Networking News - Page 5

If you live or work in a building with a lot of other people that have their own Wi-Fi networks, you know firsthand that too many networks can cause interference for everyone and slow things down. A group of researchers from Stanford University is working on a new shared wireless network system called BeHop that is designed to make for faster wireless networking by sharing inside buildings.

BeHop is a single, dense Wi-Fi infrastructure that can be centrally managed, but allows individual users to manage their own portion like a private Wi-Fi network. Users on the Behop network will each get their own SSID, passwords, and other settings.

The big thing with this shared, yet private network is that it is set up using cheap consumer grade access points. The hardware used in the tests was provided by NetGear and runs custom firmware. The test system the researchers set up let the individual users name and secure their own networks just as they would if the router was in their room.

Today Buffalo announced the launch of three new high-speed AirStation wireless routers based on the open source DD-WRT firmware. The new AirStation AC 1750 WZR-1750DHPD, AirStation N600 WZR-600DHP2D, and the AirStation N300 WHR-300HP2D all feature DD-WRT Linux-based firmware that provides a high-performance and stable networking stack that is highly customization and community driven.

Buffalo says that the new generation of AirStation Wireless Routers provide high-performance networking, advanced features, and low-level device management while unlocking extensive capabilities with increased network stability. The company's decision to continue offering DD-WRT firmware in its routers offers consumers powerful features not found on other closed-source firmware-based routers of similar pricing points. DD-WRT provides the stability and configuration options needed for high-end home networking or the small business networking environment.

"Consumers and business professionals are demanding increased access and control of their wireless network configurations," said Matt Dargis, COO at Buffalo Americas (USA), Inc. "We launched new open source DD-WRT models of the AirStation router to address this rising demand, giving users the ability to unlock advanced capabilities of their wireless routers at a cost effective price. These features, such as PPTP, OpenVPN and VLAN, allow network administrators and programmers to enable advanced features typically unavailable in consumer-grade wireless routers."

Mike Davis who is a principal research scientist in IOActive found that Belkin WeMo home automation modules have multiple vulnerabilities which could endanger homes of half million users.

According to the report, the vulnerabilities found in Belkin WeMo devices can potentially cause threats to users' house from anything as serious as opening doors to wasting electricity.

The attackers can do to following via Belkin WeMo devices:

Hackers have exploited an 8 month old flaw in ASUS routers. This exploits allows the hacker to access the data stored in a storage drive that connected via the USB port of the router.

This vulnerability was found by a researcher called Kyle Lovett back in June of last year. Kyle also published an article on how this exploit works, followed by a temporary fix such as disabling FTP and AICLOUD. He pointed out in the article that more than 40,000 ASUS routers with USB ports for attaching storage drives are at potential risk.

Some users have also found a text file in their connected drives left by the hackers. The text file contained a following message educating users with exploited routers:

A self replicating worm called "TheMoon" is taking advantage of an authentication vulnerability found in Linksys E-Series routers product line-up. This was discovered by SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center who immediately posted a warning when Linksys E1000 and E1200 were found to be scanning IP address ranges on ports 80 and 8080.

The worm infects these routers by exploiting an authentication bypass vulnerability on the firmware. ISC explained that the worm would first connect to port 8080 and if its necessary, it uses a '/HNAP1/' URL. This would prompt an xml formatted list of the router and the firmware details. Once the worm knows that a particular router has that vulnerability, it exploits the script in the firmware after which allows access to such routers without authentication credentials. The worm simply spreads itself and stifles the remaining bandwidth. The worm is a 2MB file and it has a list of about 670 networks from different countries.

So far, these are the Linksys E-Serious routers that are known to get affected by TheMoon worm: E4200, E3200, E3000, E2500, E2100L, E2000, E1550, E1500, E1200, E1000, and E900. Linksys did provide a solution in their knowledge on how to prevent TheMoon malware affecting their routers. Linksys Router users simply need to enable 'Filter Anonymous Internet Requests' and power-cycle their router which should clear the cache and remove the malware if the router was already infected.

CES 2014 - Broadcom has just unveiled its super-speed 5G Wi-Fi chips, which will be capable of tripling the typical bandwidth found in the average consumers' home.

Broadcom announced the new technology at CES 2014, where it will make it easier to stream video through routers, gateways, STBs, digital TVs, and much more in the home. The company is offering up two 5G Wi-Fi systems that will hopefully break through any walls in any home, with the chips capable of reducing interference when one person plays an online game, while another streams video content from one device to another.

The new Broadcom BCM43569 wireless networking chip will allow smart TVs to receive both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals, simultaneously. Better yet, the BCM43602 can offline processing from a CPU for Wi-Fi networking, with both chips offering support for beamforming, or taking advantage of noise to increase available bandwidth.

Today, TRENDnet announced that it has began shipping its new TPE-1620WS 16-Port Gigabit Web Smart PoE+ Switch. The company says that this all metal, rack-mountable, managed PoE switch features 16 Gigabit PoE+ ports and two shared SFP slots.

Security protocols including ACL, SSL, MAC/port filtering, 802.1X, TACACS+, and RADIUS support layered security controls. The TPE-1620WS is IPv6 ready, with full IPv6 support. Embedded traffic management technology includes: 802.3ad link aggregation, Asymmetric VLAN, 802.1Q VLAN, Voice VLAN, GVRP, 802.1p Class of Service (CoS), and QoS queue scheduling. Traffic comparison charts, error group charts, and a convenient cable diagnostic test aides in rapid troubleshooting. RMON, SNMP, SNMP Trap, and Port Mirroring support administrator monitoring solutions.

Each of the 16 ports automatically support PoE+ (30 Watts) and PoE (15 Watts) power-connected devices. Featuring the company's GREENnet technology, the TPE-1620WS is capable of powering down the ports when they're not in use, which offers up to a 70 percent increase in power savings. TRENDnet says that the TPE-1620WS is available online and from participating retail partners at an MSRP of $529.99.

For years now, San Francisco citizens have wished for there to be a free Wi-Fi service in their parks, and now thanks to Google, 31 of the city's plazas, playgrounds, parks, and rec centers are getting just that. Google donated $600,000 to install the free service, which is still pending approval.

The $600,000 gift will cover the equipment, installation, maintenance and service for the next two years after which it is still uncertain what will happen to the networks. If things go as planned, installation will begin as early as November and would wrap up sometime in April of 2014, just in time for park weather. Advocates and Google hope that this installation will serve as a model that will eventually grow into a city-wide free Wi-Fi network.

A full list of the areas getting the new free Wi-Fi are listed below:

This morning the Wi-Fi Alliance launched its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac certification program, and we sat down with them to talk all things 802.11ac. Before we get into the interview, lets cover what the Wi-Fi certified program is, and why it is needed. In today's world, we are seeing more wireless data being generated than ever before, and current Wi-Fi standards simply can not keep up.

This massive overload in Wi-Fi data is the direct result of several factors including: always-connected devices such as smartphones, tablets, notebooks, and even household appliances such as TVs, audio systems, and even refrigerators and laundry machines. This is where the Wi-Fi Alliance comes into play. They are the party responsible for certifying that 802.11ac chipsets meet the stringent standards and requirements to push connected devices to the next level.

Building on the high-performance foundation of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac products deliver whole-home coverage at two or even three times the speed of older Wi-Fi products and handle demanding applications such as Ultra HD and 4K video, multimedia, and rapid file transfer with ease.

ASUS will be showing off a ton of new products at this years's Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan. A lot of products will feature the new Wi-Fi standard 802.11ac, and to complement those products, the company is launched a new 802.11ac router.

The new ASUS RT-AC68U is being touted as the first dual-band 802.11ac router with AC1900 data rates up to 1900Mbps. This performance can be attributed to AiRadar Beamforming technology, which helps establish a stronger connections and produce 250 percent better range.

ASUS says that you will also build a file share between other ASUS routers via attached USB drives with no need for a PC or other device handling the transfer. At the time of publishing, there is no word on pricing or availability, but previous ASUS flagship routers ran in the $200 range and it would be safe to expect the RT-AC68U to be near that as well.