Dammit. The Man always has to ruin all the good stuff.
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I certainly hope that they spit on this petition, as it deserves; but itâs amazing what a coat of PR and an expensive âmanagement consoleâ from Cisco or Alcatel can do for what would otherwise be viewed as the deepest of black-hat-witchcraft.
Some scruffy kid with a beat-up thinkpad talking about ârecompiled my ath9k module so I can do death attacks from multiple radios with just a USB hubâ? Burn the witch and bring on the CFAA charges!
Mr. IT guy uses âEnterprise Management Consoleâ to identify ârogueâ APs and âdisableâ them? Feature!
Same exploit either way, same theoretical legal standing; but how wil lthat play in Peoria?
There are certainly good reasons why IT people (your friendly local fungus included) very strongly dislike people hanging APs off their wired networks without authorization and why they dislike misleadingly named spoof APs. However, there are mechanisms for dealing with both of these problems that donât involve conducting deauth attacks against other peopleâs Part 15 devices: If you donât want APs on your wired network, most wired network gear large enough to handle a network that canât be physically inspected with a glance is pretty good at sniffing out APs, NAT boxes, and routers(not 100%; but pretty good) and either shutting down the port or moving it over to a suitably restricted VLAN. On the wireless side, SSIDs arenât validated in any way(and should not be trusted); but 802.11x includes support for certificate-based authentication, by the client, of the server. Problem solved.
Would the world be slightly more convenient if I got to enjoy all the benefits of Part 15 spectrum plus absolute power? Hell yeah. Is that a good argument for giving it to me? Not. So. Much. The idea that we need to âprotectâ networks from ârogue APsâ is a bunch of âcyber-war-is-like-TRON!â handwaving bullshit. You canât beat absolute spectrum saturation with good network management; but you canât beat that by getting into a jamming war, either.
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And for those who think an Iphone/Ipad hot spot canât degrade a network, here is the link at Apple explaining how to change channels, but what if there is no other channel available without degrading another network?
Yes, more devices active in a given chunk of spectrum will cause greater congestion. Iâm not quite sure why you needed to reiterate that(especially since I also noted it).
Thatâs sort of how using unlicensed spectrum goes: itâs crazy cheap and convenient; because you donât need a license; but other people can do it as well, because they donât need a license.
(And that aside, it is far from clear that a wifi hotspot being hit with repeated deauth attacks is going to degrade a given channel less than one operating normally: these âmanagementâ techniques donât just magically silence the target device, they add additional, specifically crafted, chatter that interferes with the target device. Far from an obvious win for spectrum availability.)
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There are a lot of good sites you can go to in order to learn more about Wi-Fi and wireless communications, so I wonât recapitulate here.
Thatâs not really accurate. Wi-Fi uses spread-spectrum communications that is a very efficient way to use the minimum necessary signal with the strongest bulge across the centerpoint of a given channel, and then it bleeds out a bit on either end. You can, in fact, have all 11 channels (in the US) in use simultaneously in the same space. Xirrus makes equipment that uses directional antennas as a strategy to maximize this use. Channels 1, 6, and 11 have the least overlap, but not technically no overlap.
The general consumer/small-business advice is to use 1, 6, or 11, but you can have 100 personal hotspots in the same space running across 11 channels and it would cause less slowdown through collisions than using only the three nonoverlapping channels.
No, the minimum mandatory channel width in 5 GHz is 20 MHz. Given that they are arguing that there is too high a chance for congestion, their argument is, in fact, bogus. (Some personal hotspots only use the four channels 36, 40, 44, and 48 because of other reasons.) All 40 GHz channels are optional.
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Wi-Fi is designed to allow co-existing in the same channels by different networks, as well as careful interaction across adjacent channels. If you donât have the technical knowledge to be engaged in an argument about technical details, youâre not obliged to persist.
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Itâs the property rights argument that gets me. Marriott et al want to assert a geographic restriction on unlicensed spectrum. No, no, no. If youâve built your business around both allowing anyone in and charging for use of a medium you canât guarantee minimum performance on, then your business is bad and you should feel bad.
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No, it is unlicensed spectrum.
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Just a reminder everyone - if you find you are staying somewhere that is doing this, you can still attach a USB cable from your device to your laptop and tether over USB, or even just tether over Bluetooth. Much simpler than bringing a fool of aluminum foil with you to a hotelâŚ
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Iâm the IT Director at a hotel in NYC. While there is at least some truth to the network security claims, it is primarily a way to protect a revenue stream. We, too, had this issue with declining revenue from Internet fees, but our solution was to upgrade our WiFi infrastructure and give our guests outstanding Internet service - arguably the best in the city. I canât see this ending well for Marriott. For every customer they lose over this, how many Internet fees will they need to make up that lost room revenue?
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A lost room is waay worse to revenue than positive incremental charges. $200 a day versus $9? It is insane.
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This is such a weird idea! Better service! The other problem is egregious pricing. $10 to $20 per night makes no sense unless youâre either trying to hold people hostage (especially international travelers), or you have a poorly designed service that youâre offering but discouraging people from using through the high price. I stayed at a San Francisco hotel that offered free basic tier, and charged only for a higher-speed offering. I never upgraded to the high-speed one (which, frankly, wasnât higher speed than the LTE I could get), but it at least made sense.
My take on infrastructure is that the incentive should be aligned to reach as close to 100% utilizationâif you charge $15/night, youâre only going to get a small yield and piss off customers (except those whose business pays, but thatâs rarer, or who are in premium clubs where itâs free). If it were $5â7/night, unlimited devices in a room, youâd have nearly 100% of guests pay for it, and have more happiness. Free is better, but close to free for great service is not bad, either.
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We went both ways. We increased our price but also increased the speed per device to 10 Mbps and raised the cap from 3 devices to unlimited. Upon request, if the customer needs it for a specific reason (very large file download, etc.) we can bump a device up to as fast as a 100 Mbps connection. We have a 1Gb fiber Internet connection to the hotel, and even when we are at 100% room capacity, we rarely break the 500 Mbps mark. We also have very high WAP saturation - a minimum of 1 WAP per room, with 2 or more in the suites, in addition to WAPs in the hallways, service landings and public areas, and weâve never had a case of interference causing an outage or service issue of any sort.
Iâm simply not buying what Marriott is trying to sell.
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One point I havenât seen pointed out much in the thread yet: this whole âcharge extra for wifiâ concept is downright quaint.
Last time I travelled to the States for business was about four years ago, so granted my experience us somewhat out of date. I donât have the clout to choose which hotels I stay at for work. We were at a Marriott, which seemed nice until we had to get work done in our hotel rooms.
Wifi was extra, but I had a cable in my computer bag anyhow, and plugged in. Wired access was included in the room price, but still slow â VPNing into work was agonising. Someone with a company credit card tried the wifi, and said it wasnât really any better. If weâd used cell phones for access, we would have incurred international roaming charges,so that wasnât a real option.
That same year I vacationed in Europe, and could get free wifi just about anywhere Iâd want it. And no-one cared if I was travelling for business or pleasure â no surcharge. In fact, the hotel people kept thinking I was on a business trip because I was traveling alone.
Thatâs what gets me about this Marriott petition. Itâs such a petty, antiquated thing to want to charge for. Most likely people will just avoid booking with that hotel chain at all.
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Seconded
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Yes, and Iâve done training in deploying and analyzing Cisco, Aruba, Aerohive wireless networks (and have worked on several more). I even posted a link to the Cisco design document that discussed what happens to the spectrum when well spaced intervening channels are used.
What it boils down to is that any use of the intervening channels is seen as noise to devices on the neighboring channels.
From Xirrusâs website on high density deployments, they mention using only channels 1,6, and 11, specifically so that they donât overlap.
And from their blog, discussing channel availability on 2.4GHz vs 5 GHz:
And they specifically stated they were talking about 40Ghz channels. Yes, they are optional.
Once again, I agree that there are many problems with their request to the FCC, but I donât agree with your criticism on the technical details of their submission (at least those on page 12).
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Sure, but thatâs when youâre designing a network, not in a real-world environments with lots of low-power, short-range personal hotspots. They pick channels automatically based on the RF environment after scanning (typically). Theyâll opt for 5 GHz preferentially, to my understanding.
Iâm totally apologetic, as I had forgotten their approach wasnât sectorized, directional adjacent channel use, but sectorized, directional co-channel nonoverlapping use. Iâve seen Xirrus deployed in some very large-scale conventions, and itâs always amazing to have no usage problems even with thousands of devices in use (and many personal hotspots networks also in use).
MHz, sorry. And, no, they were using a technical detail incorrectly: they want to claim channel scarcity as a reason that they should be granted management in a physical space to protect their paying customers (as opposed to all legal users of the spectrum), and by citing 40 MHz channels, theyâre understating channel availability.
So thereâs a difference between saying that there are three channels when there 11, even if the use of adjacent channels is less optimal and reduces some throughput. Thereâs a difference between saying there four channels when there are eight, or potentially 23 (depending on the deployment in the venue, which might use some of the UNII-2 Extended since they are less used).
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Heâs probably angry because the DRM on the leg brace needed an security update and the pool filter thinks heâs trying to gain unauthorized access to the mini-keg.
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Wi-Fi is resilient.
It really isnât. Itâs more that apartments and hotel rooms are small.
A phone can be usually forced to do the tethering regardless of what the telcoâs ârulesâ âallowâ you.
There are places for civil disobedience and this is one of them.
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