The IEEE 802.11n standard is not official yet, but a host of Draft N routers are already available. We rounded up three of the most popular, threw them into the deathmatch cage, and locked the gate. The fight was brutal, but we gained a solid appreciation for how each device performs and whether any of them make a worthwhile upgrade to your current gear.
Passwords aren't enough to protect home wireless networks, and they're particularly poor security choices for networks of larger organizations, according to a University of Maryland assistant professor.
Its the ultimate answer to the needle-in-a-haystack problem: Using your wireless LAN to enable asset tracking of expensive equipment, monitor locations of patients or personnel, facilitate stock replenishment, even pinpoint a container within a huge warehouse. Wi-Fi location services can also boost security by tailoring access based on a user's location within your facility. Talk about wringing additional value out of a major investment.
US telco Sprint Nextel could spend as much as $US5 billion ($6.3 billion) by the end of 2010 on a new WiMax network.
The No.3 US mobile service said it expected spending on the network up to the end of 2008 to be at the low end of its previously announced estimates, due to its agreement to connect its network with Clearwire, a small wireless service provider.
Sprint wants to use WiMax to blanket entire cities, enabling wireless internet access on everything from mobile phones and laptops to video game players and cameras.
These days, a large number of hotel guests carry laptop computers with them - whether for business, entertainment or just to stay connected with friends and family on email and instant messenger when travelling. These laptops almost invariably include a way to access wireless connections (Wi-Fi) in them.
Errata Security has created two tools called Hamster and Ferret that enable a WiFi hacker to sniff WiFi traffic and collect unencrypted cookies used across WiFi session. Errata officials demonstrated the programs hacking into Google's GMaili at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas last week.
Hamster and Ferret enable a WiFi hacker to interactively monitor traffic flowing to and from public WiFi hotspot users' notebook, PDAs and smartphones. By grabbing unencrypted cookies, hackers could use the programs to hi-jack or overlay a user's online session.
Researchers demonstrated on Friday at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas that Web-based e-mail accounts hosted by MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail are vulnerable to hacker attacks when account holders use unencrypted Wi-Fi hotspots.
Errata Security CEO Robert Graham showed Black Hat attendees how to scan a public hotspot and sniff out an unsuspecting victim. The trick is to grab the cookie that the e-mail provider puts on the authorized user's computer.
A sizable percentage of IT managers -- 44% -- are already planning to implement 802.11n, even though the high-speed wireless LAN standard isn't expected to be formally set for several months, according to a survey released Monday.
Colubris Networks, a supplier of WLANs, said its survey of 200 senior IT professionals also found that nearly a third of the survey respondents said they plan to replace their existing wired networks with 802.11n WLANs.
Wellington WiMax network operator NZ Wireless has upped its service to small businesses in the capital and is offering voice lines as well as broadband over its wireless network.
Businesses will be able to buy two voice lines, a 2-megabit-per-second synchronous broadband connection with a 10 gigabyte datacap, ten e-mail addresses and 10 gigabytes of offsite data storage for $150 a month plus gst. It has a deal with Telecom to carry customers' voice traffic beyond Wellington.
Cisco Systems released a security advisory on Tuesday afternoon to address several vulnerabilities in its Wireless LAN Controllers that could enable hackers to cause a denial-of-service on the affected network.
The flaws lie in the handling of Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) packets. The advisory noted that a unicast ARP request may be flooded on the LAN links between Wireless LAN Controllers in a mobility group.
