Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

When you want broadband today chances are you’re locked to a landline connection with a T1, DSL or cable modem. WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), an evolving standard for point-to-multipoint wireless networking, may change that for the last mile in the same way that Wi-Fi has changed the last one hundred feet of networking. […]

Model: WET-54G Price: $264 MSRP Pros: Uses final 11g spec, supports PoE Cons: High cost (even at $140 street), requires wired connection for configuration By: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols The first generation of Linksys’s 802.11g WET-54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge — an external Ethernet-to-wireless adapter — was good. This next generation, Version 2.0, is better. Why? The […]

Price: $695 for offices with less than 20 users. Pros: Works with wired and Wi-Fi; VPN services built-in Cons: Limit of 10 wired and 10 Wi-Fi simultaneous users; Windows-centric. The first thing you’ll notice about ITServ’s RideWay Station is that there’s not an antenna to be seen. That’s because unlike such wireless security boxes as […]

You think you have network problems? Try this one on for size. You’re a network administrator at the University of Wisconsin (UW) in June when suddenly your Network Time Protocol (NTP) server is getting buried alive by NTP requests, to the tune of 250,000 requests per second. That’s hundreds of megabits per second, more then […]

Wi-Fi LANs just keep growing and growing. And, that’s great, unless you have to manage dozens or hundreds of them one by one. Then, maybe it’s not so great. Lightweight Access Point Protocol (LWAPP) an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft standard, may provide a remedy for this management headache. LWAPP offers an open, vendor-neutral […]

If you’re like me, when you go shopping for a Wi-Fi device, either online or at your local electronics superstore, you can find it much too easy to be confused by the wide variety of available access point-type equipment. It’s bad enough that we have to cope with three main kinds of Wi-Fi standards–the 2.4GHz […]

We all know that Wi-Fi is big and getting bigger. Indeed, in the States, Wi-Fi access is becoming as common as a cafe latte thanks to businesses like Starbucks, which have installed T-Mobile 802.11b hotspots. How big is Wi-Fi? According to Gemma Paulo, In-Stat/MDR senior analyst, about 21-million Wi-Fi cards will ship worldwide this year, […]

After suffering with Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) for what seems like ages, we finally have a wireless security protocol, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) that gives us reasonable, albeit not perfect, protection. But, now the question is: how do you actually use it? The theory of how WPA works is simple enough. WEP’s main problems are […]

Let’s get straight to the point; if all you’re doing is sharing your Wi-Fi connection with your roommates or neighbors, you need to buy a wireless switch like a fish needs to buy a bicycle. But, if you’re running Wi-Fi in a business, you probably are going to need to get a wireless switch. And, […]

After suffering with Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) for what seems like ages, we finally have a wireless security protocol, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) that gives us reasonable, albeit not perfect, protection. But, now the question is: how do you actually use it? The theory of how WPA works is simple enough. WEP’s main problems are […]

We all know by now that 802.11’s wired equivalent privacy (WEP) isn’t good enough to protect our data. That isn’t just the theory, it’s a fact. Sure, WEP will stop Joe Wireless, but freely available programs like AirSnort enable Joe Cracker break into your WLAN with little trouble. Thus equipped, a cracker only needs some […]

Once upon a time, you could hardly open a business magazine without finding a feature that praised third generation (AKA 3G) wireless telephony as the answer to mobile Internet needs. That was venture capital then. This is fiscally strapped now. In theory, 3G wireless networks are capable of throughput up to 384Kbps, which still puts […]