WiMax wireless technology

[Dr. Psy]

Hey, have you guys heard of wimax? I heard a blurb about it on the news this morning and did a little reading about it.
Instead of a wireless range of only a couple hundred feet, it is supposed to increase that range up to about 30 miles.

And the encryption is supposed to be much better

to avoid what happened with 802.11." The WiMAX specification mandates AES-CCM encryption between CPEs and base stations, along with key management based on X.509 digital certificates, RSA public-key encryption algorithm [PKCS #1].

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9669445822.html

Couple other introductory pages:
http://www.wimax.com/education
http://www.hifn.com/technology/wimax.html

Sounds good. I wonder how it will play out in the real world?

[XTC46]

Instead of a wireless range of only a couple hundred feet, it is supposed to increase that range up to about 30 miles.

please keep in mind that these are theoretical range and under PERFECT conditions. it in no way means you can stick a router in your house, drive thirty miles away and still have your internet connection.

802.11 when blasted off a directional high gain antenna can have a range of sveral miles with line of sight. Im thinking this will be pretty much the same.

[Dr. Psy]

Sure, but it does sound as if it will INCREASE the range. Also, it seems there is definately an improvement in the wireless encryption, which we really need!

I have not implemented any wireless technology myself yet, because I am not happy with the state of security in wireless, this sounds good to me though. I would give this a try barring no major flaws found with WiFax.

[Dr. Psy]

WiFax

LOL! WiMax.

[d0pp]

I am not happy with the state of security in wireless

What specifically concerns you?

[Dr. Psy]

The relative ease in which one can sniff wireless traffic and crack wireless encryption.

[Dr. Psy]

Though WPA implemented with a complex password provides a certain measure of security, the data stream is just all too easy to get ahold of. WPA does provide a certain level of security but I would just prefer that wireless encryption be buffed up before I implement it on my own network.

As long as wireless packets are encrypted in such a way to make even attempting to crack them a waste of time, then the ease of sniffing would not be of much significance, However, that just isn't the case right now. A WPA crack attempt IS well worth one's time.

[Dr. Psy]

If I had a compelling reason to deploy wireless, I would only do so at this time with some kind of encrypted tunnel between the gateway and client over wireless to reinforce the security of the data stream.

Something like 802.11i using AES encryption and TKIP would make me feel a lot more comfortable about a wireless setup.

We all know that nothing can be 100% secured, but there is a certain level of assurance that I expect for something like this. Like I said, when a WPA cracking attempt is worth the time and effort (based on the odds of success), it doesn't make me feel real secure about deploying it. Setting up WPA over a more secure encrypted tunnel would provide a certain degree of reasonable assurance that the connection would be secured, but this is a rather (I dont know...this seems like a temporary sort of fix, you know what I mean?) The wireless encryption itself should be secure enough to not have to rig up your connection!

Which is where something like 802.11i using AES and TKIP, or the wiMax solution provides a much more secre means of packet transmission.

[Dr. Psy]

Hell, even providing an encrypted tunnel via IPSec over wireless is still vulnerable if one wanted to crack both the IPSec PSK along with WPA! It would still be a worthwhile (albeit time consuming) challenge.

Which leaves not a lot more option than SSH tunneling. Again, it's rediculous to have to rig a connection in this way with something that should have a reasonable amount of security in itself.

Am I just asking for too much here?

[xierox]

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