Your Guide To Wireless

Tools that help find hot spots

Any Wi-Fi discovery tool can find a hot spot, but some network operators also provide connection managers for their Wi-Fi services, mainly to integrate account information easily on both ends of the link. A good example is Wi-Fi aggregator Boingo Wireless. We installed its GoBoingo client on our Windows XP machine. Operating this application is a bit counter intuitive, it wakes up when near a Boingo hot spot, but otherwise remains invisible. So, while GoBoingo is frequently listed as a discov...

WPA Wi-Fi Encryption Cracked for the First Time

Once thought safe, the WPA standard used by countless wireless routers has been revealed to be vulnerable- but only in theory, for now. Security researchers say they've developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard that is used to safeguard data on many wireless networks. Researcher Erik Tews was to demonstrate the attack at the PacSec conference in Tokyo in mid-November. Cracking WPA encryption could be exploited to read data being sent from a rou...

Cisco gears up for the future

The networking giant's new UK supremo, Phil Smith, talks to Dave Bailey about the impact collaborative tools and rich media content are having on the internet, and explains how new networking innovations are helping to combat climate change Networking giant Cisco posted a set of first-quarter financial results last week showing an eight per cent increase in sales, but with profit down 0.2 per cent year on year. The firm recently announced Phil Smith as its new UK and Ireland vice president an...

Free Wi-Fi Radio Band Passes FCC Tests

Mobile devices using a new radio band for free wireless service would not cause significant interference with cell phones employing a nearby band, the Federal Communications Commission has concluded from its tests. The band was once used for microwave links between carrier facilities; but in 2006, citing the lack of any FCC plan at the time for assigning the spectrum, M2Z Networks proposed using it for a combination of free and paid wireless services that would reach 95 percent of U.S. reside...