|
Connectivity is an increasing business need among today’s
businessmen. We often see them in hotspots like coffee shops and
hotel lobbies. A hotspot is a wireless Internet access point. It can
be a small room or an office building. Hotspots are also found
in hotels and restaurants where as part of marketing strategy they
are offered for free to clients. Even Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi
Minh City, Vietnam is a free Wi-Fi hotspot.
Other hotspots can be found in bookstores, gas
stations and even universities.
UST has recently upgraded its core network using
10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) technology from Cisco.
Www.totalhotspots.com/directory/ph lists 429 hotspots in the
country. Singapore counts 852.
When my wife Cecile and I visited Renelle Velez,
my cousin, in New Jersey in December, her whole house was a hotspot
(mine too! ed.). She had a router installed. A typical home router
with a stock antenna could have a range of 32 meters indoor and 95
meters outdoors. Range also varies with frequency band, you
know, those numbers with GHz.
Now, thanks to WiGo, Rockwell Powerplant Mall
recently became one big hotspot offering free Wi-Fi. WiGo’s other
free hotspots include LKG Tower Food Odyssey and PBCOM Tower Food
Patio in Makati and the National Library in Manila. Checking the
Globequest website, it lists nearly 100 wireless Internet zones,
called WIZ, around the country.
According to Liza de los Reyes, WiGo chief
operating officer, the free service is aimed at the growing number
of laptop users. “The need to stay online is no longer confined to
the home or workplace adding that “road warriors” are a new
breed of users whose lifestyles are putting a greater demand on
mobility,” said Liza.
While in the 2006 report of the International
Communications Market by the UK Office of Communications: 25 percent
of the world’s hotspots are in the United States with 8.8 hotspots
per 100 people; Japan has 5.3 hotspots per 100 people; UK and
Ireland both average 18 hotspots per 100 people.
T-Mobile reportedly has 7,897 hotspot locations
in the US and 45,000 hotspots worldwide for its subscribers. Of
course, a US subscriber pays extra to use a T-Mobile hotspot outside
the US. I read that St. Cloud, Florida was the first city in the US
to offer city wide free Wi-Fi. Maybe, someday we will have the City
of Makati as one big free hotspot?
The Wi-Fi brand
“Wi-Fi” is actually a wireless technology
brand owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance, which is a consortium of
companies that specifies methods and techniques of wireless local
area network (WLAN) operations. This alliance includes some popular
brands we know like Cisco, Lucent and Nokia.
The Wi-Fi Alliance agrees on a set of
interoperable products based on the family of IEEE 802.11 standards.
These numbers are the set of standards for WLAN developed by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) based in New
York. According to its website at www.ieee.org, the organization has
more than 370,000 members in 180 countries. The IEEE is also the
leading authority in other areas like aerospace systems, biomedical
engineering and consumer electronics.
Challenges of Connectivity
Problems can arise given the increasing number
of Wi-Fi access points especially in high-density areas like
condominiums or office buildings. An excessive number of access
points result in “Wi-Fi Pollution.” This can prevent access and
interfere with the use of other access points. Devices like
security cameras, Bluetooth devices and even cordless phones and
microwave ovens can also cause additional interference. In
fact, several years ago, we had a dilemma with the 2.4GHz band radio
spectrum utilized by the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard as the frequency is
used (until now) by Meralco in Metro Manila.
Wireless networks use radio signals that makes
them vulnerable. They don’t have the same physical boundaries or
structure like cables that wired networks use. And these
signals don’t end at your door. They can reach your neighbor
across the street or the room above you where a hacker who can
access your passwords and can get into your computer through your
own wireless router. (In the case of Meralco, interfere with their
communications equipment.)
Or you enter a free “poisoned hotspot” set
up by identity thieves for the purpose of “sniffing” data sent
by different users. This abuse can be avoided by the use of VPN or
Virtual Private Network.
Are you secured?
Often, we are so excited with technology that we
want it “up and running” immediately. And we become careless and
ignorant. We forget the need for security such as a unique SSID (a
name that identifies a network) and encryption technology for
wireless networks.
Gerilyn Baltan of APC-MGE, a fully- integrated
solution provider for Critical Power and Cooling Services, shares a
few simple tips. “Connect only when you are ready to send your
e-mail. Avoid going to an unknown website or a known website that
you think is prone to viruses. If possible, avoid downloading stuff
in an unsecured and public Wi-Fi facility. But when you download,
ensure that you have a licensed and reliable antivirus software
installed in your laptop.”
I recommend that you always check your Wi-Fi
settings. Why not turn off the option that allows your laptop to
constantly search and log on to the nearest hotspot. This can be
dangerous as you could inadvertently use an insecure network to
login to a website, thereby making the login credentials available
to anyone “sniffing” and have your sensitive data read.
I hope this story was sent (and not sniffed) via
a secured hotspot?
|
