Verizon down in Midwest and California

Hey, we've been getting a ton of reports that Verizon's network has been down for several hours in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and California, possibly as a side effect of merging in the Alltell network. (engadget)

Security in a Community Wireless Network

One of the inherent features of wireless technology is that the RF signals don’t stop at your walls. From an enterprise perspective, this is viewed as a weakness. However, from a community wireless networking perspective, this is viewed as our primary advantage and benefit. RF signals know no boundaries.We can’t see them, but they’re everywhere.This means that the wireless network that provides bandwidth to users in a community also has some inherent security risks that need to be considered.

Every Computer Needs to Be Protected

Firewalls placed between the DSL/Cable connection and the community wireless network can be configured to block typical attacks coming from the “outside world.” For example, the wireless network can be protected from port scanning, worm attacks, and other malicious activity coming from the Internet by enabling a firewall at the point of entry of the DSL/Cable connection.

Social Ramifications

For most of us, we cannot imagine a daily existence that lacked basic necessities such as electricity, hot water, indoor plumbing, natural gas, and so on. However, people living 100 years ago would have considered these modern conveniences to be a luxury. Nowadays, we take these things for granted. Can you imagine living in a world without them? That sensation—a bizarre and barbaric “how could you live like that” feeling—is the way that people will view our lives 100 years from now. Bandwidth is quickly becoming a “fourth utility,” comparable to electricity, water, and gas. In the future, people will just expect it to be there… anything less will simply be “uncivilized.”
Many decades ago, computers were thought of as stand-alone tools. While first used as business devices, they eventually filtered into home life for utility and recreational purposes. As computing evolved, the idea that computers could interact and “network” together grew in popularity. Before the advent of the Internet, computers were networked to share files and devices, such as printers. Early networking attempts were focused on lowering hardware peripheral costs. For example, by networking an entire business you could

Wireless HD Video Standard Finalized - Promises 1080p Support

The Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) Consortium announced on Tuesday that their wireless technology specification has finally reached a completed state. The new standard will give consumers the ability to transmit high definition (HD) content around their homes wirelessly.
The WHDI, which is a formed alliance between Amimon, Hitachi, Motorola, Sharp, Samsung and Sony, was first revealed in the summer of 2008. This Tuesday, just a mere year and a half later, the group revealed that the impressive video technology, which promises to wirelessly deliver uncompressed HD content with ease, had reached version 1.0.
When the standard was originally proposed Amimon indicated that the technology would only support 720p content, however this has since changed, the standard now supports 60Hz 1080p video, with latency coming in at less than a millisecond.

Get a Free Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card for 200GB's Google Storage

Want 200 GB of online space for your Picasa web albums and Gmail attachments? Grab it for $50, and Google will give you a 4 GB Eye-Fi card with wireless uploading capabilities for free.
The 200 GB of space is an annually renewing cost of $50, but you can downgrade to a lesser plan or cancel after one year. The Eye-Fi card, on the other hand, is yours to keep. It's an SD card (technically an SDHC) that automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to online accounts like, say, Picasa, when it's on the same wireless network as your laptop or home desktop. Adam's had nice things to say about it, and based on an approximate value of $70, you can

Benefits from Providing Wi-Fi

Benefits for Property Owners
The advantages to deploying free wireless access are numerous. For a property owner, providing bandwidth
is a way to “give back” to the community. Property owners can leverage their valuable rooftop locations for mounting antennas and other gear in order to provide a community resource for all to share.

In addition to the community benefit, property owners can also make their own properties (particularly rental locations) more attractive to potential tenants. Since a renter can avoid a monthly service fee for Internet access, the value of that particular property is greater then other locations where the renter would have to pay a monthly fee for bandwidth.

Why Wi-Fi?

So, you may be wondering:Why should I build a community wireless network? The answers to this question are as varied and diverse as the communities themselves that have deployed wireless networks.

Early models for building wireless networks focused around their commercial potential. For several years, a number of companies (both venture capital and privately funded) embarked upon the task
of setting up as many for-pay hotspots as fast as possible across the country.This “land grab” mentality was met with limited success. While some market existed for paid Internet access in “captive audience” scenarios (such as hotels and airports), most venues are now discovering that the cost and hassle of the billing process make it more attractive to just offer Wi-Fi as a free service or “amenity” that compliments their business.

For example, coffee shops and hotels are not in the business of being an ISP. By offering free access, they can focus on what they do best—making lattes, yummy treats, and providing lodging for guests. Retail locations have now discovered that offering free Wi-Fi has enormous benefits as a marketplace differentiator. In other words, while the early models were to hope that Wi-Fi could be used as a revenue source, nowadays, these venues have made a significant change in perspective.They realized that millions of people had Wi-Fi built into their laptops, but a very small percentage were willing to pay for Wi-Fi when roaming outside of their home.With Wi-Fi revenue at miniscule levels, and deployment costs getting lower and lower (thanks to cheaper and cheaper hardware!), these venues understood that it made more sense to offer Wi-Fi for free as a way to attract more customers.

We’ve seen this paradigm before: hotels (like any industry) are always looking for a way to attract new customers and gain a competitive edge. Decades ago, hotels advertised these differentiators in bright neon lights. First is was “Air Conditioning,” then “Color TV,” then “HBO,” and now “Free Wi-Fi.”

Beyond the commercial applications, one of the most exciting areas of Wi-Fi proliferation has been in residential neighborhoods—in particular, in disadvantaged and low-income neighborhoods. However, regardless of your socio-economic status, the idea of sharing bandwidth and saving money has always been an attractive motivator.With the advent of 802.11, we can now legally share our
Internet connection and get to know our neighbors better at the same time!

FCC and IEEE Regulations

The functions of the FCC and IEEE serve very different purposes and it is important to understand their distinctions.The FCC is the regulatory body for the telecommunications industry. Among other
things, the FCC manages the airwaves by publishing regulations, issuing licenses, allocating the radio spectrum, and conducting investigations.The FCC is also responsible for the ISM and U-NII mandates. More information about FCC regulations can be found here: www.fcc.gov/oet/info/rules.

On the other hand, the IEEE is a professional organization whose mission is to create and develop standards (particularly networking and communications standards).The IEEE publishes these standards in order to promote interoperability between devices. Greater interoperability between vendors helps to create more choices for consumers and ultimately benefits the industry as a whole by encouraging greater usage and adoption rates by the public.The IEEE is responsible for the family of 802.11 protocol definitions. More information about the IEEE can be found at www.ieee.org.

When it comes to use of the airwaves in the United States, we find an area of intersection between the FCC and the IEEE. As you read the FCC regulations, you’ll find some differences between the FCC rules and the IEEE specifications.This variance reflects the IEEE’s position of remaining “conservative” and within the boundaries of the FCC mandates. For example, the 802.11a IEEE guidelines for power output limitations are actually 20 percent lower then the FCC limits.Table 1.3 shows the relative FCC and IEEE power output limits.

Spectrum range	FCC Limit	IEEE Limit
5.15 GHz–5.25 GHz	50 mW	40 mW
5.25 GHz–5.35 GHz	200 mW	250 mW
5.725 GHz–5.825 GHz	800 mW	1,000 mW

FCC Regulations

One of the reasons that so many enthusiasts are drawn to 802.11 is because it operates in an “unlicensed spectrum,” where a license to operate from the FCC is not required. Unlike other wireless activities, such as radio or TV broadcasting, we do not need to purchase frequencies or pay a monthly service fee to use the airways for Wi-Fi.

While 802.11 operation is free from cost, it is important to remember that it is not free from regulations. The rules for operating RF equipment vary from country to country, depending on the local regulatory agency involved. In the United States, that agency is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).The rules for operating 802.11b equipment fall under the 1985 Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) mandate, while the rules for operating 802.11a equipment fall under the 1997 Unlicensed – National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) mandate.

ISM regulations actually predate the existence of 802.11. ISM provides unlicensed spectrum in the 902–928MHz, 2.400–2.485GHz, and 5.725–5.850GHz ranges.These frequencies were put to work in a variety of capacities and introduced a large number of technological innovations such as pagers, microwave ovens, and cordless phones.The downside, of course, is that by the time 802.11 moved into the landscape, there were already a large number of users in the 2.4 GHz frequency space.

U-NII, on the other hand, was designed specifically for wireless data networking. If you think back to 1997, it was a time when there was a national movement to bring the Internet to schools across the country. Apple computer petitioned the FCC with the thought that the best way to “wire” the schools was to “unwire” them, and so the FCC granted frequencies in the 5.15–5.25 GHz, 5.25–5.35 GHz, and 5.725–5.825 GHz ranges specifically for this purpose. Smart decisions were made in an attempt to optimize the spectrum. For example, the “Lower Band” of four non-overlapping channels (5.15–5.25 GHz) was reserved for lower-power indoor devices (up to 50mW).The “Middle Band” of the four non-overlapping channels (5.25–5.35 GHz) was reserved for medium-power indoor/outdoor devices (up to 250mW). Finally, the “Upper Band” of the four non-overlapping channels (5.725–5.825 GHz) was reserved for higher-power outdoor devices (up to 1W). In this manner, long distance (high power) point-to-point links did not interfere with shorter range (lower power) wireless networks.

Clearwire's WiMAX rollout rolls on: NC, WA, TX, IL and HI get lit

Think LTE is the future? How's about the present? Clearwire is expanding its national footprint in a big, big way today by announcing WiMAX services in a slew of regions in a smattering of states. Starting today, 4G access can be found in both Honolulu and Maui, Hawaii, which effectively removes the last sane reason to not visit and / or relocate there. In fact, CLEAR is now available to 800,000 citizens of America's finest state, with service extending 1,759 square miles over Oahu, Maui, and Lanai. Moving on, residents of Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh, North Carolina can also buy in, right along with those folks in Dallas/Ft. Worth, San Antonio and Austin, Texas who mistakenly think their BBQ is superior. Closing things out, we've got new access throughout the Puget Sound area (including Seattle and King County, Pierce County, Kitsap County, and Snohomish County), not to mention a green light to hop on the 4G superhighway in the Chicago region. If you're anxious to ditch 3G, you'll find plans starting at just $30 per month. (Engadget)

Connecting to an Access Point

In order to establish communication between a client device and an AP, the client must know the Service Set IDentifier (SSID) of the network and then perform two special steps: authentication and association.Therefore, the communication relationship exists in three states:

• Unauthenticated and unassociated
• Authenticated and unassociated
• Authenticated and associated

SSID Discovery

There are two possible ways for the client to know the SSID of the network. Either the SSID is told to the client by the AP (often called Open Network mode), or the SSID has to be known by the client via some other method, such as being preprogrammed into the client device by the system administrator (often called Closed Network mode).
The AP broadcasts “management beacons,” typically every 100 milliseconds.These management beacons are a special kind of “Wi-Fi mating call,” containing all of the synchronization information that the client needs to know in order to associate with the network, including channel, supported speeds, timestamps, WEP status, and other capability information.With Open Network mode (see image), the SSID is included in the management beacon.

With Closed Network mode (see next image below), the client uses its preprogrammed knowledge of the SSID and broadcasts probe requests across all channels.The probe request includes the SSID of
the network that the client is attempting to communicate with. If the AP hears a probe request on its channel, along with a matching SSID, then the AP will answer back with a probe response.This probe response will contain synchronization details, similar to the information found in a management beacon.
Note that APs in Closed Network mode still broadcast a management beacon; however, the portion of the management beacon where the SSID would normally be found is blank.

Again, the key distinction between these two methods is the way in which the Service Set IDentifier (SSID) discovery is handled. In order to associate with an AP, a client must know the SSID of the network. Either the client can be told the SSID (Open Network), or it has to be preprogrammed in the client configuration (Closed Network).

Authentication

Authentication can occur using either “Open System” or “Shared Key” authentication (see image below). Null authentication, as its name implies, is a simple two-step process that does not require any
credentials to be supplied.The process begins when the client sends an Authentication Request frame to the AP.The AP responds with an Authentication Response frame, indicating either success or failure.

Shared Key authentication (see image below) is a four-step process that involves the client’s knowledge of the WEP key in order to be authenticated by the access point.The first step is that the client
sends an Authentication Request frame to the AP.The AP responds with 128 bytes of challenge text.
The client uses the WEP engine to encrypt the 128 bytes of random challenge text and then sends back a Challenge Response frame, containing 128 bytes of (encrypted) cipher text. In order to authenticate the client, the AP decrypts the cipher text and sees if it matches the original challenge text.This process is used to validate whether or not the client actually knows the shared secret of the
WEP key.The final step is for the AP to send an Authentication Result frame, indicating success or failure.

Association

Once the client has been authenticated, the next step is to associate with the access point (see image below).The client sends an Association Request frame (including the SSID) and the AP sends back an Association Response frame, indicating success or failure.

7 Reasons Why Should I Buy eReaders (e-book readers)

1. Form Follows Function
   I love when a device is so perfectly modeled after its purpose. Currently, Amazon's Kindle is the apex of the design imperative for e-readers. In fact, I'm not sure Barnes & Noble's Nook will outdo it, even with that nifty energy-sucking LCD color screen (which, of course, has nothing to do with the act of reading). The current crop of e-readers from Amazon, Sony, and others are thin, easy to hold, and, especially in Sony's case, exceptionally easy to use. All e-readers should have a touch screen that recognizes sweeping a finger across the screen as the gesture for "turn the page." Let's also not forget how thin most e-readers are. The Kindle is thinner than a book, much thinner than three books and two magazines, and sits comfortably in your pocketbook, backpack or hand. I don't think we could say the same of a laptop or tablet.
   
   
2. There is No better Way to Travel with All of Your Reading Material
   Most e-books hold 1,500 books in their flash memory. The typical reader will travel with three or four tomes of varying sizes. You can also, as I have, move magazine subscriptions to the platform. Recently, I started getting my New Yorker on the Kindle. The reading experience is, to be honest, different and a little weird. I no longer have the interstitial experience of seeing cartoons sandwiched inside a massive article on the coup in Honduras. All the cartoons are in a section at the end of the digital magazine. On the other hand, when a magazine of this density arrives every week, it's impossible to keep up. I have been known to travel across the country with no fewer than five issues in my backpack. With my Kindle, those days are over. I could keep a dozen issues on the device and never feel the weight.
   
   
3. Access to the Digital e-book Store is Free, No Matter Where You Are and Books are Cheaper, Too
   It's true, there are no discounts or subsidies when you by an ereader from Amazon or Sony. But Amazon's 3G Whispernet cellular service is 100-percent free. I can peruse the Amazon bookstore from wherever I am and even do a little web browsing (though the browser is awful) if I want, and I never pay a thing. This also means that when my latest New York Times or New Yorker is available, I don't have to look for an open Wi-Fi network or hook up to my PC. I just turn on the free connection and download. Many of the books are cheaper than their physical counterparts and magazine subscriptions can be cheaper, too.
   
   
4. E-books are the Best Way to Read the Old-Fashioned Way
   I know a lot of people who stare at a computer screen all day and complain of about eyestrain. E-ink, a technology that's significantly different than LCD display technology, is fixed (no refresh), reflective (like paper), and it doesn't introduce eyestrain unless you need new glasses or are reading without enough light. I can read on my Kindle for hours and never feel anything but delight. Yes, I have tried Kindle for the PC and reading e-books on iPhones. Both experiences were somewhat less satisfying. In fact, the iPhone was, for me at least, a total bust: The screen is just too small for reading a lengthy novel.
   
   
5. E-books Are for Sharing
   Yes, it's true, DRM constraints make it impossible for me to share my Kindle books with someone who owns a Nook (Oh, wait, no one does yet) or even someone with a Sony eReader. That's not great. On the other hand, if I buy everyone in my family a Kindle and then give Kindles as gifts to my relatives over the next few years, we can share books. The reality is that I almost never share books with anyone. I used to buy them at Barnes & Noble, read them, and then put them on my shelf. Eventually, I might try and sell them at a garage sale for 50 cents each. It's easier to have virtual books that I either keep on my Kindle or eventually discard.
   
   
6. Lots of People Still Want e-books
   Mr. Elgan says everyone who wants an e-reader already has one. That would make sense if Barnes & Noble hadn't just sold out of a device that it can't even deliver in time for Christmas, and Amazon's Kindle hadn't just broken a sales record. I think the demand is still there and, in fact, growing.
   
   
7. E-reader Technology is Still Cutting Edge
   2010 may be the year of the tablet, but no one really knows what the age of tablet will mean for consumers. Are tablets the upgrade to e-readers or, because they'll use LCD technology, be heavier and probably a lot more expensive, will they be something completely different? Plus, with the sudden demise of Michael Arrington's CrunchPad, the future probably just got brighter for the e-reader market, didn't it?