While the history of wireless computer networks dates back to the 1970 with the University of Hawaii’s ALOHAnet (I wish we retained that name instead of 802.11x), it has only been during the past, say, 10 years that the technology started to make serious inroads into the consumer market – your home. The latest and greatest variant is 802.11n, and while promoted as the best thing since sliced bread, Frank Ohlhorst has his reservations, and debunks 5 myths concerning 802.11n.The 5 myths are, according to Ohlhorst:
Myth #1: 802.11n is fast!
Myth #2: 802.11n is easy!
Myth #3: 802.11n is inexpensive!
Myth #4: 802.11n offers great coverage!
Myth #5: 802.11n is secure!
Personally, I have issues with anything that is wireless. I’m old-fashioned in that I try to avoid the technology as much as possible, since for most use-cases, it offers more disadvantages than advantages. I don’t have a wireless mouse and/or keyboard, because the fiddling about with batteries (whether it has a charger or not) is too cumbersome, and the lack of a cable doesn’t make it any less so.
When it comes to wireless networking, I use it where it makes sense: mobile devices. My PowerBook uses a wireless connection, but my ‘stationary’ equipment all use good old ethernet cable, because for a desktop machine I simply see no advantages in using wireless networking – only disadvantages. It’s slower, less reliable, costlier, far less secure, and quite problematic on most less-popular operating systems.
What do you all think? What do you use at home? Wireless all around, or do people trip over strands of CAT5 cable draped all over your apartment?
Everyone knows Wired will always have higher and guaranteed speeds.
The fact that it is a shared medium, make all wireless protocols susceptible to security risks. It is up to the user to establish multiple levels of security in addition to Layer II/III security.
Management was always an issue and it varies with vendors. If you get a $49.99 worth access point, ofcourse you will get what you paid for.
Here’s my problem with that..
Home users will ask, “What the F is Layer II/III security?”
There have been some inroads to wireless security that remove the techno babble, but it’s still geared waaaay to far to the nerd than it is the noob.
Unless you’re using say Arch Linux or something advanced you usually don’t need to know crap.
Just write in the password you’re supposed to write in and just let everything be on “auto”(as it by default usually is set on). Usually works in my experience.
EDIT: But yeah, they could drop the geek jargon.
Edited 2008-06-19 21:46 UTC
”
If you get a $49.99 worth access point, ofcourse you will get what you paid for.
”
Unless you fix the router by replacing the factory’s crappity firmware with something that can actualy use the hardware properly (ddwrt, openwrt, tomato). Provided that 50$ or 100$ worth of hardware is enough to support the number of client nodes you’ll be attaching, the alternative software can provide the enterprise class functionality over top of it.
(Ok, probably completely off topic and mostly meant for obscure humour value.. it’s that kind of Friday)
Swedish parliment just voted through something ALOT worse than the patriot act. Ill be leaving internet for good, as well as ill never accept a digital bank payment again. Anyone want my phone? its free.. I will never again pay for broadband wired or wireless.
Edit:
Atleast until i move to some other country outside this blasted “union” wich i would call illegal in all ways.
Norway here i come, expect alot of swedes running for the border to Norway.
Long live Scandia!
Edited 2008-06-19 20:54 UTC
If you’re going overe here get a job at Datatilsynet(http://www.datatilsynet.no/).
They’re the one protecting our privacy, and the police(or similar don’t remember quite) where just in the media for breaking Norwegian privacy laws… so it’s not given that it’s going to stay forever.
That being said: we Norwegians are skeptical as hell to alot of things, including surveillance so hopefully we’re going to keep our privacy.
Actually, one thing that was discussed in the news papers just recently was about US surveillance of Norwegian citizens(they “listen” to the whole internet and not only US right?) and whether the Norwegian government should attempt to protect our privacy.
EDIT: Spelling.
Edited 2008-06-19 21:47 UTC
If it’s like the POTS and cell phone networks, they listen in on all traffic crossing along wires on US soil which means any of those lovely little frames that happen to bounce through US space. It’s not implausable anyhow.
Granted, anything travelling over the wires should be assumed to be readable by the whole internet unless your practicing save hex. (There are only a very few protocols I use unencrypted.)
That’s a bold statement. I’m not sure there’s any law much worse than the so-called “patriot” act….other than the final solution, of course (if that was ever a law). But if a new final solution was ever adopted by the US, it could easily be passed through if it was named the “Patriotic Solution”.
And exactly what has this got to do with 802.11n?
Maybe it does, maybe not but “sweden voted for some law I dont like” isn’t much info to go on.
I didn’t see any mention of laws in the article; what have the polititions made a mess of for you Sweeds over there? Is wireless networking a controlled technology now or some such thing?
For the average home user, the above article is scaremongering to say the least. If you’re browsing sensitive information, it’ll be encrypted via SSL, so there is no security risk. If you’re chatting via AIM/MSN etc. and want to be paranoid, then encrypt the session.
I’ll tell you the biggest security risk for end users; its people who have either stupid passwords or unsecure wireless networks. All these can be solved with selecting from a drop down box in the router configuration; WPA2 plus a decent password.
As for large/big business; replacing wired networks is a pipe dream, and pointless to say the least. Buildings have been designed to accommodate such things. There is a reason for wireless in a home – because people don’t want their house look as though the resident of that house is ‘the lord of the cords’. But in large companies where all this is hidden in walls, under the floor and there are discrete jacks in the wall, I see no point.
Those enterprises who have deployed it, I’ll put money they’re these ‘new age’ and ‘trendy’ companies – I’m sure you’ve seen them; am attempt to make their company ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ with generation Y (or what ever letter we’re up to now).
RE: judgen
I would comment on the situation in Sweden, but I have a feeling, due to my libertarian tendencies, I’ll find my post marked down to negative 100 within seconds.
Edited 2008-06-19 20:57 UTC
And if you’re streaming porn from your “Home Server” to your TV – for crissakes, encrypt it first!… or don’t – your neighbors probably wanna watch it too.
edit: stupid tags…
Edited 2008-06-19 21:23 UTC
Thats assuming one gives out the wpa2 password.
“Thats assuming one gives out the wpa2 password.”
Or assumes one gets the wpa2 password.
“I’ll tell you the biggest security risk for end users; its people who have either stupid passwords or unsecure wireless networks. All these can be solved with selecting from a drop down box in the router configuration; WPA2 plus a decent password. ”
Then this article by Bruce Schneier will probably take you by surprise.
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2…
He does raise an interesting issue; and it was actually raised in a court case a few months ago; whether one is liable if one fails to secure ones own wireless point. For me, I don’t expect there to be a ‘perfect’ security solution, but if WPA2 makes life a little more difficult, then it’ll keep my network safe from almost all hackers trying to log onto it.
With that being said, there is only one other router I’ve ever detected in my area – so I’m pretty safe; it isn’t as though I’m sitting in the CDB or something.
Hackers don’t care about your network. Criminals and skript kiddies may take interest but Hackers have there own hardware and ethics without distinguishing hat colours or falling into the single definition the media likes to sell news papers with.
I know, it’s a small symantec point but some feel it’s still an important distinction without needing to use hat colours or other cute subtitles. We also shouldn’t need to distinquish between breaking and entering or thieft just because it involves a computer tool instead of a crowbar; criminal intent is criminal intent without needing the media buzzwords.
Even the uname/passwd login prompt on this, a technical, website is run over http. This is the second site this week I’ve made mention of it about. If that’s the example set by two technical websites; there’s a whole lot of non-tech websites out there spewing user names and how many of those make site specific accounts?
MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and the other chat clients all send uname/passwd in plain text also even if you use “off the record” or some other enryption for the chat. In the case of the first two, they use your email account for authentication so you can’t even use a protocol specific password; may as well just hang a sign out from saying “this is my email, please hijack my account and use it for whatever you want”.
Damn me and my ethics. I’d have been rich by now if I didn’t develop those pesky things early in life.
Edited 2008-06-20 13:36 UTC
I agree. But I think that is worse is the fact that many people here will also use the same password for this website as they do for their email, internet banking and numerous other facilities. Its shocking that this website doesn’t do logging in via ssl.
It gives me the willies every time I have to use a plaintext login form but some sites are worth it for the limited risk presented. As you add though, most users don’t have a different uname/passwd for each login. Once you get there site account or MSN Chat off the wire you’ve got the keys too the kingdom.
In terms of websites, I think cost is a big part. A self signed cert is not going to be trusted by people who don’t know the website well (or us security geeks for that matter). A CA signed cert means involving a third party for a strictly two party discussion along with the absorbitant cost charged by most CA for the privellege of useing what should have replaced http long ago.
Apartment?… During the last 5 years, I’ve been renovating my house substantially (new exterior siding, interior sheetrock, new floors, new everything) – and thus throwing a piece of conduit in each wall (sometimes more than one) leading to my attic space was a no-brainer at that time.
This way I can add more low-voltage cabling (of any sort) to any given room/wall as needed. I can also someday easily upgrade to CAT-6 or whatever is cheap/standard if I must.
My wife thought I was nuts at first… but I think she understands the convenience now.
I do have a wireless router (a cheap-ass Linksys wrt54g running dd-wrt – in my “wire closet” with the ethernet switch and DSL modem) – but I find that I use it rarely with this setup…
Speed and reliability outweighs convenience – and when the convenience factor is mostly removed — it’s a no-brainer.
My general philosophy is that wireless is best used in situations where wired networking would be impractical/impossible. Wireless is great for temporary connections and/or laptops – but I find it’s still too balky/unreliable for fixed connections. And when speed is important, I find that plain ‘ol 10/100 is normally faster than even 802.11n (to say nothing of Gigabit ethernet).
Then there’s the security issues. E.g., the main telco in this part of Canada (Aliant) currently installs ADSL modems that also act as wireless routers – but they only support WEP encryption, which can be cracked by anyone resourceful enough to google “wep cracking tutorial”.
Or there’s WPA/WPA2, which isn’t supported by many devices (E.g., wifi VoIP phones).
Baud how I hate those crappity router boxes; I’m guessing it’s the same crapstack of chips that Sympatico is issuing it’s client.
– wifi on by default and wide open. I’ve turned it off for two nontech homes now when over as a guest since they had no wireless nodes in the first place.
– I spent two hours with a business client’s office network and webserver cutt-off because that freaking DSL modem/router decided was going to suddenly be a router instead of a passthrough bridge. The office router got an internal IP instead of the ISP issued address. Boy are the steps and settings to switch the DSL box back too a passthrough esoteric and it wasn’t the call center phone jockey that was of help either. Business Service; my a-I digress..
I miss ISP that ran a cable to your wall, gave you an IP and said “best of luck”. This “can’t run any server software” crap from the big ISP around these parts sucks rocks; even under the guise of “protection the customer from there own stupidity”.
Hah. When they say “business service,” they actually mean “the same crappy service as we provide to residential customers – but we charge you $30 more per-month because your address is zoned commercial.”
And they don’t give you grief for having ports 22, 25, 80, 443 and the other standard server deamons open. But mostly the same old service and support at premium cost.
There’s still a local ISP back home who’s running ISDN and now fibre; I’d be with them in a heartbeat if I didn’t live elsewhere now. It’s only the big brand name ISPs around these parts unless you want dialup.
That’s slightly better than the Aliant policy. IIRC, they disallow servers unless you’re on a connection that includes a static IP.
you could always go with Shaw cable, I think that’s the cable company in your parts.
It’s mostly Rogers out here (I think Shaw is mostly in the western provinces). I do use Rogers for my home internet connection, but I also do a fair amount of support/setup work with Aliant connections.
Unfortunately, Rogers has not been any better than Aliant in my experience – the service is equally-poor, just in different ways.
Yeah, Rogers tech support is horrible, I generally try to avoid them when I can
Oh yeah. Whenever you hear someone angrily yelling “English. English. ENGLISH!” into a phone – or declining a sales pitch for cell phone service – it’s a safe bet that they’re on the line with Rogers tech support.
you can pry my cat5 cable’s from my cold dead hands! i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again. wireless will never be better than a cable.
call me when wireless can do cat6 speeds and then maybe i’ll think about.
until then a cable will always be faster, more stable, more secure physically AND with data, minimal fuss to set up for less cash.
wireless gets a fail in every way compared to cables.
When it comes to desktop PCs, I’ll take plain ethernet cable any day. Why? Between Windows claiming 100% signal strength yet getting “limited or no connectivity” (ie no working Internet connection) and Linux just *Not Working, Period* in most cases, I’ll take a good old-fashioned cable for my desktops any day. For a regular desktop machine, wireless networking doesn’t have too many advantages anyway, certainly none worthy of the nightmare of setting it up at least.
Wireless keyboards and mice? IMO, they’re dumb; their cords are already short and out of the way as is, and by going wireless, there are just more things that can go wrong, plus batteries to worry about. I’ll take their corded counterparts any day. Home video game console controllers, on the other hand, are a different story: please free us from those damn cables! Thankfully, the gaming market is turning that way, and so far I haven’t had too many problems with wireless controllers. With both the consoles and the controllers made by the same companies in most cases, it’s no surprise that part of their design seems to be working so well, it’s almost as reliable as using a corded device… but with batteries.
With a laptop, it’s hard to decide. Wireless would clearly work better than a cable on such portable devices, yet it’s the same old crap–drivers–that you have to put up with; one of the primary reasons I don’t bother with them in desktop systems. Though I’ve only worked with a few laptops, in general, the problems I run into with desktops usually occur with these too.
By the way, this is somewhat off-topic, but does anyone know a wireless card brand/chipset that is likely to just *work*, with minimum of problems, in Linux distros and the BSDs, without additional screwing around?
What distro is giving you networking grief? There may be an easy fix or more supportive distro if your’ve reason to get it working.
Ralink is the best for OSS OS.
is that none of these ‘myths’ have anything to do with why enterprises decide to have wifi nets or move from g to n for those nets.
Wired and wireless. We switched from Tiscali to BT the other day and wireless will never be turned on here because they castrated even the most basic features such as allowing only selected MAC addresses to connect. Given the lousy encryption, that is that.
However, it does not do any better wired, either. The various broad band boxes we had over the past few year all had at least four LAN ports, and why not..? Now, this one has only two, one of which is needed for the TV set top box that comes with the package. – Leaving ONE port to actually connect to the Internet. So I had to get that backup 24 port switch from work I always had but never used until I replaced it with a more reasonable 5 port GBit switch. Now, in the age of TB HDs, I just don’t want to stick with 100 MBit switches any more, copying takes too long otherwise, especially where every machine comes with GBit on board these days. I was shocked that a lousy 5 port GBit switch still costs 35 GBP in the year 2008 ! Thanks for being so considerate, Britsh Telecom ! Who in their right mind would even dare to present their employer a blue print of a broad band box with essentially ONE LAN port, after the world has done better for at least two decades of DSL? Oh, and of course castrating all the wireless access restrictions we had from day one..?
E you can filter wireless based on MAC to.
The downside is that it’s way easier for someone to find out wichs MAC’s that are allowed and copy them
so you are saying it is easier to first have to find a valid MAC and fake it instead of not having to do it..? I am not sure about that one
I view MAC filtering like teaching your kids not to talk to strangers. They may see someone they think they recognize but for the most part, they then only talk to known people.
MAC isn’t going to keep anyone out of your network but it may reduce how much noise your router pays attention too; that’s my hope anyhow, along with my own preference to make use of each lock dropper provided by the router.
MAC filter works on wireless, but it doesn’t add any real security. At best it can prevent “neighbours” from unintentionally accidentally connecting to your wireless network, and that’s it.
But if you have WPA turned on anyway it is already good enough with a long enough password, there are just no need for MAC filtering.
What’s in your SLA? Are you sure that it allows you to connect more than one piece of equipment? Some ISPs deliver that type of service, especially to home users. If that’s the case, then there is no need for them to deliver more than one ethernet port.
Why you are so upset about it? Just plug in your own Access point (or firewall/router) and off you go.
There are benefits to having wired and wireless devices. The wired devices requires faster and secure connections. The wireless is only useful when working within a given area that is secured. Servers/Desktops should be wired and Laptops/Notebooks should be wireless (to a point). When it comes to security it is harder to access your information from a wired network than a wireless. It has been my experience in many situation that wired networks is better than wireless networks. The installation process for a wired network is longer but the end result is a better, faster, and much more secure network. The wireless installation is easy and quick and not as secure. With the wireless network you are broadcasting your network for all to see and the level of secure encryption is not yet up to par. By Shawn Hornsby
Edited 2008-06-20 12:45 UTC
According to Mark… “Personally, I have issues with anything that is wireless. I’m old-fashioned in that I try to avoid the technology as much as possible, since for most use-cases, it offers more disadvantages than advantages.
I wonder if he still uses a rotary phone with a cord thats pluged into the wall. Personally, I love my blackberry. I love to be able to sit in Starbucks on my laptop and read OS News. I like to play World of Warcraft laying in my bed. Talk about some MAJOR DISADVANTAGES…
I started using Homeplugs. They are fairly cheap, give up to 85mbs (faster than wireless) and are a no brainer to install. Took me exactly 10 minutes to get them up and running, and that included opening/unpacking the box booting my Macbook and physically walking between rooms. I need to set the network id on them from the default, but out of the box it all just “worked”.
Fixed machines us Gigabit wire limited to there NIC maximum with my primary workstation using two onboard gigabits.
PDA and other mobiles use 11g unless there is a reason to attach a cable.
Guest mac addresses can be added easily though this is more of filtering to keep my router listening too noise from only systems it thinks it recognizes. (anyone can put on a MAC address disquise after all)
WPA/WPA2 provides the real security authentication; devices that only support lower encryption strengths don’t get to join the network.
My static/dynamic DHCP assignment scheme distinctly displays any guest IP for quick identification.
Every device provides it’s own locally hardenned protection above and beyond the wire or wireless layer protections.
My current goal is to be able to sniff my network and get nothing unencrypted; the real challenges will be http and other plaintext protocols used outside my router. Almost all internal interaction has been sanatised by choices like using ssh instead of ftp/sftp/ftps and so on. The next step up would be too setup as an encrypted blacknet (is that a term already?) tunnelling my entire internal network but even I have too concede that it’s a home network not the NSA offices.
Wire will always be the faster and more secure
Since wired and wireless are complementing technologies you’d be pretty stupid to foolhardy refuse either one.
Wired works just fine without wireless connectivity enabled. They can be complimentary but not dependent. I would question the person who ignored wired networking in favour of .11 though.
that’s why I said foolhardy, as in refusing to use the one that is most suitable.
hehe.. too each there own.. I just got stock on the idea that both where complementary and required somehow.
This is a lousy article. It reads more like a comparison between wired and wireless networks, which is like comparing apples to oranges. These are two different animals and both work best in their respective areas.
I think configuring a wireless network is overall less time-consuming and probably safer than fishing cable through the attic, under the carpet, or in the walls. You don’t have to worry about gouging your head with the nails from the roofing tiles/ shingles or chewing up your fingers on the carpet tacky strips or disturbing old asbestos tiling or inhaling the fiberglass dust from the batts or falling through the ceiling. The vast majority of houses and apartments AREN’T wired.
Anything RF-based isn’t 100% reliable. Just like with cell phones vs land lines, users have to realize that rf has its faults and weigh that against the conveniences. The IT industry treats RF as just another connectivity option, but it’s not. Copper and fiber can be learned in a couple of 2-week courses plus a few months of field work. RF techs never stop learning. In the field, “FM” has an entirely different meaning than “frequency modulation”:)
I had to upgrade my cordless phone at home because the old 2.4ghz handset was so reliable at the expense of 11g network connections that it kept blowing away with each answered phone call. I found that anything RF based is 100% reliable provided there is no other signal to interfear.
I did keep that old 2.4 ghz phone for my toolkit though encase using it to blow out a wifi signal becomes applicable to an audit.
Mine are all nicely stapled to the overhang outside.
My housemates seem to think there’s nothing wrong running 100% wireless. Me, I prefer to run wired where it makes sense. My laptop even spends most of its time wired, if I’m not carrying it around. It lives most of its life on my desk.
But I have my systems, my wife’s, and my kids’ systems wired. And if I need more bandwidth? I staple up another wire and poof, another 100mb drop. (Right now everything in my room is going through a switch; I’m tempted to drop another wire to bypass it for my gaming system, just to reduce the latency. I probably won’t notice the difference though.)
And yes, I know I can’t double my bandwidth simply by doubling the wires. But by adding wires back to the main switch I can avoid systems having to share one wire. OTOH, if bandwidth really were a problem, currently my best option would probably be to move to gigabit.
Try THAT with wireless.