This is my section on networking. Remember I'm a programmer not a sysadmin so I actually try not to remember all this stuff so that's why I'm writing it down here.
While Verizon expected the BlackBerry Storm to be a hot-ticket item, it probably didn'd anticipate that demand for the device would crash its online ordering portal.
Department of Defense computers have been hit with an old worm that the DoD won't discuss other than to say it is taking steps to mitigate its effects.
On the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average continued its fall, by another 455 points, WLAN vendor Aruba Networks reported record first quarter revenue, but also a much higher net loss compared to a year ago.
Dell's revenue and net income dropped in its third quarter as the company tries to cope with a global IT spending slowdown and less demand for its products.
Nemertes Research continued to throw cold water on the future of the Internet this week, releasing a study projecting that demand for bandwidth on the Web will exceed its capacity by 2012.
Check Point Software is upgrading its multifunction security appliances with antispam capabilities, support for secure wireless connectivity and protection for devices that control industrial infrastructure.
Home foreclosures and a generally bad economy are driving down demand for wired phone lines, which will freeze much carrier spending on VoIP infrastructure until 2011, according to a new Infonetics report.
According to ReCellular, a self-described "electronics-sustainability firm" based in Dexter, Mich., all of this year's ten most recycled handset models were released originally in 2004 or later.
IBM Research on Thursday is expected to uncover work it is doing to bring the brain's processing power to computers, in an effort to make it easier for PCs to process vast amounts of data in real time.
Thirty years have passed since the Internet Protocol was first described in a series of technical documents written by early experimenters. Since then, countless engineers have created systems and applications that rely on IP as the communications link between people and their computers.
IE 8 lets you see Web pages' internal structures by outlining elements like DIV tags and tables. You can also switch the browser's rendering mode to make sure your page works across standards. Learn how to use Internet Explorer 8 beta's development tools with this tip.
Startup VoIP provider DeFi makes big claims, but delivers worldwide calling from a smartphone for $40 or $50 per month: DeFi has a very stripped down business model designed to appeal to a specific, but large class of traveler. They make software that's currently available for Nokia S60 phones (E and N series), and later this year for the iPhone, that acts as a kind of VoIP shunt for calling behavior. When you place a call, the software determines whether you're on a Wi-Fi network, and routes the call out that way; if not, it goes to cell. It also routes inbound calls, and can ring your cell phone's number if you're not on a Wi-Fi network and your inbound DeFi number gets a call.
For $40 or $50 per month (1 or 3 inbound phone numbers, respectively, in any of about 30 countries), you get 3,000 minutes (they call it "unlimited") of calling to and from 75 countries. This includes cell lines in Europe, typically a huge extra for most VoIP plans. DeFi said they signed deals directly with carriers, which they say most VoIP providers have not.
Wi-Fi access works at what they say is "1 million" hotspots, but is really Fon plus several tens of thousands of typical hotel, café, and airport venues. Wi-Fi fees are included for VoIP and data in the monthly subscription. DeFi uses Devicescape behind the scenes to handle no-entry authentication to their Wi-Fi footprint.
The integration is the key point DeFi makes about their product, and may be a stumbling block for an iPhone application. The head of DeFi told me that the company wants their service to require no behavioral changes for customers. Of course, users still have to make sure when they're in areas in which a cell call would be expensive that they don't accidentally wander away from a Wi-Fi hotspot. And Apple doesn't currently allow the kind of integration that would be required for call handling and interception, although DeFi said it's having no problems in its development work.
SNCF in France says they'll install Internet service on their entire TGV fleet by 2010: We've seen this promise before, so excuse me if I'm a wee bit dubious about the French train operator SNCF's claim that the service will span all their equipment. Despite Internet access over Wi-Fi being available on several train lines in Europe, including multiple lines in the UK, the biggest announcements always seem to fizzle out. The Dutch train operator was supposed to unwire their fleet a couple years ago and backed away, for instance.
SNCF says they'll have for-fee service in 1st and 2nd class areas of TGV trains by third quarter 2009 in some trains, and full coverage in 2010. These high-speed trains cross borders in all directions.
A free portal will be available for information and entertainment access within a train. Fees for access might cost €5 to €10, which is outrageously high, unless you compare it to the very high costs of Wi-Fi across Europe, where you can pay US$30 or more for 24 hours access in some hotels.
The Internet engineering community is grappling with what to do about a serious flaw in the DNS discovered this summer, and the ongoing debate brings to mind a famous quotation from Voltaire: "The perfect is the enemy of the good."
by Steve Cimino, Assistant Editor at 08:22 AM, 11/20/2008
Whether you plan to migrate SQL Server Data Transformation Services (DTS) packages to SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) or run DTS packages in SQL Server 2005, this tutorial has it all. Learn the best practices for SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), from migrating and running DTS packages, to SSIS debugging, maintenance and programming in SQL Server.
Exchange Server backup and recovery is critical. Several Exchange backup solutions are available. But because Microsoft's System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM 2007) performs transaction log synchronization on a consistent basis (every 15 minutes), it can be more beneficial than other Exchange Server backup solutions.
This section of our chapter excerpt on network algorithms explains three important subtasks that arise with intrusion detection and outlines tools such as Bloom filters and Aho-Corasick trees.
Virgin America has formally announced their in-flight Internet launch and plans: Virgin put out the news a few weeks ago that they'd have a press event flight on 22-November to show off their in-flight Wi-Fi with GoGo (AirCell's branded service). They're now formally noting that service will start for all flyers on a single aircraft 24-November, and expand to their entire fleet by second quarter 2009. Earlier reports indicated the airline would equip about one plane per week, which probably conforms to overnight maintenance schedules for their fairly new planes.
Virgin America goes quite a bit beyond other airlines in the electronic amenity department. They have an advanced seat-back system that includes in-flight chat (currently intra-plane, soon across the fleet as Internet access is added); it's gotten rave reviews. They also have power available at every seat, which is an easy choice to make when you're building planes for today's passengers.
I'll be on the press event flight, covering it for a few publications including this fine site, and will try to blog from the air just for the fun of it. If you can blog from the top of mountain, it seems necessary to do so. (Disclosure: I'm paying for all my expense associated with getting to and from the press event.)
Virgin America is the only airline worldwide that's committed to putting Internet service on all its planes, although it has a fairly small fleet. (Planespotters has the full list of 27, including their names, such as the BoingBoing-plumed Unicorn Chaser.)
For a mainstream media article I'm writing, I'd love to hear the experience of anyone who has used American Airlines' GoGo service, which has been in operational on long-haul 767-200s for the last few months. (Email me at news@wifinetnews.com.)
Are you noticing that hosted services are starting to disappear? Me, too: I haven't launched a new blog in some time, but was motivated to start up ItDied.com recently after receiving about one email a day about a photo gallery, video service, online storage, or other company or division shutting down. It's not related to Wi-Fi, but if you're tracking what's about to go belly up--or worried that a service that stores your data in their cloud is about to disappear--check 'er out.
Meraki offers wall plug, solar unit, apartment package: Meraki has added two products to its line up. A wall plug ($179) can be screwed into an outlet's center screw hole for theft prevention and stability, perfect for hotels and public venues. The long-awaited solar product is nearly ready, with a 4-December ship date ($749 with no solar panel up to $1,499 with highest-end panel).
Meraki switched battery technology to lithium iron-phosphate during the year-long delay, partly due to an increase in cost and shortage in solar panels. Meraki's also got a new bundle: $5,000 for a set of nodes designed to cover an apartment building.
Over at Ars Technica, I wrote a long recap of the state of municipal Wi-Fi, noting that Meraki seems to be on the winning side of the equation with its start-small approach. A number of municipal wireless projects (not all Wi-Fi) are getting rave reviews. We may be over the hump: applications (purposes as it were) are now driving network building rather than networks seeking reasons to be.
Violet prepares to ship an RFID tag reader, Mir:ror: The new device plugs in via USB to a computer and can read standard RFID tags, as well as new ones offered by the company. Some of Violet's tags look like postage stamps and are adhesive; others, like tiny versions of their Nabaztag/tag bunny. It's weird, but interesting, like all their stuff.
Qualcomm brings in Skyhook's Wi-Fi positioning: Qualcomm becomes the latest GPS giant to add Skyhook Wireless's technology to their platform. The gpsOne system, found in 400 million cell phones, will be enhanced in future versions with an option for Skyhook data to assist and integrate with GPS lookups. Qualcomm's sold so many chipsets due to E911 requirements for location finding.
Boingo adds biggest U.S. ferry system to network: On the heels of acquiring the Opti-Fi set of airport Wi-Fi networks from Parsons and ARINC, Boingo Wireless has purchased Parsons's separate business operating Wi-Fi-based Internet access on the Washington State Ferry (WSF) system. WSF handles 26 million passenger rides per year, which is about half of all U.S. passenger ferry volume. (Just north, British Columbia's ferry system handles slightly more riders.) The announcement is slated for Monday.
Boingo already had a roaming relationship in place with Parsons for ferry use, and thus the purchase doesn't affect users of any of Boingo's monthly subscription plans; subscribers still have access folded in to the company's $8 per month handheld/mobile, $22 per month unlimited North America U.S., and $59 per month global (2,000 minutes) plans.
While neither Parsons nor Boingo released statistics on use, I ride ferry on a regular (not routine) basis, and have found the Wi-Fi relied and widely used. WSF runs two big routes that serve Seattle metro commuters: from Bainbridge Island, which unloads passenger after a half-hour run in downtown Seattle (right near Pioneer Square), and from Kingston, which brings riders also after a half hour into Edmonds where they catch express buses. Those two routes represent half of all WSF passenger trips.
Wi-Fi service is available on the majority of WSF's routes, as well as in terminals and in the car waiting areas. For regular rush hour commuters who drive, they may spend over 2 hours round-trip between waiting and the ferry passage, and far more on bad days.
WSF runs on time, however. This may baffle people used to train, bus, and plane schedules, but it's a thing of wonder to watch the ferry workers cast their lines, tie the boats up, and shepherd hundreds of cars and passengers off and on in a matter of minutes, and then return to the bay or sound for the direction or next stop. I'm not saying the system is a miracle, but it's well-tuned. A notable failure, due to initiative-driven cuts in transportation spending, has led to devastating reductions in service to Port Townsend; its regular boats were found to be irreparable. Replacements haven't yet begun to be built for a variety of reasons.
Port Townsend occupies a significant role in the history of Internet access on the ferry system, however. A small firm, Mobilisa, located in "PT" (the affectionate name town residents use) was able to secure a Department of Transportation no-bid contract to unwire the boats. The line it tested service on was the Port Townsend-Keystone run, and it's where I first encountered the service, when I visited PT to write a New York Times article about commuter Wi-Fi: "Destination Wi-Fi, by Rail, Bus or Boat," 8-July-2004. (Mobilisa has been adept at using earmarks to obtain contracts, the Seattle Times reported in a detailed article on 29-December-2007.)
The service launched for production use in late 2004, and on the Bainbridge route in early 2005. The original contract called for an RFP to be issued, and for Mobilisa to operate the network just briefly--perhaps for a year or so, building out service that another firm would take over. Mobilisa was, I was told, specifically barred from bidding on operating the completed network.
Parsons got the contract in late 2006, and slowly extended service to routes that weren't yet covered. At one point, Parsons seemed to be developing a specialty business in building and operating difficult Internet service networks. That line of business is apparently being shed, however, given that only VIA Rail (operated under the Opti-Fi name) apparently remains in its holdings.
Boingo's original plan was to never operate any physical infrastructure. But the opportunity arose a few years ago for it to buy Concourse Communications, which already managed several major airports' Wi-Fi (and sometimes cellular) networks, and it leapt in with both feet. Boingo now runs vastly more large-scale commuter and business traveler nodes than the next largest operator in the space worldwide.
The in-car Internet system gets reviews: Autonet is packaging a car-oriented router that combines a cell data modem and subscription with a Wi-Fi gateway. The device costs $500 and plans are $30 per month for a measly 1 GB of data or $60 for 5 GB. The higher rate is precisely what you'd pay a carrier directly for such an item with a 2-year contract; Autonet requires just a 1-year commitment. Unlike portable cell routers that come with car-power adapters, Autonet's device is installed in the trunk or back, and is wired into a car's electrical system. Antennas are part of the unit, however.
Edward Baig of USA Today reminded potential buyers that a 3G connection requires a 3G cell network, and traveling in areas with spotty or no 3G coverage could be disappointing. Overall, he's not unhappy with it. He concludes, "Having a rolling hot spot is an appealing, if expensive, service for a lot of families. Just keep your expectations — and those of your kids — in check."
The Wall Street Journal's elder tech statesman Walt Mossberg finds the service too slow for video beyond YouTube snippets, just as Baig does, but seems to agree that for the right person or family, having continuous Internet access is worth the cost.
I haven't tested Autonet, but the router's cost isn't out of line with similar systems: Junxion, acquired recently by Sierra Wireless, sells its devices for $600 to $700 a pop, with discounts for quantity, because they're aimed at corporate road warriors.
But I can't see the benefit of getting a box with a sealed 3G card permanently installed in your car. For those who might find the Autonet a reasonable choice, the Kyocera KR2 ($220) coupled with the 3G EVDO card of your choice--including tethered handsets. The KR2 is portable, cheaper, and more flexible. The disadvantage is having to use a car-power adapter, an increased likelihood of theft if left in the car, and a unit that's not designed to be as rugged.
First, it was the poles; then the performance; then the lawsuit: Now, the settlement. The city of St. Louis Park, Minn., wanted to build a city-owned Wi-Fi network that would cope with the problems of its dense canopy. They chose a vendor, unfortunately, that had never built a network using the technology that the vendor chose to use.
The network required 16-foot tall poles that were originally rather unsightly. And 400 poles would be needed city wide. Citizens were revolted and did revolt; a new design for the poles reduced their ugliness, one can see from photos, but the network--solar powered to boot--never achieved the performance required under the contract, the city said.
Last December, the city moved to terminate its contract and later filed a lawsuit. The settlement signed by Arinc and approved by the city a few days ago calls from Arinc to pay $1m, and grant ownership of about 8 miles of fiber run by Arinc along with related gear. The city will be responsible for the estimated $150,000 cost to remove the equipment from poles and take the poles down, but the Wi-Fi nodes and solar panels go back to Arinc. (Which will sell them on eBay, most likely.)
Arinc claimed at various times that it had performed the tasks for which it was contracted, and that interference was beyond its control. Given that there's an incredibly successful network nearby in Minneapolis that appears to have suffered from few or none of the problems in St. Louis Park, it's hard to credit that. (Minneapolis paid nothing for the network, but is paying $1.25m a year for 10 years for services.)
St. Louis Park is thus left without a network, with at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard costs and staff time that lacks recompense (as the settlement covers only expenses after the network started to be built), and with a bunch of fiber they say they have no particular plan for.
This series of articles on automating Windows Vista deployment continues by looking at how to perform the initial configuration of your Windows Deployment Services server.
Starbucks U.S. operations have launched its Gold card, a paid membership with Wi-Fi included: The Starbucks Gold card was in testing for some time in Seattle--the outlet near my office has had a Gold logo in the window for months, I believe--but it's now unleashed for general consumption. The card costs $25 per year, and includes two hours of continuous Wi-Fi access each day; the firm's stored value card offers Wi-Fi for 30 days following a purchase or adding value.
Gold has a bunch of frequent sipper benefits: a free drink when you purchase the membership, followed by 10 percent discounts on most stuff you buy (drinks, food, merchandise, hard goods), a free beverage on your birthday each year, and other discounts and deals that will be announced during the year.
I suppose the logic is that for someone who spends over $175 per year at Starbucks would likely make up the difference (10% of $175 plus a couple free drinks should top $25). It's possible I spend that much, even though I only have casual interest in their shops, because of frequenting them in strange towns, enjoying their sandwiches (not their roasts), and airport purchases.
Update: Contrary to the plain text with no footnote on the Gold sign-up site--"Free Wi-Fi access for up to 2 hours each day in participating Starbucks stores"--Starbucks contacted me to clarify that Gold card holders must also make a purchase or add value every 30 days to have continuous access to the Wi-Fi offer.
Houston, we have a problem: While the city reports its Wi-Fi-connected parking meters work great doubling as Wi-Fi hotspots downtown, their much-ballyhooed "bubbles" efforts to unwire housing projects seems to have narrowed in scope. The headline on the story in the Houston Chronicle, in which yours truly is quoted, is perfect: "Houston's Plan for Wi-Fi Bubbles Has Burst." The city now plans to use Wi-Fi only to connect up community centers rather than bring service to residents. As far as I and the reporter I spoke to for this story could figure out, the networks will be running as password-protected clouds that only computers in central locations will be able to access. I have no idea why anyone would think this is a good idea. Bringing Internet access to libraries, schools, and community centers is a perfectly marvelous idea, but in low-income neighborhoods, the notion of putting free or affordable Internet access in the home, paired with programs to offer inexpensive or free refurbished computers along with training, is to deal with the commensurate problem that kids can work from their homes instead of being out on the mean streets. In many neighborhoods that are both poor and high crime, parents keep their children in to avoid trouble. Thus, community centers aren't the logical way to ensure greater access and bridge the digital divide. These efforts should be trying to bring access parity across income levels to match the ecumenical availability of information to rich and poor.
Freakonomics notices funny network names: A Dutch cafe using a service from a company called They displays messages via network names (SSIDs) that remind freeloaders to buy something: BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate. I confess to finding this story amusing, but not above the threshold to share, until the New York Times's Freakonomics blog picked it up. That's partly because even though the cafe is in the Netherlands, all the messages are in English. Are Brits and Americans the only freeloaders. They, the company, not an inchoate group of people, told me that they use a technique to change the text display name of the SSID, while the underlying network identifier remains the same. This keeps customers from being booted off even as messages are dynamically rotated.
WEP in 24,000 packets: I forgot to mention in all the hubbub about the WPA flaw discovered by two German researchers last week that they also combined a variety of WEP-cracking techniques to reduce the number of packets necessary to extract a key. The fellows from two technical universities examined and improved previously known algorithms and code for extracting a WEP key, and optimized the process.
Erik Tews and Martin Beck's paper, Practical Attacks against WEP and WPA (now available for download), walks through how they re-examined and combined processing attacks. But the takeaway is that WEP, already known to be very broken is, well, very very very broken. Previous attacks, per their analysis, required from 32,000 to 40,000 packets to be processed to gain a 50-percent likelihood of key recovery. They moved that down to about 24,000.
WEP is still widely used in certain quarters, by home users who don't care about security but simply are setting up a no trespassing sign (which is enforceable by law in many states and countries now); by those who know no better; and by retailers who use systems that are either expensive to upgrade or must be replaced to stop using WEP.
The open-license 3.65 GHz band could be a great opportunity for startups: The band is available in a good hunk of the U.S. under a licensing regime that allows anyone to obtain a license, and providers in the same geographic areas have to work to coordinate among themselves. Redline Communications and the extremely sharp Monica Paolini of Senza Fili Consulting are offering a free 45-minute Webinar (Web-based seminar) on 12-November at 11 am PST/2 pm EST on the topic. Redline is one of several firms offering 3.65 GHz gear.
Meru further virtualizes virtual SSIDs: This might seem a little technical, but it's fascinating. Enterprise Wi-Fi maker Meru says they've developed virtual ports, that allows each Wi-Fi connection to act as if there's a separate AP controlling it. This has been used for quite a while to create virtual SSIDs: unique network names fed by a single access point. Meru says their approach centralizes the virtual SSIDs (which use BSSIDs, the underlying network address for a Wi-Fi access point), allowing roaming without the adapter appearing to change its network association. That goes one level beyond current roaming. The connection is essentially virtualized to be independent of the access point. With a unique per-user virtual WLAN, Meru says that they can optimize a connection, including throttling and provisioning to provide guaranteed bandwidth and priority.
Boingo Wireless acquires Opt-Fi Networks and its 25 airports: Boingo already operates 30 airports (mostly in North America) as part of its Concourse Communications networks. The purchase of Opti-Fi from its owners, Parsons and ARINC, means they cover 43 percent of "passenger enplanements" (i.e., the count of people getting on a plane, even counting transfers) in the U.S.
Opti-Fi runs smaller airports, such as Edmonton, El Paso, and Buffalo Niagara, but you add those together, and you still get millions of yearly passengers. Opti-Fi was already part of Boingo's network, so the acquisition means Boingo will derive more revenue from keeping sessions in house, as well as be able to use portals at the new airports to acquire more customers. It also increases Boingo's leverage with other WiFi networks in the U.S. and worldwide.
Under the Opti-Fi brand, Parsons also powers VIA Rail of Canada's train-based Internet service. Separately from Opti-Fi, Parsons provides Wi-Fi across the Washington State Ferry system, which handles about 50 percent of all ferry passenger trips in the U.S.--some tens of million of trips per year. (In fact, two runs alone account for 25 percent of all U.S. rider trips.) Neither project was mentioned in today's announcement. Odd, huh?
Oakland goes free: FreeFi has added the Oakland International Airport to its existing service in Denver. The company says that its deal with Denver, nearly a year old, has meant more income for the airport, even as the service went free. FreeFi sells ads and offers digital movie downloads in Denver. It said daily unique users nearly septupled after switching from from fee to free. The service filters Web content, which has drawn some criticism from David Byrne and BoingBoing.
WPA isn't as broken as reported: If you read the coverage early this week on two German researchers' paper on a vulnerability in Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), the weaker of two encryption and integrity algorithms in the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) certified standard (and part of the underlying 802.11i protocol), you'd think that TKIP was broken. It's not.
The flaw that was discovered does not allow a WPA-protected network's key to be recovered. It does allow short packets (network data quanta) used typically for network identification purposes to have their encryption keystream recovered: that's the overlay of per-packet encryption derived from a key that two Wi-Fi components use to protect information sent to one another.
With a recovered keystream, a single packet of the same length can be sent back into the network (using another flaw) to fool a client (but not an access point).
That's not to say that WPA keys (both the weaker TKIP and strong AES-CCMP) cannot be recovered. That's just not part of this weakness.
His advice? For effective security, choose a passphrase that's at least 20 characters long and contains no words found in dictionaries of any language.
Substituting 3 for e and 0 for o isn't a good choice, by the way: Brute-force attackers build dictionaries with common substitutions. Changing "camel back liposuction" to "!cmale bc@@k lippppo___!!sction" would make much more sense. Anyway, which among us manually enters a passphrase more than once per client?
Within a couple of years, effective brute-force methods appeared that could crack shorts keys that used only words found in dictionaries. There are pre-computed dictionaries that combine the SSID (network name) and billions of short key combinations. (The network name is used as an element in creating the key, but "linksys" and other default network names are often unchanged by users. Apple names its networks by default with part of the base station identifier, making a brute-force crack probably a million, maybe a billion times harder.)
ElcomSoft recently updated their "key recovery software" to use the graphical processing unit (GPU) in modern computers, which the company said in press releases--they haven't gotten back to a request I made for a briefing weeks ago--could improve key cracking by a factor of 100. Their software is also distributed, so you could conceivably put 1,000 computers on the task.
How does Elcomsoft's breakthrough affect the 2003 advice on passphrases? Security experts I've talked to, including Erik Tews, the co-author of the paper on the new WPA flaw, said that 20 characters should still require such a vast amount of time even with all the horsepower that one could throw at it, that there's no risk.
If there were a risk, you could increase a passphrase to 22 characters in length, and suddenly push the time to crack out by another factor of 100 (more or less; dissenting opinions welcome).
Average users can bypass all this by buying Wi-Fi gear that uses Wi-Fi Protection Setup (WPS), which uses for its source material a passphrase longer than the 20-character minimum, and employs excellent methods of securely exchanging key material over the untrusted network.
Of course, as I discovered when reviewing the excellent Linksys WRT610N (concurrent dual-band 802.11n router) for Macworld magazine, there's surprisingly no precise standard for WPS interface implementation. That is, the Wi-Fi Alliance defines the way in which WPS works on a protocol level, but not how the details are presented to a user.
Apple has two methods neither of which match up correctly with Linksys's three or four methods (depending on how you count). It's frustrating. Apple never responded to a comment about the mismatch; Linksys said they're looking in how to improve compatibility in future releases.
Wayport acquisition by AT&T makes me go whoompf: Yesterday's announcement that AT&T would purchase hotspot operator Wayport for $275m in cash gave me pause for reflection. I started covering the Wi-Fi field in late 2000, spurred by testing Apple's AirPort system, which, despite being on the market for a year, I was quite dubious about. It worked well, and it led me to find that Wi-Fi was being deployed as an amenity. I hopped on the story, and wrote a very early feature for The New York Times about public-space Wi-Fi in airports, cafes, and elsewhere. (See The Web, Without Wires, Wherever, 22-Feb-2001.)
Of the firms mentioned in the article, several disappeared within a year. And later startups like Cometa had big runs up and then giant flameouts. (I run down the failures as well as some other details of the Wayport deal at Ars Technica.)
Wayport may have survived and thrived due to two moves. First, the operator was an early partner with Boingo, renegotiating its contracts with venues to allow the pricing model of wholesale aggregation resale to work. On a panel at 802.11 Planet after Boingo launched, if I recall correctly, Wi-Fi veteran Phil Belanger (then at Wayport) explained that contracts with its venues needed to be renegotiated, but it was worth it to increase volume of use.
Wayport was right. Firms that resisted reasonable resale pricing or availability seem to have all gone by the wayside. The latest of these was T-Mobile, which had very restrictive roaming/resale agreements, and was replaced at Starbucks by AT&T, which has expansive agreements.
The other element was Wayport grabbing the McDonald's contract through the use of a still-innovative pricing model. Instead of reselling sessions at McDonald's to aggregators or others, Wayport offered only a flat rate based on the piece of the McDonald's network that a reseller sliced. It had hoped to get cable systems interested as a competitive tool against 2.5G networks and other telecom advantages. It didn't happen.
Wayport also was able to snag AT&T as a resale partner early on; AT&T was providing backhaul to many stores, and wound up buying access to resell to some of its customers. That later expanded into Wayport becoming AT&T's managed services provider, and AT&T slowly but dramatically expanding cheap ($1.99 per month) and then free access to its base Wi-Fi network to a large portion of its wireline, fiber, business, and smartphone customers.
I'd say Wi-Fi World paid off as an approach.
Some might ask where this puts Boingo in relation to AT&T. Since Boingo is an aggregator, the advantage of which is to take many disparate networks and repackage them for resale at a predictable and reasonable price, why would you need Boingo when you can get 20,000 U.S. locations at no cost (if you're a qualifying AT&T subscriber) or as part of AT&T's own aggregated worldwide network of 80,000 locations ($20 per month for non-subscribers; $10 per month for those who qualify for free service)?
I checked with Boingo yesterday, and it has about 24,000 U.S. locations in its network. So...that's nearly 85 percent AT&T when the Wayport acquisition closes. But don't worry about Boingo. The company has a trump card: Airports.
Its acquisition a few years ago of Concourse Communications gave them the golden ticket: Boingo controls Wi-Fi access in most major airports in North America. AT&T and T-Mobile each have a handful that they operate, but Boingo has the big plums. Boingo operates the big NY/NJ airports (EWR, JFK, LGA), Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago (ORD and Midway), and on and on. The firm has 24 airports, most of them biggies, across the U.S.
Boingo told me some time ago that the Concourse acquisition was partly for revenue, partly for marketing, and partly for strategy. With airports in hand, it has better bargaining power with networks onto which it wants its users to roam, including outside the U.S.
If AT&T were to try to push to hard as the new Wayport owner with 85 percent of Boingo's domestic footprint, Boingo has the counterbalance of the critical airports that AT&T's business travelers want--and increasingly consumer and leisure travelers as those categories of passenger carry mobile devices that rely on a Wi-Fi network for their sole or best performance. (Think iPod Touch as well as iPhone.)
The end of Wayport spells the end of a long period in which many hotspot operators were in play. Now it's AT&T and a number of much smaller firms--T-Mobile will still have perhaps 3,000 locations--and company-operated networks, like Panera, run through in-house divisions or through managed services.
A deeper look into the world of multithreading and highlighting some ways which can alleviate some of the difficulties developing a well threaded application.
Acronis True Image Server was selected the winner in the Data Recovery Software solution category of the WindowsNetworking.com Readers' Choice Awards. Symantec Backup Exec and SonaSafe for File Systems were first runner-up and second runner-up.
Verizon has joined the bandwagon and announced a new open access plan for its network. This plan will go into effect next year and means any application can run on any device from any manufacturer and will have full access to the Verizon spectrum.
Verizon representatives say this move was prompted by two different motives, the first being more sophisticated customer needs and the second is an explosion in innovation. They are hoping to see an wave of wireless devices flood the market in more arenas than the traditional handset market.
Some speculate that this decision is tied to the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction, Verizon denies this was their motivation but the timing couldn’t be more coincidental.
Via [arstechnica.com]
The much anticipated 700MHz spectrum auction in January officially has another bidder. Google has announced that it will toss its hat in the ring.
A Google representative says that the company’s goal is to offer American consumers more choices in an open and competitive wireless world. Officially, Google doesn’t have to announce its plans until December 3rd so until then speculations abound.
Some say Google has no interest in becoming a network provider, others look to the previously proposed four open access provisions, or possibly they will lease space to others. Nothing is certain at this point except that when Google does make its plans known it will create a nationwide buzz.
Via [arstechnica.com]
CBS has just made an announcement that is sure to delight New Yorkers. From Times Square to Central Park and from 6th to 8th Avenue will become the new CBS Mobile Zone. This zone will carry free Wi-Fi for cell phones, laptops and other devices that want to access the internet or even make voice over internet phone calls.
In return, CBS gets ad impressions, tons of them. Visitors to the region will be greeted with a sponsored homepage with hyperlocal news and information for people within the specified area.
CBS Outdoor Chairman and CEO, Wally Kelly, explains that this is just one example of how CBS is dedicated to turning Outdoor assets into next-generation interactive platforms.
Via [centernetworks.com]
The deal struck between Sprint Nextel and Clearwire back in July has been scrubbed and the national WiMAX network took a hit. Both companies say they will continue to work on the technology independently.
Although both companies appear committed to developing WiMAX, their shareholders may actually hold the reins as huge sums of money are necessary to go forward.
Manufacturers of WiMAX equipment feel the technology is still sound and they plan to go ahead with device creation, it just may take longer for the technology to take hold. AAA So, the future of WiMAX is uncertain, it may be better suited for emerging markets than the U.S., only time will tell.
Via [news.com]
The recent departure of Sprint CEO, Gary Forsee, is having some far reaching impact. The WiMAX build out between Sprint Nextel and Clearwire is the latest victim as the proposed joint, nationwide WiMAX effort has been dropped.
Sprint’s corporate shake up was not the only reason the proposed venture was nixed,the complexities of the transaction were also cited as a stumbling block. So that leaves the American WiMAX project in a bit of a conundrum, do Sprint and Clearwire go out and forge independent networks or will new bonds form?
In the meantime, WiMAX is progressing nicely overseas, proving that they technology is valid and workable.
Via [gigaom.com]
IBM has joined forces with MediaTek to develop microprocessor chipsets that will wirelessly transmit videos almost instantly.
These chipsets will let you connect HDTVs with set top boxes without the need for wires. They will also transfer data at rates of at least 100 times that of current WiFi standards.
This new technology, mmWave wireless, is expected to be used widely in homes and offices.
Via [networkworld.com]
WiMAX has a reason to celebrate. The International Telecommunications Union has just approved the non-cellular technology as part of a 3G standard. This means that operators with 3G spectrum in their 2.5 GHz bands globally can use WiMAX to build out a spectrum.
The last interface added was back in 1999 when ITU added IMT-2000 as it established the original technologies. IMT-2000 and five other cellular standards had to be used in the 3G standard, now the door is open to WiMAX.
But all is not rosey for WiMAX, the debate between technologies is far from over.
Via [wirelessweek.com]
The BBC has announced that the Health Protection Agency is going to begin a systematic research program on how WiFi is used. The goal of this study is to determine how WiFi is being used and the possible radiation exposure that results from such use.
Spokesmen from the HPA believe that the study will confirm the safety of using WiFi, but feel that since England’s Chief Medical Officer suggested children limit their non-essential cell phone use due to potential exposure to radiation that a study into the radition emmissions of WiFi was the next logical step.
Results of the study will be publicly available, but officials reinforce their belief that WiFi is safe.
Via [bbc.co.uk]
Chicago’s WiMAX World show displayed a large rift between Mobile WiMAX supporters and municipal WiFi.
With continued problems halting all progress in the municipal WiFi world, WiMAX supports say they have the solutions. They contend that their licensed spectrum will guarantee continuous coverage and that indoor reception will not be as problematic as it is for WiFi.
But all is not rosy in the world of WiMAX, hardware is a huge problem. Every laptop has built-in support for 802.11b/g and will soon have 802.11n, this won’t be the case for WiMAX for quite some time, several years at least.
Right now all eyes are on Sprint and their pricing of Xohm. A reasonable price point may make or break a WiMAX solution for the masses.
Via [arstechnica.com]
Another massive wireless network has fallen behind schedule, this time the location is California’s Silicon Valley. About 40 municipalities over a 1500 square mile area are still in negotiations but representatives have said that the model should be completed by the end of the year.
So far the delay has been blamed on technological improvements and changes and the deeply complex process of covering multiple technologies and different services. This may be so, but the template agreement is still not finalized and even when finally done, it still needs to go to individual municipalities for some tweaking.
Like the struggling citywide Wi-Fi in other cities across the country, their plan is very ambitious and progress is slow.
Via [infoworld.com]
A hypothetical paradox:
What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security
team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of
Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
-- Tom Galloway
I'll be on the press event flight, covering it for a few publications including this fine site, and will try to blog from the air just for the fun of it. If you can blog from the top of mountain, it seems necessary to do so. (Disclosure: I'm paying for all my expense associated with getting to and from the press event.)
Gold has a bunch of frequent sipper benefits: a free drink when you purchase the membership, followed by 10 percent discounts on most stuff you buy (drinks, food, merchandise, hard goods), a free beverage on your birthday each year, and other discounts and deals that will be announced during the year.
WEP in 24,000 packets: I forgot to mention in 