03 JUNE 02: “Wi-Fi”
Wild About Wi-Fi
Rising from the grass
roots, high-speed wireless Internet connections are springing up everywhere.
Tune in, turn on, get e-mail. Sometimes for free.
By Steven Levy and Brad
Stone
NEWSWEEK
(June 10 issue)
Pete Shipleys dimly lit
Berkeley home has all the earmarks of a geek lair: scattered viscera of
discarded computer systems, exotic pieces of electronic-surveillance equipment
and videos of the BBC sci-fi Red Dwarf show. But among the hacker community,
Shipley, a 36-year-old freelance security consultant, is best known for
his excursions outside the homeas a pioneer of war driving.
BREATHE
EASY: this isnt a Sum of All Fears kind of thing. War driving involves
roaming around a neighborhood looking for the increasingly numerous hot
spots where high-speed Internet access is beamed to a small area by a
low-power radio signal, thanks to a scheme called Wireless Fidelity. Imagine
your computer as a walkie-talkie, but instead of talking, youre getting
high-speed Internet access. Wi-Fi, as its generally called (propellerheads
call it 802.11b), has unexpectedly emerged as the wireless worlds Maltese
Falcon, something truly lustworthy and, once possessed, impossible to let
go of.
Two million people use it now, a number expected to double by next year,
according to Gartner, Inc. And International Data Corp. predicts that public
hot spots will jump from a current 3,000 to more than 40,000 by 2006. Consumers
use Wi-Fi to establish wireless networks in their homes; businesses adopt
it to untether employees from desktops, and techno-nomads celebrate its
presence in cafes (from Starbucks to Happy Donuts), airports and hotel
lobbies. (Next on the docket: airplanes.) It seems that moving megabytes
on the move is almost mystical, like an out-of-body experience. Once you
are untethered from a wall it becomes like candy; its a really insatiable
appetite, says Michael Chaplo, the CEO of one Wi-Fi start-up. You just
want it everywhere. Like the early Internet, Wi-Fi is a jaw-dropping technology
with unlimited promise. Also like the Internet, it opens up a rats nest
of security woes.
Theres nothing like a war drive to expose both sides of this cutting-edge
sword. Shipley Velcroes two weird-looking antennae to a NEWSWEEK reporters
car, and connects them to a Lucent wireless card plugged into a Fujitsu
Tablet PC. He boots a program called Net Stumbler, which transforms the
system into a sniffing machine, capable of detecting Wi-Fi networks with
the reliability of a drug beagle, and were off. Almost instantly, the
rig starts finding networks16 of them within the first three blocks (last
year Shipley was getting just two). Turning toward the campus, name after
name of wireless setups scroll by, some set up by corporations, some by
… well, who knows? Cal Bears Network … V Street Network … Henry Household.
About half of the more than 200 networks he finds are unprotected by encryption
or access control, meaning that anyone passing by could potentially grab
the data. Or a freeloader could plant himself in front of the network owners
house and send out thousands of spam e-mails, leaving the owner to take
the heat.
This is not just a West Coast phenomenon: a war-driving security specialist
in Omaha, Neb., recently found 59 hot spots, 37 of them unprotected. And
on a war walk through New Yorks Greenwich Village last week, NEWSWEEK
found more than 50 hot spots in a quarter-hour. A disturbing security situationin
effect, its like opening a drive-in window to an otherwise firewall-protected
networkbut also an exhilarating opportunity. Without knowing exactly who
was beaming out the broadband, it was possible to stand on a random street
corner and grab sports scores and e-mail. The Internet was in the air.
Thats only one irony in the Wi-Fi revolution: while most of the tech industry
gripes about how hard it is to provide high-speed Internet access, seemingly
out of nowhere a technology has emerged to do just that, at low cost or
even for free. And without those nasty wires! The secret of Wi-Fi comes
from its mongrel origins. Wireless technology is actually a kind of radio,
and different devices run on different frequencies on the radio bandwidth.
Some portions are hotly contested, and governments reserve their use for
favored parties: in some cases, like cellular phones, firms pay billions
to use portions of the spectrum. No one pays a penny for Wi-Fi, which springs
from a semi-orphaned frequency range formerly known as the Industrial,
Scientific and Medical Band, designated for humble appliances like cordless
phones and microwave ovens. (Its around 2.4 gigahertz, for those keeping
score at home.) This junk spectrum is unlicensed, meaning that as long
as you keep the power low, no one limits your activity. This freedom appealed
to computer people, who see it as an open invitation to innovate and experiment.
As a result, cool things keep happening with Wi-Fi.
A lot of this still goes on among the geek set. For instance, Rob Flickenger,
author of Building Wireless Community Networks, has gained renown for
designing a long-range $6.45 Wi-Fi antenna housed in a Pringles potato-chip
can. (Its been recently outperformed by an antenna made out of a Big Chunk
beef-stew can.)
But even as the wireheads build their toys, serious companies sense big
money. Things really began to take off three years ago when Apple adopted
Wi-Fi for its home-networking AirPort device. Simply plug your Internet
cable into the flying-saucer-shaped gizmo, and your Macs (if equipped with
a $99 wireless card) instantly become wireless Net machines. Last year
Microsoft rolled out its new Windows XP operating system with built-in
Wi-Fi support: every time an XP user with a wireless card gets within sniffing
range of a network, a little dialogue box pops up and asks if he or she
wants to hook up. And this year IBM began shipping ThinkPad computers with
Wi-Fi built in.
Dozens
of start-up companies hope to ride the Wi-Fi wave. Boingo wants to be at
the center of a sprawling Wi-Fi archipelago. It offers customers service
at hundredsone day maybe millions, dreams CEO Sky Dayton (who earlier
founded Earthlink)of hot spots signed on to the Boingo system. In return,
Boingo handles the billing and kicks back part of the user fees. A company
called Joltage provides software to turn hot spots into instant mini-Internet
service providers. Other firms are working to go beyond hot spots to larger
hot zones, like WiFi Metro, which has placed antennas in Palo Alto and
San Jose, Calif., to blanket six-block areas in a single network. Going
a step further are companies attempting mesh networks to create hot regions.
For instance, a company called SkyPilot wants to Wi-Fi the suburbs by hopscotching
bandwidth from computer to computer: sort of a Napster approach to connectivity.
While entrepreneurs envision hot spots in their bank accounts, some people
are organizing on the principle that connectivity in the air should be
as free as the breeze. In more than 50 cities and towns, community-based
network groups are setting up regions where people are encouraged to partake
of free wireless Internet. NYC Wireless has more than 60 guerrilla installations,
including Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. In Pittsburgh, you
can Web-surf for free in Mellon and Market Squares.
Traditional broadband providers cry foul when users take their cable modem
or DSL connections and beam them to friends, family and passsers-by through
Wi-Fi networks. It constitutes a theft of service per our user agreement,
says AT&T Broadbands Sarah Eder. But at least one very important observer
doesnt buy that. I dont think its stealing by any definition of law
at the moment, says FCC chairman Michael Powell. The truth is, its an
unintended use.
Wi-Fis success has already made some telecom companies like Nokia and
Nextel realize that their future lies in complementing, not competing,
with Wi-Fi. The new vision involves a hybrid scheme where people would
do heavy-duty computing in low-cost, high-activity Wi-Fi hot zones, and
then, when they drove out to the desert, or visited North Dakota, theyd
stay connected, using a more costly (licensed bandwidth) 3G-cellular network.
Performing this trick without fiddling with the computera so-called vertical
handoffis the holy grail, says AT&T researcher Paul Henry. It would
mean that wherever you were, the Internet would be there, too.
This would require superior security software. But it will take some effort
from users. The current form of protection, an encryption code called WEP,
is far from perfect, but a lot of people dont even bother to turn it on.
Nonetheless, experts assume that, like the Internet, Wi-Fi will manage
to increaseif not perfectits security so that problems wont stunt its
growth.
No matter who provides the signal, the Wi-Fi revolution is now moving to
a fascinating stage, where the medium affects behavior. Putting wireless
nets in businesses has affected culture in places like Microsoft and IBM,
where people trundle into meetings with laptops, pull up relevant information
on the spotand surf the Net if theyre bored. An in-house video at Cisco
Systems tells the tale of an engineer who discovered a toilet-paper shortage
in the mens roomand was able to order more online while maintaining his
position.
And when the Internet is ultimately everywhere, imagine the effects on
journalism when, as tech columnist Dan Gillmor has speculated, hundreds
of witnesses to a local disaster have the ability to capture and send out
instant digital photos and videos.
All that from junk spectrum? Hard to believe. But not too long ago surfing
the Internet seemed as weird as, well, war driving.
Arthur Magazine 