There's no doubting the hipness of wireless hot spots. Thanks to Wi-Fi technology, tech-savvy people can jack into the Net at Starbucks coffeehouses or on Lufthansa Airlines or at upscale hotels across the nation. In corporate America, Wi-Fi has the potential . . .
There's no doubting the hipness of wireless hot spots. Thanks to Wi-Fi technology, tech-savvy people can jack into the Net at Starbucks coffeehouses or on Lufthansa Airlines or at upscale hotels across the nation. In corporate America, Wi-Fi has the potential to become the de facto standard for connecting mobile users to networks, despite serious security worries. New security standards on the horizon might solve some of those problems, making this hip technology far more practical.

Wi-Fi, which stands for Wireless Fidelity, is a consumer-friendly name to describe a gory set of wireless-networking standards. In the engineering world, Wi-Fi refers to a set of IEEE standards, the most common of which is 802.11b, which describes a wireless networking system with speeds up to 11 Mbps. Since the 802.11b standard was ratified in 1999, Wi-Fi use has exploded in both the consumer and business sectors.

Its pervasiveness has also spawned a widespread security risk. The standard security shipped with all Wi-Fi hardware, a system called Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), is somewhat of a joke in the security community. Wi-Fi's lack of security wouldn't be such a big issue if not for the way Wi-Fi LANs operate. Wi-Fi access points, the boxes that sit between wireless users and a wired LAN, broadcast their existence to the world, making them easy to locate. With a range of 100 to 500 feet, access points often give workers network access in several adjacent rooms of an office. Unfortunately, that offer sometimes extends to the parking lot and street out front as well.

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