Zit Seng's Superwall » wireless

WPA2 Now Available in NUS

Zit Seng — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:30:35 +0000

It took a while for NUS to catch-up on the latest in wireless LAN security, but it finally did. WPA2 security is now available on the NUS wireless LAN. At least in most parts of campus. Definitely so in SoC areas (yeah, since we get to control that). It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, but in the interest of presenting a consistent user experience across campus, we (in SoC) held back on pushing out WPA2 service on our wireless infrastructure. In an enterprise network, consistency in user experience is important… even if it means consistently delivering not-so-good services.

I think one of the biggest benefit, apart from the obvious IT security improvements, is the support of not-so-smart devices. Devices such as smart phones (which, ironically, aren’t that smart after all), which often have limited support for all the variants of wireless security protocols.

We used to use 802.1x LEAP (because when we embarked on wireless in a big way, there was only LEAP), then we moved on to 802.1x PEAP. The real PCs with full-fledged operating systems don’t have problems with any of these wireless security protocols. No so for the new breed of not-so-smart portable devices.

Now, we’ve pushed out WPA2 Enterprise… something that seems to be so much better supported by today’s smart phones. At least on my Nexus One, I can now configure the NUS SSID properly through the phone’s GUI… and not have to resort to editing a configuration file via a command-line shell.

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Linksys WRT610N Firmware Upgrade

Zit Seng — Sun, 10 May 2009 10:52:16 +0000

I just got around to upgrading the firmware on my Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router. At this time, the latest firmware is 1.00.02.10 (also shown as 1.00.02 B10). I decided to check out the firmware updates because the last two days I was having some random network connection problems through the WRT610N. Then, last night, my MacBook simply refused to connect to the 5GHz 802.11n channel (though it might have been a problem with my MacBook afterall, because it was okay again after rebooting my MacBook).

I originally attempted my upgrade through Safari on Mac OS X. But the “uploading” part never completed. The progress bar went up to 98% and then stayed there forever (at least 10 minutes) before I gave up. Thinking it might be one of those browser compatibility issues, I retired using MSIE under Windows XP. This time, the upload completed, the browser screen refreshed to a new page announcing “Upgrade is successful”, and presented a Continue button that when clicked rebooted the WRT610N router into the new firmware.

If you’re having trouble with doing the upgrade using Safari, I guess you could retry it in MSIE. Nowadays that I have VirtualBox running beautifully in my Mac OS X, it is not much hassle to try things in MSIE.

The new 1.00.02 B10 firmware lists a few important highlights such as:

Resolved wireless connection drop issue.
Resolved USB storage handling during large file transfer (I’ve not gotten to trying the USB storage yet).
Enhanced wireless range.
Updated FTP server / UPnP media server.
And a bunch of other more things.

So far the new 1.00.02 B10 firmware is working well for me, although seriously, if there were to be any problems, it is probably still too early to tell.

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Caring For End-Users’ Security

Zit Seng — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:20:43 +0000

In the past, most companies don’t care. They do sell products with security features, but the features are turned off by default because they usually make the product more difficult to setup and use, and customers may get turned off by the complexity of getting the product to work. Fortunately, some companies are now trying to make security easy. They are putting some extra effort to take care of their customers’ interests.

One area has got to do with wireless network security. Wireless broadband routers are so prevalent nowadays. The biggest security risks with these products is with the wireless network access. Anyone in the nearby vicinity can connect to the wireless network and get direct access into your home network, as if they were plugged in with a cable to your broadband router. There have been many security enhancements to the wireless network technology: WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc.

But in the past, few manufacturers bother to turn them on, because it was difficult to explain to customers what needs to be done to setup their computer. If a product was difficult to setup, customers are going to “condemn” the product as “not-working”.

Sometimes, “setup wizard” programs make the security configuration easy. But it is even easier to not have to run the wizard. So again, it ends up that end-users don’t bother with it. What does it take to get the security awareness message across?

Well, the Linksys WRT610N I bought recently had a sticker pasted across all its ethernet ports. You can’t plug in a UTP cable until you’ve peel off the sticker. What’s written on the sticker?

WARNING: If left unsecured, your wireless network may be accessible by unauthorized users. Follow the instructions in the installation Wizard to secure your wireless network. See User Guide for additional information.

That’s really good.

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Linksys WRT610N Dual Band Router

Zit Seng — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:43:35 +0000

Last weekend, a Linksys WRT610N became the latest addition to the networking gear I have at home. It replaces my trusty old WRT54G which was starting to go bonkus after serving for many years.

I have been thinking about upgrading my wireless broadband router for some time. In fact, I was considering StarHub’s free Apple Time Capsule promotion last year. It does 802.11N wireless, Gigabit Ethernet wired ports, includes 500GB or 1TB of storage and printer connection sharing.

But there was no urgency when my WRT54G was still working. Of course, now things are different. So I quickly refreshed my comparison survey of the various wireless broadband router products. The Apple Time Capsule is off the list, because it is too expensive and its disk storage capability has been filled in by a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus direct attached storage I bought last year.

The main new feature I want is draft 802.11n support and Gigabit Ethernet wired ports. The main contenders were the Linksys WRT310N, WRT350N, WRT610N, and D-Link DIR-655. The Apple AirPort Extreme was considered too.

In the end, I bought the Linksys WRT610N. I liked that it was Dual 802.11n Band, operating at both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands. Everyone nowadays has at least a 802.11b wireless device somewhere. The 2.4GHz frequency band is extremely congested. I see a dozen Wireless LANs in my home. But the 5HGz frequency band is lesser used. It is occupied by 802.11a, which is not common. Furthermore, Dual Band 802.11n wireless broadband routers are not so common either. The reduced congestion is distinct advantage of running a Wireless LAN on the 5GHz frequency band.

The WRT610N has the new Linksys outer casing design. The device has a UFO-like shape and features internal antennas. It definitely looks nicer than their older products, and many of their competitors’ products. But the router is does not need to be looked at, so in my opinion, it is not something terribly important. Not unless it is so beautiful that you want to show it off.

The WRT610N cost $245. I don’t think it was a terribly good bargain. Considering that one can get the Apple AirPort Extreme for just $13 more ($258 with educational discount from Apple Store), which would have come with just about everything the WRT610N has plus USB printer connectivity sharing.

The AirPort Extreme looks beautiful. Yes this is something you could display in your living room (except that its white colour tends not to gel with most living room gadgets). But I’ve not used or seen the the box in operation, so I don’t know exactly what kind of configuration options there are. I am concerned about configuration flexibility because I have rather specific things I want to do. I consider myself somewhat of an expert at networking, and there are some not-so-standard things I want to do with my home network. I have used a variety of Linksys broadband products for many years, so I know what it can and cannot do. It was thus a safe choice to go with the WRT610N.

One common complaint about many Linksys products is that they get very hot. So far my WRT610N has not gotten hotter than “warm to touch”. Setup and configuration is similar to any other Linksys broadband router product, so Linksys users should be quite familiar with the administration interface. The 5GHz and 2.4GHz wireless radios are configured independently, so you can have different settings between the two Wireless LANs.

Although 802.11n is still in draft status, the WRT610N works perfectly with my MacBook (supports 802.11n in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands as well). In the past, “draft” often means you have to buy everything from the same brand manufacturer. Fortunately 802.11n draft is sufficiently advanced for this to become a non-issue.

Just for record sake, I managed to clock about 80Mbps transfer rate from my MacBook approximately 2m aware from the WRT610N, performing scp file transfer from a PC connected to the Gigabit Ethernet port. Decent performance I guess.

Update (9 Jan 2009): I’m told that Apple’s AirPort Extreme may be dual band, but operates at only one band at a time. I.e. you can configure it to work at 2.4GHz, or at 5GHz, but not to provide wireless coverage on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands at the same time.

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Setting Up Your Mac For NUS

Zit Seng — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:48:13 +0000

The new school year at NUS has started. Many people are buying new computers. Some of them will be buying Macs, particularly since they have gotten quite popular in the last few years. Now, how do you get it working in NUS? Most official help resources are going to focus just on Windows XP or Windows Vista. So here you are, my concise guide to getting a couple of basic things setup to work in NUS.

The Macs are supposed to be easy to use, so why is such a guide necessary Unfortunately, there are some things that are not so straight-forward afterall. No doubt there are some areas that Mac OS X still needs improvement to work seamlessly in an enterprise environment.

I’ve put together the guide at: Mac @ NUS. Right now, there are just a few basic things:

Setting up NUS wireless network.
Accessing NUSNET Exchange email.
Mapping network drives.
Printing to network printers (in SoC).

More things will come later, but I guess those are the most important things to get started.

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Mobile Phone as a Wireless Hotspot

Zit Seng — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:45:54 +0000

Have you ever wanted to share your 3G data connection with another device? You can easily setup a cabled or bluetooth connection for your notebook or PC. But what you wanted to offer 802.11 wireless connectivity to your friends’ notebooks or mobile phones? Well, there is a free software available that can turn your 3G mobile phone into a 802.11 wireless hotspot. Now you can easily “deploy” wireless internet connectivity wherever you go with just your mobile phone!

It still bills itself as beta, but I chanced upon this software JoikuSpot from Joiku. In its current form, JoikuSpot will provide HTTP and HTTPS access to 802.11 wireless clients by turning supported mobile phones into a 802.11 wireless hotspot. It uses the phone’s data connection for Internet access.

There are clearly a few more “needed” features they’ll have to fix up before this software would be really useful. For example, they will need to implement NAT (network address translation). I believe in its current state, JoikuSpot functions as an application layer proxy. As a result, they currently support only HTTP and HTTPS protocols (the protocols used for web surfing), as it is quite tedious to support every type of application on the Internet. Also, the wireless link is currently unencrypted, but they are expecting to implement WEP/WPA/WPA2 in the final version.

The software may be a bit limited now, but it looks to be good enough to let you share your 3G connection with others for simple web surfing needs.

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Automatic Logins to Wireless@SG

Zit Seng — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:33:25 +0000

One of the stumbling blocks to the use of Wireless@SG has to be the ease of logging in to the network. If you’ve found a Wireless@SG hotspot with working coverage and network access, you’re still faced with the challenge (though just a minor inconvenience) of manual login. Can we have automatic logins?

For phone users, you’d appreciate the difficulty of manual login from your phone’s browser: keyboard entry is difficult, the screen is small, etc. It seems mighty inconvenient if you just needed to quickly check something on a website. (Compare this with 3G, where your phone’s authentication to the network is automatic.)

Well, it seems like Devicescape may have the answer. Download and install their Devicescape client to your Wi-Fi device, select Wi-Fi networks you want to use, and it automatically connects and logins to the hotspot for you. It sounds quite cool, and many devices are support: Windows, Macs, Windows Mobile and a variety of Nokia phones including the N95 8GB.

Devicescape has information on how to login to various hotspot networks. These instructions are sent to your Wi-Fi device to enable it to automatically login to the hotspot. Wireless@SG is listed as one of the networks you can configure (although it is marked as in “validation phase”). What about usernames and passwords? Well, you’d need to configure and store them on the Devicescape server. Yes, I have a big concern over this, but let’s just see how automatic logins to Wireless@SG is possible first.

So after having installed and setup Devicescape client and my account information, I happily headed for a nearby Wireless@SG hotspot. Sadly, login failed.

A quick check on Devicescape’s community forum revealed that they have been trying to get Wireless@SG supported since 17 April 2007. Some posters have been helping with troubleshooting, but it appears this has ultimately not yet been resolved.

Why doesn’t Wireless@SG come up with some automatic logins of their own? Better yet if they can implement secure wireless access using WPA2 or something.

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Getting Lost with Clueless@SG

Zit Seng — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:50:55 +0000

Just taking a quick swipe at a pet topic: Wireless@SG is lost. Lost as in it doesn’t know where it is. I was at NUH today. Surprise, Wireless@SG was working and I could login. But bigger surprise: The SingTel web page said “Welcome to Toa Payoh”! NUH in Toa Payoh? Luckily we don’t depend on Wireless@SG to get our bearings. Related posts: Griping about Wireless@SG, Again That’s how it is with captive portals, you are redirected... Hopelessly Clueless Courts’ Salesman... Related posts:

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Griping about Wireless@SG, Again

Zit Seng — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:49:01 +0000

That’s how it is with captive portals, you are redirected to a web page to login, and there you have to type your username and password. Can you imagine how inconvenient it is to login from a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA? Even if it does have a tiny weenie keyboard? Is there an auto-login client for Wireless@SG? Can IDA sponsor someone to write a client for Symbian OS and Windows Mobile?

So now I carry around an 802.11 wireless capable mobile phone with me all the time. Great if there is wireless around me. At home, I have a WPA2 access point where I can authenticate and login automatically, and enjoy secure encrypted wireless access. In NUS (where I work), I have 802.1x PEAP access points, so again it is automatic authentication and login, secure encrypted wireless access.

And what do I get with Wireless@SG? Manually key in username and password. After that, the wireless connection is neither secure nor encrypted. Anyone can trivially sniff my traffic. Okay it is free, don’t ask for too much.

I was tempted to just switch to my 3G data connection, even though there was this rare opportunity that Wireless@SG was there for me to use. I think automatic login is not too much to ask for. I hope IDA or the Wireless@SG providers do something about it.

Added on 11th July 2007: Here I am sitting in SUNTEC trying to get some work done. No WirelessSG. But there is ACCESS-StarHub. Fortunately I have a Hub ID. Otherwise, you guessed it, it will be 3G again.

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Walking into a High-Speed Wireless Oven

Zit Seng — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:41:52 +0000

I recently came across a new high-speed wireless development that promises over 10Gbps of bandwidth, or some 100-times the speed of current Wi-Fi networks. While existing Wi-Fi operates at 2.4GHz frequency, this new technology uses 60GHz millimetre wave radio technology. What’s interesting about 60GHz is its oxygen absoption properties: 60GHz electromagnetic energy is absorbed by oxygen molecules much like a piece of food in a microwave oven.

IBM announced new microprocessor chipsets that can wireless transfer HD video between computers, handheld devices and televisions. This will enable our homes and offices to be rid of cumbersome wires that connect between HD set-top boxes, HD TV, computers, etc.

I wonder if this would set off new health concerns. Already we have some people scared stiff by mobile phones (850MHz to 1.9GHz) and 802.11 Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz), neither of which are commonly known to have any interaction with oxygen molecules. (Though in perspective, the electromagnetic energy from microwave ovens operate at 2.45GHz.)

The 60GHz radio isn’t all that new, however. It is apparently also beamed between satellites for covert operations. Imagine, when 60GHz starts getting beamed all over your house… isn’t that kind of walking into a sort of microwave oven?

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