WifiNigel

Last year, I put up a  posting  which highlighted the fact that here in the UK (and I suspect all of Europe) we often have 3 channels missing from our allocation of unlicensed channels in the 5GHz band.  Looking at many manufacturer data sheets, channels 120, 124 and 128 are often shown as not being supported. This is despite the fact that they are allocated for use by local regulatory bodies (OFCOM here in the UK). I recently posted a question about this on a partner forum of a major WiFi vendor that I deal with and finally got a definitive answer on this. In this post, I'll share my findings. The reason that these particular channels (120 - 128) receive special treatment is that they occupy frequencies that are used by weather radar systems. WiFi systems have to be very careful not to interfere with those systems during their normal operation. Therefore, WiFi equipment has some additional checks and tests imposed on it to make sure that it does not inadvertently cause any int

With all of the excitement around 802.11ac that is currently unfolding, I was very interested to hear about the support for 11ac by the recently released  Saumsung Galaxy S4. Having a quick scan of the reviews across the web about the new handset, I was intrigued to see claims that it supports 802.11ac, allowing speeds up to 1.3Gbps! Feeling a little sceptical that it would support anything close to those speeds, I did a bit of digging to see what I could find. My first port of call was a product tear-down over at  TechInsights.com . They revealed that the WiFi chip in the S4 is the  Broadcom  BCM4335 A quick look around the Broadcom site soon revealed the product page for the BCM4335, with an overview of the chipset specification. In summary, it supports: Single stream IEEE 802.11ac solution with  data rates up to 433.3 Mbps Full IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n legacy compatibility with enhanced performance Supports 20, 40, and 80 MHz channels with optional SGI (256 QAM modulation

 In a  recent post , I was voicing my concerns around the existing default security method employed by cloud-wireless solutions to 'protect' administrative access to their service. In summary, I proposed that some type of multi-factor authentication should be the default method of access for administrators (both customer and vendor) of cloud wireless services. The current default of a "username and password" is too weak when considering the damage that can be inflicted on an organization by unauthorized access to any cloud-managed network. I heard from one of the  guys at Meraki , letting me know that they already have multi-factor authentication.  I already knew that they have an SMS OTP method, but I didn't really think that it was a particularly good solution. For instance, what about if you're out of cell-phone range or suffer one of those annoying delays in receipt of an SMS message? However, after taking another look, they also now show support f