SECURITY IS OBSTACLE TO BUSINESS USE OF WI-FI, CONFERENCE IS TOLD
CUPERTINO, CAL. -- Multiple, severe, security challenges stand in way of realizing multibillion-dollar business potential of 802.11 wireless LAN technology, especially for cellular carriers seeking bridge between current slow data transmission and high-speed 3G, industry executives said. Implementations of current standard security technology, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, are woefully inadequate to protect sensitive data, Cisco Systems marketing development manager Eric Blaufarb told Wireless Communications Alliance meeting here July 18: “Wireless is broadcast over the air, so the medium can be attacked pretty easily.” Security concerns remain prevalent as IEEE works on next generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11g.
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Blaufarb said effective fixes would become commercially available over next 12 months. Companies now can use Virtual Private Network (VPN) architecture, but that hurts performance and restricts service offerings. “Pervasive standard” authentication fix is IEEE 802.1X technology, best used with fast key rotation to short-cut decryption, Blaufarb said. He said encryption holes in that approach were expected to be plugged by IEEE 802.11TGi group’s adoption later this year of Temporal Key Integrity Protocol and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), with AES incorporated in 802.11g radio sets starting in first-half 2003.
AES standards will be enforced through Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance certification. Unfortunately, he said, new measures will degrade network performance 20-30%. And citing recent study in which 67% of wireless networks were found not to employ WEP, Blaufarb said any tools were only as useful as willingness of players to use them. Still, Stu Jeffery, networks vp of Adjungo Networks, said wireless LAN represented economical transition to data services for cellular carriers. His company and others offer carriers gateways to integrate patchwork of wireless LAN networks into conventional cellular networks.
Much anticipated “g” standard would boost speeds to 22 Mbps from 11 Mbps with 802.11b. IEEE 802.11 Working Group next meets Nov. 10-15 in Kauai, Hawaii, and new 802.11 variants will be considered. Reflecting technology under consideration, no papers will be available at meeting -- all information will be disseminated electronically via Wi-Fi, IEEE said. Patent, antitrust and copyright issues related to Wi-Fi also will be on agenda.
IEEE 802.11 Task Group G is considering standard that still would operate in spectrum unlicensed by FCC and would be backward-compatible with 802.11b and 802.11a. Task Group said it was considering standard by Intersil using modulation called wideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), similar to some DSL variants. Texas Instruments had proposed packet binary convolutional code (PBCC) that it said would be more compatible with previous 802.11 versions but that was rejected. Company instead plans to offer PBCC as 802.11b standard at 11 Mbps.