Possible sec issue?
Can't wait for the first worm/trojan to make use of that bit of code in its payload!
An unfinished project to fit Windows 7 with virtual Wi-Fi devices makes every laptop into a hotspot with the smallest of patches. The patch comes from Nomadio, who followed Microsoft's plans for virtual Wi-Fi support until Redmond dumped the project in 2006. Nomadio then noticed that most of the code is present in Windows 7, …
If I'm anywhere that I'm paying for a connection, I'm also going to reflect it out as an open hotspot for free. Now that all the hotels I stay at give wifi away, I don't have to carry a wireless router anymore to share the joy. It'd be cool to have the capability in my laptop so I could do it in the rare instance when I do come across a paid access point.
This has been possible not only on Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, but also on Windows XP+ (ad-hoc network).
For this kind of usage I don't see any practical difference between having an ad-hoc and a central AP, but maybe I'm wrong, is there some?
And if you really want a central AP, googling "software wifi router" gives some results...
So, what's new about this? (Again, I could be wrong, please clarify if I am)
That a very veru few people will be able to do this? I can see the Microsoft logic and for once it's not that bad: why enable a feature that is going to be seldom used, can cause a storm of lawsuits due to privacy violations (the AP sees all the traffic), and some nice security holes?
These guys played you - they got you to publish this piece about that age-old practice of getting people to PAY for things in Windows which everyone else gets for free with every other OS.
I would expect other sites to fall for this, but I am rather surprised that The Register would!
To those bleating that this has all been done before, care to share some sources? According to the site, it's able to be a client on one WLAN and act as Master/AP to other clients, all using the one wireless NIC. It doesn't use Ad-Hoc mode, they say. I've never heard of an app for Windows or Linux that can do this, and at the very least it's hardware-dependent.
If anyone can point me to such a thing - especially for Linux - I'd be delighted.
...the higher the bandwidth. The back of a laptop offers the antenna designer a nice stable platform for efficient beam forming, no power wasted in other directions when you MIMO-mesh up with your keyboard, mouse, earpiece, and hundreds of beam connections to other femto cells in the network.. This reusability of spectrum makes public bandwidth almost infinite.
As i have ranted in the past, 802.11n presents us with the capability of creating a public, self forming, mesh network. The more people that join, the higher the overall bandwidth. Google gets this.
The carriers don't.
Paris because she consumes vast quantities of bandwidth.