NoCatAuth: Authentication for Wireless Networks

Lisa writes: "Even an open community wireless network needs to keep track of who's using it, says Rob Flickenger, who describes the authentication system used by NoCat in this article." This is at least partially an ad for Flickenger's new book, but since I plan to buy the book anyway... Update: 11/17 14:53 GMT by M : Yep, this is a duplicate. But community wireless needs more participants, so why not read it again? :)

Re:Nice job, Micheal

[macdaddy]

Some moderator had his or her head up their asses again. How the hell can the first post to an article be redundant. Dumbass.

Moderator Test

[PhotonSphere]

Since this article was posted earlier, can I simply copy and paste all the top-moderated comments to grab some easy karma? I shall call it a consistency-test!

Re:Moderator Test

[millette]

... and another round of meta-moderation begins.
Which leads me to this question: have you played nomic lately?

Re:Moderator Test

[mberman]

Or the more important question: can I make the parent post to every duplicate article, ever?

Slashdot readers Spammed, film at eleven...

[bozo42]

Is posting the same article several times considered Spamming Slashdot Readers (tm)?

spam slash spam slash spam slash spam slash spam slash spam slash spam slash spam slash

...plionk...

...SPLASH...

...aaaaah...

4 of 11 comments and he already retracted.

[garcia]

well at least they are getting closer to not doing duplicates :)

web-centric inadequate

[cotu]

While it's certainly reasonable to want authentication
even if you're not going to be charging BigBux for it,
taking a web-centric approach to using a net is not
really going to cut it going forward. Using the web as
an _enrollement_ tool is probably fine, but if you want
to be running VoIP phones which need real time handoff
capabilities, let's see... "Hold on while I sign up for service
on this new AP...". I don't think so.

Fast roaming is going ot require a better authentication
subsystem which is inherently single signon and will
almost certainly requires cross realm agreements so that
you can move from cellular to 802.11 to whatever
seamlessly. My personal fave candidate is to use kerberos
mechanisms since it allows amortization of expensive
public operations, but other heroism may be needed in
the form of the icky prospect of transfering AAA, SA, and
QoS authorization context across access routers, etc.

What would be nice...

[duffbeer703]

... would be if you could easily set aside a certain percentage of your bandwidth (say 10-15%) for use by other people, and more if its available. That way you aren't taking a backseat to freeloaders on your own network, but you also aren't curring people off whenever you start a big, bandwidth-heavy transfer.

Fine for him, don't force it on us.

[Distan]

If he wants to authenticate users on his network, good for him. But he assumes that everybody feels the same way as him. Authentication flies in the face of absolute anonymity, and anything that blocks anonymity is a Bad Thing (tm).

Re:Fine for him, don't force it on us.

[Wesley Felter]

Do you authenticate to your ISP? Doesn't that fly in the face of absolute anonymity?

Only 36 comments after 15 hours?

[RedX]

Worst. Thread. Ever.

Re:Only 36 comments after 15 hours?

[great throwdini]

Worst. Thread. Ever.

Well, this Barrington Bayley book bore [slashdot.org] had already been declared as such [slashdot.org] after only 26 comments and less than three hours... with no forward declaration of redundancy.

I guess they're both winners... of a sort.

- me, refusing to post at +1 so as not to favor this thread any more than I already have

Open networks

[Pludodog]

Of what use, exactly, are these open networks? My wireless station doesn't even reach outside the house, and I doubt you could boost it to cover more than a few homes. Unless you plan to let flocks of people park on your lawn and use their laptops, wouldn't the only others using it be neighbours, who will stay in one place, and let you give them access to it anyway?