations planned, I figured this would be agreat trip to test the isefullness of my Palm Tungsten C as a mobile office.

You see, the Tungsten C has WiFi built in, and Vienna, due to the existence of metronet is probably one of the most WiFi’ed cities in the world, including a number of cafés within walking distance of the apartment we borrowed for the week, in downtown Vienna.

I’ve used metronet before with my lap-top, and apart for the horrible pricing for occasional users like myself (who are left with only the prepaid version of their product), their service seems to be ok.

On the way to and from Vienna, I also had the opportunity to test the commercial WiFi networks at the Copenhagen Airport and the Vienna Airport (well almost anyway).

Read on for a mini-survey of these services.
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ROAM – Home Page

The British Radio Telecommunications Agency is reviewing options on what to do with 2 narrow slivers of GSM spectrum in the 1800MHz band. And one of the options is to open it up for u8nlicensed, regulated use.
My good friend Julian is trying to gather some momentum around this, by gathering the Open Spectrum people into answering to this proposal.

License-free spectrum in the GSM band is such an awesome concept. Set up your own GSM cell, link it to VoIP, and when you’re at home, you can uswe your existing GSM phone to talk at Voice-over-IP rates.

If you’re Interested, this is the place to visit: ROAM – Home Page

Cory also blogged this over the weekend.

The uk radio authority is running a consultation process on what to do with the sidebands of the 1800Mhz spectrum. These bands formed a safety band around the 1800Mhz frequencies that are used for mobile phones. Its been decided that these saftey bands are no longer necessary so the spectrum is being freed up.

The UK Radio Authority is requesting comments on whether to make the spectrum license exempt and operated in much the same way as 802.11 (WiFi) – so you wouldn’t need a spectrum license to set up your own network.

This would mean for instance that anyone could set up a local GSM network.

http://boingboing.net/2003_06_01_archive.html#200443141

OK,
So Reboot was friday, and between then and now I’ve been stoned once, seriously drunk once, and had a great day yesterday with Signe (it was her birthday), and our families.

It’s monday now, and i’m not sure exactly how much my memory of Reboot has been influenced by the events of the weekend, but I am sure I found it an invigorating, interesting event in general, with some pretty good speeches.

As mentioned, I didn’t blog live, partially because the blog-tools on my Palm Tungsten C were giving me no end of trouble, and partially because, frankly I don’t type very well

But here are a few opinions about some of the speakers, and some general notes on the days events.

Cory Doctorow | blog
The day started off with Cory warning us about the nightmare that is IP law, copyright and Digital Rights Management. Just like last year, it was an inspired speech, and Cory’s rendition is wonderful. Guan has a nice write-up of what he heard.

The key message that came across was that we need to act now before the US and Europe shred the net to pieces with ridiculous, pointless, police-state-style copyright protection. Oh, and that the solution currently advocated by the EFF is a compulsive license on music heard online. In other words, a similar solution as the one used for music on the radio. Somewhere there is a collection point, and each user either directly or through some fee, pays a monthly for free rights to music on-line. I’m no expert and really don’t know how much sense this makes, but in Cory’s words there’s a compelling argument.
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Ben Hammersley