Glenn Fleishman reports on SMC's choice to use TI's ACX100 chips in their next generation access point, whichwill deliver 22Mbps "turbo" mode for SMC client cards, and standard 802.11b for all other cards. They also claim a 30 percent increase in range because of the ACX100. Since 802.11g isn't even ratified yet, and since TI and Intersil are building competing implementations that are not compatable, this should be seen as a shot across the bow at Intersil, though it remains to be seen where the majority of the market will end up with regards to the 802.11g standard.
More Google API hacks for Movable Type
Wow, I was pleasantly surprised with the rush of positive feedback from today's Google API hack for Movable Type users. A number of people asked for some new features, and given that it was only anoither 7 lines of perl code or so, I coded it up!The new patch to MT 2.11 adds the following new features to the MTGoogleSearch tag. It adds the following new properties that will change the behavior of the tag:
- title="1" : This will cause the google search query to be the title (MTEntryTitle) of your current blog entry
- excerpt="1" : This will cause the google serch query to be the entry excerpt (MTEntryExcerpt) of the current blog entry
Those two properties are mutually exclusive (along with the current query="" and related="1" properties). In addition, if you use strip_html="1" inside the MTGoogleSearch tag, it will remove any html that Google replies with, including <b> tags that surround the search query terms. This is a patch on the default build of Movable Type 2.11. If you've already installed my previous patch, it might be easier to just back out the patch and install this one. By the way, I haven't done a lot of testing with the MTEntries query code (entries="1") so if you do use it, please send me feedback.
A great new use of the Google API and SOAP
OK, I'm convinced. I've been toying with Movable Type's new Google APIs, and I've created something new and really cool.With a 3-line hack to Movable Type's source code (gosh, I love having the source code to my software) I added a new function to its Google search capability - I can now do dynamic google searches on each and every one of the titles of my blog posts. What's that mean? Well, look down at the bottom of this blog entry. You'll see a line that starts, "Related Stories:" followed by 10 links. These links are created by a google search on the words in the title of this blog entry. The reason why I can do this is because Google has created a standardised way to automate queries to its search engine using a protocol called SOAP and the folks at Movable Type have created an interface that takes advantage of SOAP calls. All I needed to do was to add 3 lines of code to the Movable Type codebase to enable the capability seen in the "Related Stories" links below. In addition, those links get updated each time I post a story - In other words, as Google indexes my pages and others like them, new stories show up whenever I update the index page with a new entry. Additionally, I could run a regular task to automatically refresh my Google related stories links for all of my entries each night as well. If you're interested in the patch to the Movable Type codebase, I've included it below.
You can get the patch file at http://www.sifry.com/mt-googleapi.patch It is also included below:
+++ Context.pm Wed Jun 19 01:46:44 2002
@@ -1225,10 +1225,13 @@
sub _hdlr_google_search {
my($ctx, $args) = @_;
my $query;
+ my $title;
my $blog = $ctx->stash('blog');
if ($query = $args->{query}) {
} elsif (my $url = $args->{related}) {
$query = 'related:' . $url eq '1' ? $blog->site_url : $url;
+ } elsif ($title = $args->{title}) {
+ $query = _hdlr_entry_title($ctx);
} else {
return $ctx->error('You used
Proxim to acquire Agere's Orinoco Division
Glenn Fleishman reports on Proxim'sannouncement that it will be buying Agere's (formerly Lucent's) Orinocowireless division. I agree with Glenn's assessment, that this is a good move for both Agere and for Proxim.
IBM announces new Distributed Wireless Security Auditor
IBM made a press release today about their new 802.11 wireless security tool. It runs on Linuxon desktops and laptops, can accurately pinpoint the location of any rogue access points by triangulation from 3 or more signals from machines running their software. The wireless security tool was developed in collaboration with the IBM Personal Computing Division, which is investigating the potential of including it on future ThinkPad models. ThinkPads are already equipped with built-in 802.11b wireless networking capability.
More information is available.
New last-mile solution using hacked 802.11 cards?
John Markoff at The New York Times is reporting onEtherlinx, a company that claims to have significantly extended the range of wireless broadband by hacking the firmware of current 802.11b cards and running CPEs (customer premises equipment) with 2 cards inside - one card that runs their software radio (non-standard, not 802.11b protocols) and one that retransmits signals into a house or other local broadband endpoint. They claim 2MBps speeds in field trials they've been conducting in Oakland.
Certainly, this is somthing that needs further investigation. The company claims all sorts of neat stuff, including security, QoS, and other features. This can be performed in the CPE, probably not at the radio layer. The CPE can also be built very cheaply, and sold at about a $100 price point. A number of questions remain - are they using FHSS (old-fashioned 802.11 signals maxed out at 2Mbps and were FHSS) or DSSS? How do the CPEs react to multipath loss, reflections, and loss of line-of-sight to the brodcast tower? How well does the technology scale? Can it be used in a mesh configuration or is it point-to-multipoint? They claim that their low-cost CPE can be deployed without the need for an installer, which means it must be robust indeed.
This can be compared to Navini networks, which has developed a base station that uses phased antenna arrays (essentially smart antennas) to direct power at the CPEs, and simple CPEs that can be installed indoors.
Phased array antenna approaches allow for better penetration and even a notional non-line of sight capability, but they require a managed base station and can't be used for organic mesh networks, like the meshes that are created as a part of Nokia Rooftop's or Sky Pilot's solutions.
Two more interesting 802.11 real-world use cases
Thanks to Tom Davey, who points out two stories about WLAN rollouts in real-world scenarios. First, a story this week in Network World that highlights armory and other inventory tasks in the U.S. Marine Corps. Next, a story in June's Business 2.0 that highlights manufacturing operationsat Boeing
These boosterish pieces pay little to no attention to security or management issues, which makes me wonder how Boeing and the Marines perform them (if at all).
Does WLAN pose a health risk?
Time to toot my own horn a bit - Dan Jones, Senior Edior of Unstrung just wrote up an article entitled, Does WLAN pose a health risk? around the issue of 802.11b radio emissions and personal safety, with lots of quotes from yours truly.
The short answer? Maybe -- if you are one of the growing band of people who use home-made equipment to increase the range of 802.11b hotspots.
Sirius has withdrawn their FCC petition!
According to Carl R. Stevenson, Interim Chair of the IEEE 802.18Regulatory Technical Advisory Group, Sirius has withdrawn its FCC petition regarding out of band (OOB) emissions from 2.4GHz users.
Sifry's Alerts' comments on this development:
This is good - it removes a potential issue that overshadowed the widespread adoption of wireless technologies like 802.11b. I think the FCC would have ruled against them anyway, for the following reasons:
1. They were asking for a legislative fix to the laws of physics. This Sirius request included an OOB limit of -158dbm which is 8 dbm below the thermal noise floor. In other words, the normal evaporation of water into clouds makes more noise in the 2.5GHz spectrum. Besides, other noise generators much closer to the receiver emit a much larger noise profile. The spark emitted from a spark plug is one example.
2. Significant opposition from other established industry players, including Motorola, Intersil, Intel, and others.
3. The FCC's emphasis on reducing the digital divide. The FCC was being asked to decide if it was more important to have high-end radio between cities or cheap, high bandwidth connectivity in low income neighborhoods, and I think the public interest would have won on this one.
So, count one for the good guys today! And don't rub Sirius' nose in it - they did the right thing.
Webcasting copyright licensing rules rejected!
Wow, this is an interesting turn. The Librarian of Congressrejected the findings of the CARP arbitration panel.
The Librarian of Congress now has until June 20, 2002 to issue his final recommendation. This should be thought of as a victory, because the CARP pricing scheme would have effectively killed Internet Radio. However, things are still up in the air, because this is only a rejection of CARP's report, and does not detail the new pricing scheme that the Librarian will accept.