Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 7, 2005
by sjvn01
0 comments

MIMOing Your Way to Faster Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi vendors Netgear Inc. and Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems Inc., have both announced this week that they will be releasing Wi-Fi products that use MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) antenna technology to improve their 802.11g products’ speed, range and reliability.

Linksys claimed that its new MIMO-enhanced 802.11g devices would enable users to have three times the range, and network speeds of up to eight times that of conventional 802.11g. This, if accurate, would give Linksys MIMO devices throughputs in the range of 400-Mbps.

More realistically, most vendors predict that users will see at least two to four times faster throughput and a doubling of range. Perhaps more importantly, MIMO Wi-Fi devices should deal better with structural issues that lead to dead spots in Wi-Fi coverage.

Best of all, while neither Netgear nor Linksys has announced prices yet, it is expected that MIMO adaptors and access points will cost little more than their existing 802.11 counterparts.

How can they do it? MIMO works by taking one of radio communication’s oldest problems, multipath, and turning it into a solution.

Multipath is what happens when signals bounce off objects or structures and take multiple paths to the receiver. If you listen to your car radio, you run into the multipath problem every day. For example, if your favorite radio station fades out every day in a certain location, you’re hearing an example of what’s called multipath fading or “Rayleigh” fading.

What’s happening is that your antenna is receiving both the transmitter’s main signal and its reflections. When these signals arrive out of phase with each other, they cancel each other out, and your morning traffic report fades out.

But starting in the 1990s, a pair of Stanford University researchers showed that you could use each reflection, each multipath route, as a separate channel.

The engineering problem was that in order to make use of multipath this way, you need multiple antennas. However, it turns out that these antennas can be very close together- close enough to fit on a Wi-Fi card.

So it is that MIMO devices actually transmit and receive multiple data streams over their multiple antennas. These streams are then bonded together on the Wi-Fi device to create a higher-speed wireless connection.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Bonding was a trick we often used with ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) routers, and in modem devices that combined several 56K modem connections into a single, faster connection.

More recently, Wi-Fi chip maker Atheros Communications Inc. this week has used bonding with 802.11h to make Wi-Fi devices that could double the theoretical speed of 802.11g from 54Mbps to 108Mbps. Wi-Fi devices labeled “Super G” use this technology.

Unfortunately, these accomplish this speed increase by bonding together two or more of the 802.11g standard channels. Therefore, if you have multiple 802.11g networks, they can interfere with each other. This can result in a slowdown in the conventional 802.11g network.

MIMO avoids this problem by not bonding together 802.11 channels. Instead of sending one data stream down one channel and another stream down another channel, MIMO simultaneously transmits multiple data streams over the same channel.

As you might guess, this does cause signal interference. But MIMO receivers use algorithms to pull out the proper data streams and bond them in real time, resulting in a much faster throughput with longer range than conventional 802.11 technologies.

MIMO also uses SDM (Spatial Division Multiplexing). SDM multiplexes the multiple data streams, one per antenna, to transfer data simultaneously in each channel of bandwidth. This also results in faster traffic while still using any of the 802.11 networking protocols: 802.11a, 802.11b or 802.11g.

Airgo Networks Inc. was the first company to release a commercial version of MIMO. The groundbreaking firm’s “True MIMO” AGN100 Baseband/MAC (Media Access Control) processor and AGN100RF transceiver are being adopted by such Wi-Fi equipment vendors as Belkin Corp., Linksys and SOHOware Inc.

Airgo, however, is far from the only chip OEM to be producing MIMO-capable chip sets. For example, Netgear is using Video54‘s RangeMax MIMO technology. Intel is also working on MIMO technology for its next-generation Centrino chips.

Of course, it would be too much to expect these varying MIMO implementations to be compatible with each other. Each of them, however, is backwards-compatible with existing Wi-Fi equipment. In addition, to that extent, pieces of MIMO equipment will be compatible with each other. So, for example, while you wouldn’t get 100Mbps from a combination of Belkin MIMO-enhanced 802.11g access points and Netgear MIMO-enabled Wi-Fi cards, you would still get 802.11g’s usual speeds.

In addition, MIMO Wi-Fi cards, even used with non-MIMO access points, should see extended range. That’s because, by their very nature, these cards are better at picking up low-strength signals.

What all of this means for you as a reseller or an integrator is that MIMO technology deserves your attention today. Everyone loves Wi-Fi, especially now that it’s getting more secure with the maturation of 802.11i. At the same time, everyone wants more range and faster throughput.

If at all possible, stick with one vendor, or at least one MIMO chip set, in your deployments. If you don’t, your customers won’t see significant performance gains.

Finally, if you’re hoping that 802.11n, the next high-speed networking update standard, takes care of these incompatibility woes … don’t hold your breath. 802.11n is in the very early stages of development, and we’re already seeing at least two main camps with different ideas on how to achieve a real-world 100Mbps Wi-Fi throughput.

On one side, you have the MIMO camp led by Airgo. They’re grouped together under the name WWiSE (World-Wide Spectrum Efficiency). On the other, you have the TGn (Task Force 802.11n) Sync group. This group, which includes Atheros, Intel, Nokia and Sony, is taking the bigger-is-better approach by using existing wireless technologies over bigger, 40-Mhz channels.

The bottom line? Don’t wait for 802.11n, but do test out the coming MIMO equipment, pick a vendor and start rolling it out. You and your customers will be glad you did.

A version of this story first appeared in Channel Insider.

January 2, 2005
by sjvn01
0 comments

The Triumph and Tragedy of Ray Noorda

Over my years as a computer journalist, I’ve met pretty much everyone who’s anyone in the technology business. Very few of the big names have really impressed me, though. Among those who I’ve thought were really something special have been Steve Jobs of Apple, Linus Torvalds of Linux and, oh yes, Ray Noorda of Novell.

Unlike those others, Noorda wasn’t technically brilliant. He was just a hard-headed, hard-working businessman who made things happen. I admired his work ethic and his willingness to do what was right by his lights.

Sometimes that meant fighting the good fight against Microsoft, which he saw as potentially totally dominating the desktop long before everyone else did. And sometimes that meant making peace.

For example, after Novell bought Unix and USL (Unix Systems Laboratories) from AT&T, rather than continue to fight with BSDI (Berkeley Software Design Inc.) over possible Unix intellectual property rights violations in BSD/OS, an early, commercial BSD Unix, Noorda famously declared that he’d rather compete in the marketplace than in court, and the two sides settled peacefully.

Noorda also took Novell Data Systems and turned it into the LAN company of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Along the way, Noorda also shaped the modern reseller world.

It was Noorda who came up with the three-tiered approach to resellers that so many companies now use. It was Noorda who decided that training and certification were the best ways to make sure that his partners could support Novell’s products. In turn, those early Novell resellers used Novell’s CNE (Certified NetWare Engineer) to market their wares and services so successfully that every major vendor has a certification program for its partners.

If you use any certification to get a job or to sell your services, you owe a debt to Ray Noorda.

Thus, it’s with a heavy heart that I see that Noorda’s investment company, The Canopy Group, parent company of SCO, and many others involved in a civil war. It appears that an old-fashioned power struggle has developed between Noorda’s hand-picked executives, some of his family and some Canopy associates.

I don’t know the details of the fight. No one outside of the Canopy family does.

But I do know that Canopy, which is a privately held venture capital firm, almost certainly has more than $1 billion in assets. It doesn’t take a genius to see how people could fight over it.

It also doesn’t help any that Canopy’s internal structure is a Byzantine complex of, at one time, more than two dozen companies. These companies frequently share resources and officers and invest in each other.

For example, in late 2000, SCO (then Caldera) formed a partnership with EBIZ Enterprises, a Texas-based company in which Canopy held a controlling interest, to create a B2B (business-to-business) marketplace company called PartnerAxis. The company was designed to link Linux solution providers with resellers. PartnerAxis, in turn, was funded by Canopy.

I’m no accountant, but I have followed several of the Canopy-related companies, such as SCO and Novell, for more than a decade … and I can’t make heads or tails of Canopy’s internal structures. If you want to give it a try, the TWkiIWeThey site, with its listings of Canopy officials and companies, is your best place to start.

Novell, I should add, isn’t part of Canopy anymore. Noorda and Canopy largely divested themselves of Novell stock back in 1996.

In part, that was because—oh, the irony of it all—Noorda believed that Linux was the future, while Novell, now under Bob Frankenberg, killed off its internal Linux skunks work project. Soon thereafter, Noorda cut off his ties with Novell and via Canopy bankrolled Caldera Systems, one of the first Linux companies.

Over time, though, Ray’s health and memory have continued to fail. And meanwhile, Caldera, now renamed SCO, has turned against Linux and Novell has now embraced Linux with open arms. Oh the irony!

Were Ray, who is 80 now, in better shape, I’m sure that we would never have seen SCO sue IBM and launch its attack against Linux. Instead, we would have seen Novell acquire SCO, rather than SuSE, to make its Linux play. And we certainly wouldn’t see what promises to be a long, nasty fight for control over Canopy.

So it is that today I sit in my office, and I’m very sorry indeed that Ray’s legacy has come to this.

Still, in the larger sense, his legacy still goes on. Regardless of what happens to the companies he founded, he, just as much as Scott McNealy of Sun and John Chambers of Cisco, helped create the networked world we live in now, And more so than anyone else, he created the modern reseller and integrator world from which so many of us make our living.

A version of this story first appeared in Channel Insider.

December 22, 2004
by sjvn01
0 comments

Use Firefox for a Safer System

The itsy, bitsy spider, climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
So the itsy, bitsy spider went up the spout again.

That was one of my daughter Alicias favorite nursery rhymes when she was small. And its a great fun as that, but it makes for a lousy IT policy. How many times must Windows desktop users be hosed before they start using a more secure desktop operating system?

Or, if youre not ready to shift over to a good, solid desktop Linux such as Novell Linux Desktop or Xandros or buy a Mac, the least you could do is start using more secure, open-source applications on your Windows.

Take Firefox for example. Ive been using Web browsers almost since before there were Web browsers, and Firefox is simply the best browser Ive ever used on any platform. In addition, Firefox is a lot more secure than Internet Explorer.

Notice I didnt say it was perfectly secure. Like any software program, it has problems. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, is a security hole disguised as a Web browser.

Dont believe me? In past few weeks, weve seen a pair of IE problems that hit fully patched Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2), a spoofing problem that also smacks completely patched systems, and the Bofra/IFrame bug, which SP2 does stop. And the IE faults keep coming and coming.

Do you want to spend all of your IT staffs time patching IE and praying that your users dont run into a page that opens up your network like a rotten fruit while waiting for a patch? I dont think so.

Oh, and did I mention that if your shop is still running Windows 2000, you can forget about getting XP SP2-style security patches anyway? I hope your budget is ready to either upgrade all of your systems to XP or add a lot more security to your systems, because Microsoft isnt giving you a whole lot of choice about the matter.

A Microsoft program manager, Peter Torr, recently asked on his blog, “How can I trust Firefox?” My question, of course, is how can I trust IE?

Yes, Firefox has holes, too. For example, theres a pop-up window problem that gets pretty much every browser on the planet.

People who dont get security often say that if Firefox or any other open-source software were only as popular as IE, their security would be just as bad. Nope. Wrong.

First, open-source software is constantly being looked at by numerous developers. When problems are found, and they are all the time, theyre quickly fixed. With Microsoft code, you have to trust that its programmers are on the ball and that theyll fix problems quickly. You look at their track record and you decide if thats true. I know what I think.

Second, on Windows, open-source applications are just that: applications. Microsoft programs, by their very nature, are tied directly into the operating system kernel. This means, IE—and other Microsoft Windows applications such as Outlook—enables any security hole to potentially rip open the entire operating system.

This isnt paranoia. Read eWEEK.coms security section. Youll find story after story about serious Internet Explorer holes that appear, and Microsoft sometimes takes months to patch them. Who needs this?

Torr said he thinks Firefox and its plug-ins and helper applications need better code signing so that users know that an application really is a legit one and not a hacked Trojan that will lie in wait to attack your system. Hes got a point.

But at least with Firefox, the real application isnt a problem. I know who makes Internet Explorer, and IE is the problem.

A version of Using Firefox for a Safer System first appeared in eWEEK.

November 19, 2004
by sjvn01
0 comments

Author of Linux Patent Study Says Ballmer Got It Wrong

When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he wasnt really saying that Linux violates more than 200 software patents, Microsoft followed up by saying Ballmer was only citing findings from a controversial study done this summer by OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), a risk-mitigation consultancy.

The study claimed that Linux has been found to potentially violate 283 software patents. The author of that report, however, doesnt see things the way Ballmer does at all.

“Microsoft is up to its usual FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt],” said Dan Ravicher, author of the study Microsoft cites, who is an attorney and executive director of PUBPAT (the Public Patent Foundation).

“Open source faces no more, if not less, legal risk than proprietary software. The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.”

“There is no reason to believe that GNU/Linux has any greater risk of infringing patents than Windows, Unix-based or any other functionally similar operating system. Why? Because patents are infringed by specific structures that accomplish specific functionality,” Ravicher said.

“Patents dont care how the infringing article is distributed, be it under an open-source license, a proprietary license or not at all. Therefore, if a patent infringes on Linux, it probably also infringes on Unix, Windows, etc.,” he said.

It makes no difference whether and how software is distributed, Ravicher said. “The bottom line is theres no reason to believe that Windows, Solaris, AIX or any other functionally similar operating system has any less risk of infringing patents than Linux does.”

“Ballmer makes a very bold statement by saying Linux infringes hundreds of patents,” Ravicher said. “That is extremely different than saying Linux potentially infringes X patent, because the requirement to prove infringement is much more difficult than the requirement to simply file a case claiming infringement. As the SCO saga shows, filing a case based on an allegation is one thing; proving the merits of the allegation in court is something completely different.”

Speaking Thursday at the Microsoft-sponsored Asian Government Leaders summit in Singapore, Ballmer said, “There was a report out this summer by an open-source group that highlighted that Linux violates over 228 patents. Someday, for all countries that are entering WTO [the World Trade Organization], somebody will come and look for money to pay for the patent rights for that intellectual property. So, the licensing costs are less clear than people think today.”

In fact, the study said Linux potentially violates 283 software patents, not “over 228” as Ballmer said in his speech.

But Ravicher said Ballmer misinterpreted his studys findings. “He misconstrues the point of the OSRM study, which found that Linux potentially, not definitely, infringes 283 untested patents, while not infringing a single court-validated patent.”

“The point of the study was actually to eliminate the FUD about Linuxs alleged legal problems by attaching a quantifiable measure versus the speculation,” he said. “And the number we found, to anyone familiar with this issue, is so average as to be boring; almost any piece of software potentially infringes at least that many patents.”

The study shows that when it comes to software, open-source varieties face fewer patent threats than proprietary ones, Ravicher said. “If one believes the proof is in the pudding, open-source software has much less to worry about from patents than proprietary software.”

“Consider this—not a single open-source software program has ever been sued for patent infringement, much less been found to infringe. On the contrary, proprietary software, like Windows, is sued and found guilty of patent infringement quite frequently.”

These include the patent battle over Eolas Technologies browser technology and the recent settlement between Eastman Kodak Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. over Kodaks patent being infringed by Java.

Ravicher wasnt the only open-source leader to take offense at Ballmers comments.

“At OSDL, we have a lot of confidence in the robustness of Linux around IP, patents and copyright,” said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL (Open Source Development Laboratory), the home organization of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

“Some of the worlds largest vendors share our view and are willing to stand behind Linux to protect their customers, as are we,” Cohen said. “HP offers its Linux customers indemnification. So do Red Hat and Novell. Both Novell and IBM have publicly promised to use their extensive patent portfolios to protect Linux customers.”

Cohen said OSDL has set up a $10 million legal defense fund for Linux customers. “With Linux adoption growing three times faster on the server than any other operating system, customers are clearly not intimidated by FUD and are continuing to embrace Linux,” he said.

Cohen said none of the challengers to Linux has specified where the platform may be overstepping its bounds.

“Over the past 18 months, a handful of companies and individuals who are threatened by Linuxs success have tried to argue that Linux may infringe others software patents. We find it interesting that none of those companies or individuals have said which patents Linux may offend.

“Yet patents are, by their nature, public; inventions must be disclosed in exchange for the rights granted by the PTO [the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office]. Detractors of Linux on patent grounds should be asked to point to the specific patents that they claim infringe.”

A version of this story was first published in eWEEK.

October 19, 2004
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Author of Linux Patent Study Says Ballmer Got It Wrong

While Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cited Dan Ravicher’s study as saying that Linux has been found to violate more than 200 software patents, Ravicher says Microsoft is “up to its usual FUD.”When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he wasnt really saying that Linux violates more than 200 software patents, Microsoft followed up by saying Ballmer was only citing findings from a controversial study done this summer by OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), a risk-mitigation consultancy.

The study claimed that Linux has been found to potentially violate 283 software patents. The author of that report, however, doesnt see things the way Ballmer does at all.

“Microsoft is up to its usual FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt],” said Dan Ravicher, author of the study Microsoft cites, who is an attorney and executive director of PUBPAT (the Public Patent Foundation).

“Open source faces no more, if not less, legal risk than proprietary software. The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.”

“There is no reason to believe that GNU/Linux has any greater risk of infringing patents than Windows, Unix-based or any other functionally similar operating system. Why? Because patents are infringed by specific structures that accomplish specific functionality,” Ravicher said.

“Patents dont care how the infringing article is distributed, be it under an open-source license, a proprietary license or not at all. Therefore, if a patent infringes on Linux, it probably also infringes on Unix, Windows, etc.,” he said.

It makes no difference whether and how software is distributed, Ravicher said. “The bottom line is theres no reason to believe that Windows, Solaris, AIX or any other functionally similar operating system has any less risk of infringing patents than Linux does.”

“Ballmer makes a very bold statement by saying Linux infringes hundreds of patents,” Ravicher said. “That is extremely different than saying Linux potentially infringes X patent, because the requirement to prove infringement is much more difficult than the requirement to simply file a case claiming infringement. As the SCO saga shows, filing a case based on an allegation is one thing; proving the merits of the allegation in court is something completely different.”

Speaking Thursday at the Microsoft-sponsored Asian Government Leaders summit in Singapore, Ballmer said, “There was a report out this summer by an open-source group that highlighted that Linux violates over 228 patents. Someday, for all countries that are entering WTO [the World Trade Organization], somebody will come and look for money to pay for the patent rights for that intellectual property. So, the licensing costs are less clear than people think today.”

In fact, the study said Linux potentially violates 283 software patents, not “over 228” as Ballmer said in his speech.

But Ravicher said Ballmer misinterpreted his studys findings. “He misconstrues the point of the OSRM study, which found that Linux potentially, not definitely, infringes 283 untested patents, while not infringing a single court-validated patent.”

“The point of the study was actually to eliminate the FUD about Linuxs alleged legal problems by attaching a quantifiable measure versus the speculation,” he said. “And the number we found, to anyone familiar with this issue, is so average as to be boring; almost any piece of software potentially infringes at least that many patents.”

The study shows that when it comes to software, open-source varieties face fewer patent threats than proprietary ones, Ravicher said. “If one believes the proof is in the pudding, open-source software has much less to worry about from patents than proprietary software.”

“Consider this—not a single open-source software program has ever been sued for patent infringement, much less been found to infringe. On the contrary, proprietary software, like Windows, is sued and found guilty of patent infringement quite frequently.”

These include the patent battle over Eolas Technologies browser technology and the recent settlement between Eastman Kodak Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. over Kodaks patent being infringed by Java.

Ravicher wasnt the only open-source leader to take offense at Ballmers comments.

“At OSDL, we have a lot of confidence in the robustness of Linux around IP, patents and copyright,” said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL (Open Source Development Laboratory), the home organization of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

“Some of the worlds largest vendors share our view and are willing to stand behind Linux to protect their customers, as are we,” Cohen said. “HP offers its Linux customers indemnification. So do Red Hat and Novell. Both Novell and IBM have publicly promised to use their extensive patent portfolios to protect Linux customers.”

Cohen said OSDL has set up a $10 million legal defense fund for Linux customers. “With Linux adoption growing three times faster on the server than any other operating system, customers are clearly not intimidated by FUD and are continuing to embrace Linux,” he said.

Cohen said none of the challengers to Linux has specified where the platform may be overstepping its bounds.

“Over the past 18 months, a handful of companies and individuals who are threatened by Linux’s success have tried to argue that Linux may infringe others software patents. We find it interesting that none of those companies or individuals have said which patents Linux may offend.

“Yet patents are, by their nature, public; inventions must be disclosed in exchange for the rights granted by the PTO [the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office]. Detractors of Linux on patent grounds should be asked to point to the specific patents that they claim infringe.”

A version of this story appeared in eWEEK.

October 15, 2004
by sjvn01
0 comments

Black Duck Moves IP Protection to the Lawyers Office

Black Duck Software, an information services company offering IP (intellectual property) risk management and mitigation solutions, will announce on Monday the immediate commercial availability of its first comprehensive source-code services program, protexIP/license management.

This is the next product in Black Duck Software Inc.s suite of development IP tools. It will be officially unveiled Monday at the annual Licensing Executives Society meeting in Boston.

The first of Black Ducks earlier programs, protexIP/development, provides companies with an extensive license and source-code knowledge base that can be used to rapidly identify instances of open-source software and associated license conflicts in developers code trees.

Its companion service, Black Duck protexIP/registry, enables software vendors to place their code in the knowledge base, after it has been scanned for IP violations by the protexIP/development module.

With this pair, developer and managers can track open source and a companys own code during the software development process. ProtexIP/license management takes the next step of moving software development IP issues from the programmers room to the lawyers office.

With protexIP/license management, a companys in-house counsel, or an outside law firm working with a business via an extranet, can look for possible IP issues during a programs evolution from starting idea to shipping product.

“This will be very useful for companies trying to introduce methodologies to address licensing issues,” said Black Duck founder and CEO Doug Levin. In turn, this will mean that the “process will enable companies to avoid costly code reviews, software audits, bad public relations and legal fees,” he said.

This problem exists, Levin said, because “virtually all companies that develop software are now working in a mixed-IP environment, where software is created on ever-increasing layers of previous work, without knowledge of copyrights and license restrictions.” At the same time, “companies want to take advantage of the benefits that open-source software solutions provide.”

However, by using the Black Duck suite, companies can “identify open-source software mixed with company-developed software” and “determine the license restrictions of the open-source software and if theyre compatible with company business goals and policies.” Finally, with the Web interface-based program, company attorneys and managers can “manage and track resolution of issues during, and not after, the development process.”

Newly hired senior product manager Keith Erskine said resolving issues early can pay off well. “With protexIP/license management, companies can get the lawyers in the loop early. Usually, IP issues were addressed late in the development cycle.” Because any IP problems were handled as last-minute details, companies often faced expensive delays in rolling out software.

This isnt just an issue for ISVs. “Were finding companies now that have software compliance teams, albeit they may go under different names. The people in charge of IT want to know now if there are any IP issues with the software coming into their companies,” Erskine said.

Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault LLP, a leading Boston law firm, is already using protexIP in its multidisciplinary Open Source Task Force.

The law firm is finding it useful in counseling its operating-company clients—as well as venture capitalists and institutional investors—on open-source issues in the areas of software development, IP infringement and IP due diligence in venture capital financings, M&A (merger and acquisition) transactions and IPOs (initial public offerings).

Black Duck’s programs, though, are useful for more than just companies using open source or the law firms that advise them. The software also can be used to track proprietary code and licenses within a companys IT framework.

Black Duck’s chief market, however, is with companies using open source. With this new program, Levin confidently said, “Businesses can use open source safely.”

The program, which requires the use of protexIP/development, will be available Monday. Its starting license fee is $9,500 for a two-seat license.


A version of this story was first published in eWEEK.