The Future of Wi-Fi and Broadband
Performance, Availability and Security Converge

by John Boline
Service Manager, MCSE, CNE, USE


It is in the news everyday. The cable companies and telephone companies are competing to roll out WI-FI en masse. Municipalities are exploring broadband and wireless access, PCS services are starting for wide area broadband, and all at a time where virus and worm infections look to infect any unprotected system. Is there hope that this technology will be useful?

WI-FI Everywhere
In the months since I last wrote in-depth about WI-FI proliferation, there have been changes. Many of you may have noticed more Wireless Access Points (WAP) popping up in your neighborhood, I know I have. I can fire up the old laptop and I see connections available to Graceland, Elvis, Zeus, Bob and some connection only known as Wireless. There is a good news / bad news component to the availability of this connectivity, and that is security. Security in my neighborhood is not an issue; there is none. I could connect to any of these WAP’s I chose to as they do not even have the basic security in place. They broadcast their availability; don’t use keys, encryption or even MAC address filtering. The same is true for many implementations of WI-FI around my office. This must stop before WI-FI can become truly viable for all users. But there are other considerations for connectivity that skirt on WI-FI and that is wide area broadband.

Other Broadband
As they were one of the first, I would like to use Verizon as an example of wide-area broadband. Verizon has their offering that will allow continuous connection to broadband up and down the interstate highways in Illinois and most of the country and many places in between where there is cell service. Cable companies are signing agreements with Cell Phone companies; phone companies with satellite providers and the lines are fading between who offers what and where. The problem is that while the technology is there, with few exceptions, the people offering it, installing it and supporting it have no idea what they are doing (everyone remember the roll out of broadband cable). If you go with this technology, you may well need to be able to troubleshoot connectivity yourself.

Security is Coming
The good thing about the roll out of the new letters in the alphabet soup that is the 802.11x standard is that most reputable vendors, that is the ones that are not trying to compete for the cheapest WI-FI nic’s at the large retailers and superstores, now offer security software and wizards as part of the install. With a marginal knowledge of security needs, you can answer a few simple questions and be able to have some level of security other that the default ‘wide-open’ of many of the devices that were previously sold. As the speed increases and access spreads, this is more important by the day. The spread of the recent variants of mass mailing worms could have had a much smaller impact had security measures been in place.

Firewalls, etc.
What do you need to be safe? Well, that has not changed much. If you are on a hardwired LAN, you need a firewall, either locally or on the network that you sit behind. The same is true for WI-FI and broadband. Do not count of the provider to make sure you are secure. If security is not outlined in their product offering as being included, it isn’t, A good rule of thumb is that any system that is mobile, that is used on and off the hard-wired LAN should have a firewall locally, because you never know if the network you connect to while traveling is safe; in fact you should assume it is not. You should also have software that blocks Malware from installing on your system, and projects from browser hijacking. Giant Software’s solution, acquired by Microsoft, is an excellent example of this real time protection.

How can I get more information about Improving Network Performance?
You can get more information about this subject. The web provides a wealth of information. There are articles in publications like Telephony, CSO and Information Week that discuss these topics too. You can also refer to the white papers offered by many of the main network vendors (3Com, Cisco, Netgear, Allied, Asante, etc.) and as always, try to avoid those off the shelf solutions you can purchase at the local electronics superstore as they are geared to consumers and not businesses and do not have the security included that was mentioned above, at least in most cases! If you have questions or comments about this article, contact me (JohnBoline@hagerman.com)



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