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Highly integrated chip promises fast speed and mesh networking

Internet speeds here in America are lagging behind those available abroad in many areas of the world. The low speed of internet access doesn’t mean you can’t have a wireless home network that provides very fast connectivity.

Quantenna has a new product that takes a different approach to intelligent wireless networking. The firm has produced what it claims to be the first fully integrated 802.11n chipset. The Quantenna High Speed (QHS) chipsets offer 4x4 MIMO, transmit beamforming, vector mesh routing, two or four concurrent bands, and throughput of up to 1 Gbps on a single chipset.

The QHS chipsets claim to be able to deliver link speeds of up to 1 Gbps and data throughput of up to 600 Mbps. The mesh networking capability uses spectrum management to cover a home or office entirely. The 4x4 MIMO technology and Tx beamforming claim to deliver 50% more performance than other 802.11n technologies.

Integration of the chipsets allows them to provide concurrent dual mode and a power amplifier to deliver content like real-time video on the 5 GHz band and legacy data on the more crowded 2.4 GHz band.

Cost to produce devices using the QHS chipset can be cut according to the chipset maker because the highly integrated nature of the chipset means fewer chips are needed in a device. Multiple security types are supported by the QHS chip including WEP, WPA, and Radius.


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WEP
By AnnihilatorX on 10/21/2008 7:45:53 AM , Rating: 4
They are still supporting WEP?

WEP should be wiped off the face of the planet!
An encryption that can be cracked in 2 minutes only gives people a false sense of security




RE: WEP
By murphyslabrat on 10/21/2008 8:37:42 AM , Rating: 2
It will, however, keep the neighbors away from your porn.


RE: WEP
By JAB on 10/21/2008 8:52:01 AM , Rating: 2
Only if they dont try.


RE: WEP
By jonmcc33 on 10/21/2008 12:08:04 PM , Rating: 2
My neighbors are too dumb to try. I'm the only one in the area with WPA2 encryption on my wireless router. Everyone else is either unsecured or WEP. It's too funny.


RE: WEP
By Hieyeck on 10/21/2008 9:15:29 AM , Rating: 2
You DO know a Nintendo DS can crack a WEP key...


RE: WEP
By jonmcc33 on 10/21/2008 12:03:36 PM , Rating: 3
I'll be wary of all the 7 year olds on my street. <rolls eyes>


RE: WEP
By Samus on 10/22/2008 1:27:43 AM , Rating: 2
Considering most wep keys are...

0000000000
5555555555
1234567890
8888888822
6666664444
012f012f01

I agree, it should be wiped off the face of the earth :P

Let's not even bother getting into how it mutulates bandwidth.


RE: WEP
By FITCamaro on 10/21/2008 9:47:16 AM , Rating: 2
They still have to get past my MAC address filter. I use WPA now though.


RE: WEP
By Lord 666 on 10/21/2008 9:52:55 AM , Rating: 1
MAC can be sniffed. Its only a matter of time before WPA is cracked like WEP. Currently, WPA can be broken using dictionary attacks greatly sped up by Nvidia GPU's


RE: WEP
By FITCamaro on 10/21/2008 10:08:35 AM , Rating: 2
Anything can be cracked. It's just a matter of how badly does someone want what you have. Between the two, I think I'm good for my home network.


RE: WEP
By monitorjbl on 10/21/2008 10:55:30 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah, that's true, but MAC filtering doesn't provide any amount of protection from intruders if there's a single device operating on your network. IMO, it's kind of a waste of time to set up. It'll only make things difficult for you.


RE: WEP
By akugami on 10/21/2008 11:08:53 AM , Rating: 3
I disagree. It's to keep the average person off your network. If they have the time and expertise to get through WPA and MAC filtering then they're welcome to my porn collection. However, I'd say that someone with that much expertise has better targets than the random WiFi networks in a neighborhood.


RE: WEP
By Lord 666 on 10/21/2008 11:16:58 AM , Rating: 2
With Cisco now offering a CCIE in Wireless, watch the amount of experts suddenly explode along with general interest in wireless.


RE: WEP
By fibreoptik on 10/27/2008 11:48:29 AM , Rating: 2
Right. Everyone is going to RUSH out to get that CCIE Wireless cert.


RE: WEP
By Korvon on 10/21/2008 11:52:17 AM , Rating: 2
WPA already has. You just sniff the 4 way handshake, capture it to your hard drive and then crack it on your system. Then its just the time to crack the hash, made much faster with rainbow tables.
The only thing that makes WPA much better is that the encryption is seeded with the SSID. So if you have a long unique SSID with a long password, it can take a VERY long time to crack.
However, most people don't change their SSID from "Linksys" or "Default" so rainbow tables for these are quite easy to make.

Long and the short, WPA can be very easy to crack or very hard, it just depends on how the person has set it up.


RE: WEP
By GaryJohnson on 10/21/2008 1:23:29 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
made much faster with rainbow tables...most people don't change their SSID from "Linksys" or "Default" so rainbow tables for these are quite easy to make

Only if they are using a common SSID AND a dictionary password, right? If either is random, then the hash is random and still has to be calculated from the SSID which the attackers would already have. So if your password is random ASCII, it doesn't matter if your SSID is long or unique. As even an 8 character random ASCII pass rainbow table wouldn't fit in a semi full of harddrives.


RE: WEP
By Oregonian2 on 10/21/2008 1:42:22 PM , Rating: 2
Don't recall what I used for WEP, but for WPA2 I use a long sentence in multiple languages where a dictionary attack might take a while (tricky when it's only got an hour to crack it before encryption changes if I understand what WPA2 does). My SSID also contains a random portion.

But with that lead-in, I've seen "Netgear" and the like previously, say a year or more in the past. But I have to give my neighborhood credit, the three or four other networks that I can sometimes see now all use WPA2 which I take as good progress, and if typical, it's a good thing. Especially when Verizon FiOS's router defaults to WEP (at least better than most other routers I've seen that default to free wifi hotspot mode).


RE: WEP
By GaryJohnson on 10/21/2008 3:06:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
tricky when it's only got an hour to crack it before encryption changes if I understand what WPA2 does


You have two things confused there, authentication and encryption. The key for encryption changes, but the key for authentication stays the same. If the key for authentication changed you'd need to look up the new key on the access point every time you wanted to connect a new device.


RE: WEP
By nitrous9200 on 10/21/2008 9:14:53 PM , Rating: 2
I used http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/WPA_key/genera... to make my WPA key and set it to maximum (63 bits)...I'm not too worried about anyone getting in to my network!


RE: WEP
By GaryJohnson on 10/22/2008 12:10:44 AM , Rating: 2
I like https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

The thing we need to watch out for is someone finding an exploit in the key schema.

And Quantum computers.


RE: WEP
By jonmcc33 on 10/21/2008 12:23:19 PM , Rating: 2
And everyone has the nVIDIA 8800/9800 in their computer and paid $599 for the software to do just this...

http://hothardware.com/News/Russian-Firm-Uses-NVID...

Pity that some people live in the real world where as others have been on the internet far too long it seems.


RE: WEP
By Lord 666 on 10/21/2008 2:57:44 PM , Rating: 1
The software also works with 280s and when two are used in SLI, the WPA is broken by brute force dictionary attack 10,000 time faster than "normal."

Lets do the simple math on that; as a consultant this would be CHUMP change ($600+400+400) to do penetration testing and/or proof of concept and pay for itself with one client.

Welcome to the real world where capitalism is still alive and well. Its also the same world where people think that just because they buy and setup wireless stuff purchased at Best Buy they are wifi experts.


RE: WEP
By jonmcc33 on 10/22/2008 7:13:36 AM , Rating: 2
Oh yes, everyone owns a 280 too. I forgot about that. <rolls eyes>

You've been on the internet too long. Gamers make up 1% of computer owners there, bud.


RE: WEP
By fibreoptik on 10/27/2008 12:02:01 PM , Rating: 2
Anyone with a name beginning with "Lord" is ultimately a DB that will consistantly make DB remarks, as we have seen here repeatedly...


RE: WEP
By Lord 666 on 10/21/2008 9:49:13 AM , Rating: 2
First rule in wireless security is to reduce ap range to minimum required area and keep the perimeter tight. Broadcasting the entire neighboorhood isn't a wise idea,regardless of the encryption method. What your neighbors can't see will keep interest low.

that being said, I do agree WEP should be eliminated.


RE: WEP
By 67STANG on 10/21/2008 10:55:55 AM , Rating: 2
Ding Ding Ding!

This was the result of many studies on wireless security. Other, conventional security means meant nothing compared to this-- after all, wireless is meant to promote connectivity.

These are pretty much the measures you have to take to make you "as secure as possible":

-Make sure your signal doesn't penetrate your walls.
-Use WPA or Radius Authentication
-Use Mac filtering
-Usa a DMZ
-Don't broadcast your SSID
-Use a less popular frequency band(ie- 802.11a)

If you do *all* of these things, you can consider yourself "as protected as I can be using wireless".


RE: WEP
By Crusty on 10/21/2008 11:48:18 AM , Rating: 2
Disabling your SSID broadcast is worthless, it doesn't hide your network at all. All it does it make it harder for legitimate users to connect, same with MAC Filtering. MAC addresses are a joke to spoof, you only need 1 packet to traverse the wifi to pick up a MAC to spoof.

Everything else are good ideas though.


RE: WEP
By 67STANG on 10/21/2008 1:35:22 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, but it's the combination of using all of the above that is best practice, not picking 1 or 2 items out as worthless. SSID and Mac Filter will prevent "casual" hijackings by residents/neighboring businesses and are very easy to implement.


RE: WEP
By wolrah on 10/22/2008 9:09:51 AM , Rating: 2
Turning on encryption will also stop casual users, and it'll do it without the pain in the ass that is MAC filtering or SSID hiding.

Logging on to an encrypted AP with a new computer is as simple as point/click/password. Logging on to one "protected" with what you suggest requires first getting on another computer to add the new one to the MAC list, then manually specifying the SSID, then possibly the password (I've found that most of the idiots who disable broadcasting or use MAC filtering don't encrypt for some reason).

Kismet and Kismet-based GUI tools like KisMAC can easily see "hidden" APs and tell you a list of all the MAC addresses attached to it. With that information, it takes just about as long to spoof an allowed MAC address and log on as it does for a legitimate user to connect, possibly even less time. It's an annoyance that adds literally zero security. WEP is better, at least that takes a few seconds to crack rather than merely putting a wireless card in monitor mode and watching.

Let me repeat: SSID hiding and MAC filtering are 100% worthless. They will stop absolutely zero active attacks, and the "casual" free surfers you describe will already be stopped by any level of encryption no matter how small.


RE: WEP
By sld on 10/21/2008 11:51:54 AM , Rating: 2
You many want to have a good look at this:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/Ou/?p=454


RE: WEP
By sld on 10/21/2008 11:55:02 AM , Rating: 2
If your wireless routers do not broadcast your SSID, your laptops and other wireless clients will.

Implication: your wireless router stays in one spot. Your laptops go everywhere with you.

Conclusion: your wireless security becomes WORSE than before.


RE: WEP
By LeftSide on 10/21/2008 1:29:47 PM , Rating: 2
I disagree reducing your broadcasting range just makes it harder for you to connect. If someone else wants in, it only takes a pringles can, and they'll have a better connection than you. Reducing AP Range is just another false security.


RE: WEP
By SavagePotato on 10/21/2008 10:45:28 AM , Rating: 2
I'll go one better. 802.11 should be wiped off the planet. What a beautiful cabled world it would be.


RE: WEP
By FITCamaro on 10/21/2008 12:47:32 PM , Rating: 2
When I own a home, every room will have at least 1 ethernet connection. Possibly 2-3.


RE: WEP
By Oregonian2 on 10/21/2008 1:53:56 PM , Rating: 2
With WiFi in ours ("draft-N" WPA2) , every room in ours does. :-)


RE: WEP
By jonmcc33 on 10/22/2008 12:30:28 PM , Rating: 2
And the cost to do such a thing would be more than just getting a wireless router. <_<


RE: WEP
By Oregonian2 on 10/21/2008 1:52:36 PM , Rating: 2
And that "cable" needs to be glass fiber!


Finally
By ineedaname on 10/21/2008 7:42:00 AM , Rating: 4
Now anyone will be able to stream HD porn throughout their whole house. At 1 Gbps we no longer have 2 think about lag.




RE: Finally
By FITCamaro on 10/21/2008 7:48:41 AM , Rating: 2
Too bad your hard drive can't keep up.


RE: Finally
By AnnihilatorX on 10/21/2008 7:59:53 AM , Rating: 2
I do not think the HDD is the bottleneck. Thoerectically it is, because 1Gbps = 125MB/s, faster than all but the most expensive SSDs or RAIDed HDDs.

But I am betting that the wireless environmental factors and the wireless protocol will create a greater bottleneck, hence the 600Mbps figure.


RE: Finally
By dickeywang on 10/21/2008 8:24:44 AM , Rating: 2
Even at 600Mbps, it is already fast enough for most of the current consumer NAS units in the market. I'll definitely get one of these if they can really produce anything around 400-500Mbps data transferring speed in real life.


RE: Finally
By drebo on 10/21/2008 10:17:20 AM , Rating: 2
The key is that wireless is half-duplex by design. So while your connection speed is 1gbps, your maximum throughput is roughly half that, discounting any environmental factors.

Wireless is a neat toy, but it will never replace good old wires for anything with practical implications.


RE: Finally
By SavagePotato on 10/21/2008 10:43:18 AM , Rating: 3
Wireless is a monumental pain in the ass. Because 90% of the people that use it have no idea what they are using, much less how to use it.

If I had a dollar for every imbecile that thinks their internet is cutting out because they have one bar of signal on their 30 dollar three year old dlink di-524, I would be able to quit and never have to speak to them again.

I really wish 802.11 didn't exist, plugging in a cable is hard enough for a brain dead idiot that doesn't know where their enter key is. Getting it a across to them that a buggy piece of crap wifi connection is the issue much less trying to get them to fix it, well good luck.

Maybe they should just license wifi like Russia wanted to. I think that idea was secretly brought up by Russian tech support agents that didn't want wireless routers in the hands of imbeciles any longer.


RE: Finally
By Lord 666 on 10/21/2008 6:18:59 PM , Rating: 2
Neither will the horseless carriage, airplance, or home computer.

802.11 has been around for about 10 years now and has made great improvements.

Just think how long it took for cat5e to come around. Ever hear of vampire taps?


RE: Finally
By amanojaku on 10/21/2008 11:14:20 AM , Rating: 1
I think FIT was making a funny. Hard drive can't keep up with streaming porn ... I've seen laptops hit close to 1Gbit/sec in the right environments. Shocked the heck out of me, let me tell you. Must be buffering, compression, and the like. And your calculation is off: 1Gbit/sec= ~119.21MB/sec.


RE: Finally
By bobsmith1492 on 10/21/2008 11:33:00 AM , Rating: 2
Actually you're both wrong on the calculation;

1Gbit/s * 1byte/8bit * 1024MB/GB = 128MB/s.

Of course, via TCP/IP you'll only hit maybe 90% data throughput thanks to the overhead.

With a wireless link, you may be lucky to hit half that!

Advertisement numbers are just that, advertisements. Real life rarely follows.


RE: Finally
By amanojaku on 10/21/2008 11:53:02 AM , Rating: 1
Oh really?

1 Gbit = 1,000,000,000 bits
1,000,000,000 bits/ 8 (bit/byte) = 125,000,000 bytes
125,000,000 bytes / 1024 (bytes/kibibyte) = ~122,070.31 kibibytes
122070.3125 /1024 (kibibytes/mebibyte) = ~119.21 mebibytes

Eh?!? O_o


RE: Finally
By FITCamaro on 10/21/2008 12:46:35 PM , Rating: 2
Actually I was saying many people's hard drives don't have a read rate of 1Gbit/s.


Wireless, smireless
By bigboxes on 10/21/2008 12:22:26 PM , Rating: 1
The most secure, fast and reliable network is still wired. I have wireless capability on my router, but keep it turned off cuz I don't use it. Everything (four PCs) is wired (via cat6) to a gigabit switch (->router ->cable modem). I still bitch about the lag, but I would pull my hair out with wireless what with the constant dropping of signal and slow speed.




RE: Wireless, smireless
By jonmcc33 on 10/21/2008 12:28:02 PM , Rating: 2
Wireless hardly drops a signal (unless you have some crappy Belkin wireless AP) and wireless is best suited and most used for connecting to the internet. Common home broadband isn't going to peak the 54Mbps of 11g. So it's not really slow.


RE: Wireless, smireless
By Oregonian2 on 10/21/2008 2:06:17 PM , Rating: 2
For internet use, 'G' speeds are fine, but that can be quite slow for inter-machine LAN use. For instance, we've our photos on one server (my machine). My wife uses a 12 MP camera that makes If I recall correctly 5 MB files. When she wants to just scan through the photos (hers is wifi connected), with 'G' (which actually only transfers at 27 Mbps in one direction) it's sluggish looking at photos. With draft-N, ours is about three times faster which helps a good bit (and is why I replaced our FiOS Verizon supplied 'G' router with another).


RE: Wireless, smireless
By jonmcc33 on 10/22/2008 10:13:38 AM , Rating: 2
Oh, so the problem is impatience and unusually high expectations?


RE: Wireless, smireless
By Oregonian2 on 10/22/2008 2:58:45 PM , Rating: 2
I don't think "expectations" being high or low is the issue. Having performance that one wants drives expectations -- and that is based upon impatience I suppose.

In the case of my wife, she wants to be able to scroll through her pictures on her computer at the same speed as I do on mine (where the files are located). It's not practical to route a cable (gigabit ethernet) to her playroom from mine, so having the wifi as fast as possible is the approach, but still doesn't quite do the job. Any given afternoon she may knock off a half-gig of photo snapshots, not hard to do with a 12 MP P&S with a 4G card in it. Plus I've my digital cameras. When looking at a hundred photos at one time, having a few seconds loading time gets old quick.

The internet speed is only 20 Mbps, so that isn't the issue. It isn't used for those sorts of applications (for self fulfilling sorts of reasons, I know).


RE: Wireless, smireless
By jonmcc33 on 10/22/2008 7:50:12 PM , Rating: 2
You're expecting a computer, over wireless, to make thumbnails of 5MB sized images on another computer at any fast rate? She expects it to happen as fast as it would as if the pictures were actually on her hard drive?

That's not an issue with wireless or speed but a VASTLY CONFUSED WOMAN that has no clear understanding of networking...obviously.


RE: Wireless, smireless
By Oregonian2 on 10/23/2008 1:12:36 PM , Rating: 2
No, we're not making thumbnails, she just goes through the full sized images one by one, looking at each in sequence. Each "batch" of images in it's own directory that's a subdirectory of directory that represents a half year (we're now using 2008_H2). We've also separate indexing/databasing/thumbnailing software when hunting individual images, but most of the time it's looking through a single "batch" where finding it in the file structure is easier.

As to what she wants, that has nothing to do with expectations of the implementations, nor should it. It's what she wants, and that drives the implementation. Demands drive solutions, not the other way around.

As to speed, using draft-N where we get around 70 Mbps unidirectionally (measured -- compared to 27 Mbps for 'G'), it's halfway decent on her machine.


RE: Wireless, smireless
By bigboxes on 10/21/2008 2:57:02 PM , Rating: 2
I've seen 'em all drop signals to the point of irritation. D-Link, Linksys, etc. I'm not saying it doesn't have it's purpose. It's a product for the masses in that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to set up. But really, who moves their PCs around that much? Unless you want to sit outside with your laptop what's the point? I'd rather not have to trouble shoot the wireless all the time.

If and when I get a laptop and want to sit outside then I'll turn on the wireless and set up WPA.


RE: Wireless, smireless
By SavagePotato on 10/21/2008 6:11:41 PM , Rating: 2
You have never been a party to the quality and joy of the dlink di-524, or perhaps is newer brother the wbr-1310. Or their frequently dying larger sibblings the di-624 and wbr-2310. The d-link four lights of doom is so well known here it's an institution.

Welcome to cheap router wireless hell. That doesn't take into account all the crap chipsets either like the atheros garbage the bosses daughters notebook had which was bugged and dropping connection randomly,(which there was a bios flash fix that didn't work out for on the LG website, the real solution for the warrantied units was a swap to an intel wireless chipset.)

Just as food for thought, when presented with cheap router versus good router which would you imagine most customers go with. That's right the cheap one.

Ban all wireless routers and throw the existing ones in a pit in the desert, atari et fiasco style. What a wonderful world it would be.


RE: Wireless, smireless
By PandaBear on 10/22/2008 3:01:26 PM , Rating: 2
Agree, in general stay away from any chipsets that can't support an open source firmware (i.e. DDWRT or Tomato). VxWork based firmware are way too unreliable.


RE: Wireless, smireless
By PandaBear on 10/22/2008 3:02:57 PM , Rating: 2
Actually atheros are pretty good now, they have a new HAL that support open source firmware and in general have better radio than broadcom.

Still much better than Marvell or Ralink.


RE: Wireless, smireless
By fibreoptik on 10/27/2008 12:46:19 PM , Rating: 2
Atheros and Orinoco are two of the best wireless chipset builders out there :p


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