[IP] [Technical] Gigabit Wi-Fi looms large
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 21, 2004 8:09:11 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Gigabit Wi-Fi looms large
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Original URL:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/19/gigabit_wi-fi_promised/
Gigabit Wi-Fi looms large
By Wireless Watch (peter at rethinkresearch.biz)
Published Friday 19th November 2004 15:54 GMT
Among the factors that have held back enterprise uptake of wireless
LANs outside greenfield sites have been security fears and lack of
performance compared to wireline Ethernet. The past week has brought
little reassurance on the first point, but has highlighted developments
pointing to the creation of Gigabit Wi-Fi.
A few days after experts exposed vulnerabilities in the WPA WLAN
security standard, more question marks were raised over Wi-Fi's
openness to attack.
Lack of WLAN security
Two surveys predicted dire consequences if UK corporations do not take
a stricter approach to wireless security, while a study by Federal
Computer Week found that US government civilian and defense systems are
"exceedingly vulnerable" to hacking since they introduce wireless
networking, since much data on these links is unencrypted or access
points are inadequately protected.
All this is creating something of a resurgence of the security panics
that plagued corporate WLAN adoption last year, and which equipment
makers had hoped would be lulled by the appearance of the WPA interim
security standard from the Wi-Fi Alliance, and the recent ratification
of the full blown IEEE 802.11i specification, which supports features
such as AES authentication.
Of course, the security specialists benefit from renewed fears about
Wi-Fi's vulnerability, and two of them, SonicWall and Red-M, are behind
the new surveys of UK companies. The SonicWall report found that 70 per
cent of UK organizations are using wireless connectivity or planning to
do so soon, but one-third of these admitted that they would have no way
of detecting a security breach on their WLANs.
The study involved interviews with directors and senior IT managers at
more than 400 businesses, half of them with more than 1,000 PCs and the
rest in the small to medium sector. Around half had already deployed
WLANs while a further 20 per cent were considering implementing it in
the coming 12 months. Drivers for adoption were flexibility (64 per
cent).
Security remains the single biggest fear factor. More than three
quarters (77 per cent) of firms cited it as a key concern, along with
network management (30 per cent) and cost (24 per cent). Only 16 per
cent failed to see any benefit from wireless, compared with more than
30 per cent in a similar survey published a year ago.
About 70 per cent of firms have deployed their WLAN in a secure
firewall zone but are still using the old WEP protocol, which does not
protect the application layer effectively, so better encryption is
urgently needed.
More than 80 per cent of those with WLANs said they enforced security
policies governing usage yet less than half (44 per cent) had ever had
their wireless networks audited. When asked how they would know if they
was a breach of security on the WLAN just 16 per cent could answer the
question and 38 per cent of those said they would have no idea.
In a survey of 81 large companies, Red-M found that 68 per cent of them
demonstrated "an alarming lack of urgency in securing computer networks
against wireless risks".
CEO Karl Feilder said: "I'm beginning to believe that it will take a
few catastrophic events to jolt business leaders into action. Because
they can't physically see the threat they believe it doesn't exist, yet
the threat is much bigger than most companies realize."
Of the companies surveyed, 45 per cent mistakenly believed that their
existing security measures would protect them against wireless
intrusion, while 23 per cent of them believed that simply declaring
their offices wireless-free zones was effective. "That's like saying
that because stealing is a crime we don't need to lock our buildings at
night," said Feilder.
US federal systems
Over the Atlantic, Federal Computer Week has pointed to many points of
vulnerability in US government systems. As well as common failings such
as unencrypted data, use of WEP instead of WPA or 802.11i, and access
points that are allowed to broadcast signals widely, the study
identifies contractors on civilian and defense projects as the weakest
link.
Systems integrators such as Computer Sciences (CSC), which has a huge
contract with the National Security Agency, were found by the
investigation to operate systems with "significant and troubling
security vulnerabilities" that do not comply with the guidelines issued
by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in
November 2002.
The FCW team was able to detect network traffic on the Pentagon's
private WLLAN from a range of more than 1,000 yards from highways on
three sides of the Pentagon building. And at CSC's federal division's
base in Virginia, FCW reporters discovered five rogue wireless access
points, and said the whole system could have been crippled with a
denial of service attack within minutes.
Extricom
All this throws fresh doubts over enterprise WLANs just when some
pioneers are seeking to boost their data rates to match those of
Ethernet. Fresh from raising new funding, Israeli start-up Extricom is
one of those promising a 1Gbps Wi-Fi.
The company claims that its Interference Free Architecture triples the
available channels and the bandwidth of 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g
taking 'b' to 99Mbps and the others to 1Gbps. CEO Gideon Rottem says
the key to achieving these speeds is solving the problem of co-channel
interference.
It is focusing on the enterprise market, as are other proponents of
superfast Wi-Fi (or Gi-Fi, as it is inevitably being labelled).
Extricom says its architecture, backed by 10 patents, eliminates
coverage and capacity limitations (and the need for expensive cell
planning and site surveys) through use of per-packet adaptive
techniques and channel re-use. The per-packet adaptive architecture
adapts to its RF environment for each packet sent across the wireless
network, enabling frequency reuse of each 802.11 channel, multiplying
the aggregate capacity by up to 60 times.
The company has developed a switch and access point with specialized
software algorithms, which will be available in the first quarter of
2005. The APs are ultra-thin, with no radio or processor, and can be
deployed in very dense configurations to boost throughput and to
support zero hand-off time between APs. This is an approach that is
also being studied by switchmakers such as Aruba.
Although they will work with third party switches, they have to be
combined with the Extricom switch to achieve the maximum speeds. A
common complaint against Wi-Fi hardware makers is that, while
technically conforming to 802.11 standards in terms of
interoperability, they create -standards-plus' features that lock users
into their systems. In the case of 1Gbps Wi-Fi, this lock-in could be
permanent, since there are no firm plans for the IEEE to develop a
standard for this speed.
Rather than taking Cisco on head-to-head, Extricom is pitching itself
as an OEM offering for vendors already in the market and looking to
make superior RF performance a core feature of their next-generation
products.
This has certainly been a key focus for switchmakers recently, with
experiments with wireless grid (Aruba), MIMO smart antennas (Airespace)
and advanced routing algorithms (Chantry) among the approaches. There
will be more start-ups too - Stellaris Networks, also from Israel, is
working on technology similar to Extricom's, although it remains in
stealth mode for now.
NewLans
Another start-up targeting this space is NewLans, details of whose
approach are as hazy as those of Extricom's. NewLans was set up by
serial entrepreneur Dev Gupta, who has already presented his technology
to the IEEE and hopes for a standards taskgroup to be set up soon.
Two trends are making talk of Gigabit Wi-Fi - also known as Gi-Fi or
Wireless Gigabit to the Desktop (wGTTD) - more than just interesting
speculation. First, WLan companies claim that enterprises are becoming
increasingly comfortable with the idea of replacing wired Lans with
wireless, rather than just supplementing them, but they will demand
that Wi-Fi keeps pace with Ethernet speed advances. Gigabit Ethernet to
the desktop is starting to be widely adopted.
Second, in the US, the Federal Communications Commission has decided to
open up the 56GHz band for possible high speed WLAN usage, which will
stimulate adoption of wireless for intensive applications such as
video. Only with such infrastructure options will an entirely wireless
enterprise become a possibility.
Gupta himself is mainly looking to the enterprise for Gi-Fi uptake and
told US journalists that he hoped to market the idea to Cisco
customers. Given that several of his past ventures have been acquired
by the networking giant, he may also be hoping to market his company to
Cisco itself. Certainly, Gi-Fi is the type of technology that could
attract the market leader, whose real power lies in enterprise
backbones and whose business in that area could be cannibalized by a
major shift to wireless.
For now, there are very few technical details revealed about how speeds
of 1-2Gbps will be achieved over Wi-Fi at a time when most vendors
believe that the protocol is being stretched to its limit by the
current 802.11n project to achieve 108Mbps. Such suppliers are looking
to WiMAX to provide the throughput and reliability upgrades as
customers start to demand faster wireless.
Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
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