Dr. Dobb's Journal December, 2004
Chaos Manor has gone through myriad wireless network setups of varying ease of installation, usefulness, and—most importantly—security. We've had a D-Link DI-614+ 802.11b wireless router setup for some time, using a secure 128-bit WEP connection to allow the TiVo downstairs to receive its scheduled programming updates, where getting a wired connection is not possible in the house. In fact, the link is so secure that no one here at Chaos Manor can seem to recall what the WEP key setup was, making it useless to anyone wanting to use the wireless connection. Of course, I could have figured out what the IP address for the DI-614+ was and then reset the WEP key to something I could remember, but then I would have to deal with reconfiguring the wireless bridge setup downstairs for the TiVo, and I didn't feel like tempting fate with changing so many things at once. Luckily D-Link had recently sent me their newer DI-624 802.11g unit, (http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=6) so that problem solved itself.
As usual, the first requirement was to be sure we were using the latest D-Link firmware. A search online revealed a recent beta firmware revision, but it had the dire proclamation "for test only." Still, it appeared to fix some bugs, improve security, and add a new extended range feature D-Link had announced at CES 2004, and Chaos Manor Associate Editor Dan Spisak thought it would be worth trying. It's not as if wireless is all that critical here: For anything important, we can connect to one of the Ethernet hubs scattered around the Great Hall.
There are three different revisions of the DI-624, according to the D-Link web site. The only version that can eat this new firmware with all these features is for the Rev C model. You can tell if you have this revision by the number of antennas on the unit: Revisions A and B have two antennas, whereas revision C has just the one. We downloaded the revised firmware and connected to the DI-624 through a wired Ethernet connection. D-Link does not recommend updating device firmware over the air because you could run into any number of problems that could potentially render your new wireless router dead.
If you're paranoid, you should do your update with your wireless router disconnected from your local network. That way, when your new unprotected access point comes up, prying eyes in your neighborhood won't be able to get at anything of interest or get online. Once you have your encryption turned on and working, you can then plug it into your network with the rest of your equipment.
Of course, it's not likely that anyone in my neighborhood is watching for unprotected wireless networks or would make use of one that suddenly appeared; but that certainly won't be universally true and it's very much the case that an unprotected wireless network is vulnerable to anything from snooping to hosting spam to becoming a vehicle for anonymous terrorist activity. You have been warned: If you install wireless, install the latest security features.
Setting up the wireless encryption security on the DI-624 was our first opportunity to try out the newer Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) Standard for securing our wireless networks at Chaos Manor. WPA is meant to supplant WEP due to its improved security framework. It integrates with 802.1x authentication, and is supposed to make setup simple for end users.
This simplification of the wireless encryption setup is by far the biggest advantage WPA has over WEP. When setting up WEP it always seemed like one had to be prescient or guess what string of characters was the right and properly blessed one to make your WEP work. Was it a 40-bit ASCII password? Or a 128-bit HEX password? Or did Windows want a pass phrase? Basically, one had to try them all until the darn thing worked and many people don't have that kind of patience as evidenced by the large number of unencrypted wide-open wireless access points.
With the new system, you enter WPA and select TKIP as your data encryption. Then just enter a simple pass phrase, and Bob's your uncle. Alas, WPA as it works in Windows XP with SP2 installed does not give you any indication of an incorrect pass phrase being entered and will show you connected to your wireless access point, although you will never see any data passing through it. On the Mac, things are simpler, as OS X automagically figures out the right data encryption and just lets you worry about entering your pass phrase. The Mac also behaves properly when you give it an incorrect pass phrase, notifying you of an error when trying to connect to the wireless network.
The neat part is that, once I did manage to connect my TabletPC Lisabetta—it Just Worked. Now, every time I turn on the wireless hardware, I am automatically connected to my network. I also see a couple of unsecure networks, doubtless my neighbors...
Coincidentally, the Wi-Fi Alliance has announced WPA2 (http://www.wi-fi.org/OpenSection/protected_access.asp). The main changes from WPA to WPA2 is stronger over the air encryption going from Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) to a NIST-approved AES encryption for over-the-air packets, thus making it more agreeable for corporate enterprise customers. WPA is definitely something you should ensure your next wireless router supports. Both XP and OS X support it directly; there is third-party support for Windows 2000.
My UNIX Wizard friend Roland Dobbins installed CodeTek Studios (http://www.codetek.com/) VirtualDesktopPro on Ariadne, my rather temperamental 15-inch Mac Powerbook. (Roland and other Mac power users suggest that it's me who's temperamental, but that's a story for another time.) As the name implies, the CodeTek software lets you create a bunch of virtual desktops and page back and forth between them, and it's pretty neat. Roland lives out of his, and people who use their Mac hard will probably want to buy it. I wish them well of the experience: CodeTek doesn't make that particularly easy.
On the other hand, Dan Spisak, our Chaos Manor Mac expert, has found a free open-source alternative called simply "Desktop Manager" (http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/). It is described as "alpha quality software" and has only been tested on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther systems, so your mileage may vary. Dan has been running the latest version on his 12-inch PowerBook and says he hasn't run into any adverse issues yet. Desktop Manager supports many of the options of VirtualDesktop Pro, but not all of them. It looks to be crisp and exchanges desktops by "rotating" them in a rather attractive manner. If you are looking for a product not quite as fancy as VirtualDesktop Pro but still quite serviceable, give Desktop Manager a try.
I didn't use Ariadne, my 15-inch PowerBook, very much last month because I was on the road a good part of the time and I still prefer Lisabetta (the TabletPC) as a travel computer: She works well on airplanes, and integrates more simply into my mostly Windows environment. Dan, on the other hand, has pretty well given up Windows systems in favor of his Mac, and he sure gets a lot done with it.
Speaking of Windows, one feature which was definitely jettisoned from Longhorn is WinFS, the Windows File System. WinFS was going to be a completely relational filesystem, where everything would be searchable instantly. Those with long memories and smart tongues will wonder if WinFS is the son of Cairo, a similarly unreleased OS enhancement first promised in 1992. While WinFS isn't officially dead, it has slipped until at least 2007. Companies who are doing their own search function for Windows can breathe easily for a few more years.
Dan Spisak points out that Apple has already demonstrated most of the really cool search features ("Spotlight") that Microsoft wants in Apple's Tiger update to OS X (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html). Tiger does it in a different and possibly less elegant way, but it may be out in January.
Spotlight was demonstrated, apparently live, by Steve Jobs at MacWorld earlier this year and is due out next year. Our take: Apple needs Spotlight, and a great many other insanely great features, to keep people interested in the Mac, and Microsoft needs to figure out how to make people care about OS improvements.
The game of the month is Medieval: Total War The Viking Invasion (http://www.totalwar.com/community/viking.htm). Not only does this expansion give a new campaign, it fixes some bugs and introduces new units. This game is unique in that much of the game is driven by scripts that you can edit. The preferences of the AI players, the starting units, the capabilities of units, even the personalities of leaders are all in those scripts, and there's a considerable online lore on how to doctor up the game to make it more realistic. I have enjoyed playing about with the scripts: indeed, rather more than I have playing the game itself, and I like playing it a lot since it is turn-based strategic with real-time tactical battles. The battles are pretty realistic. The Medieval version came after the Japanese era game (Shogun: Total War), and now they're coming out with one based on the Romans. I'm looking forward to that.
The book of the month is Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age (Bantam, 2000; ISBN 0553380966). It's set in Shanghai in a time when nanotechnology has been fully developed, and like all Stephenson books, there are many excursions to wherever his mind takes him. There are also major contradictions: If you have certain technologies you may have problems but they won't be the problems he gives his characters. There's a plot, sort of, but some of the main threads just peter out, and like most of his books, there is no real ending; he just got tired of his characters and stopped writing. Still, there are parts where you really want to keep turning the pages, and I don't regret reading it.
If that doesn't appeal to you, try Norton's Star Atlas and Reference Handbook, 20th Edition, edited by Ian Ridpath (Pi Press, 2003; ISBN 0131451642). This is a standard reference work on astronomy: instruments and techniques, time measurements, star locations, maps of the craters on Mars and the Moon, and nearly anything else you might want to know about.
The computer book of the month is Robert and Barbara Thompson's Building the Perfect PC (O'Reilly & Associates, 2004; ISBN 0596006632). I don't much care for the title, but Tim O'Reilly picked it himself, so I guess I can't complain. It's O'Reilly's first full four-color book. Think of this as a companion to PC Hardware in a Nutshell, and another of those books you must have if you're going to build your own systems.
DDJ