Battery Wars - This 'Is' the New Wireless Frontier

I can picture it now. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader face off for an epic light-saber battle to the death! The fate of the world hangs in the balance!

Then their light-saber batteries run out of juice so they're left holding onto a couple of limp licorice sticks, resulting in a leg-wrestling extravaganza. Yoda wouldn't stand a chance. Not quite what George Lucas had in mind for the ultimate Star Wars battle scene.

With all of the tremendous advances that are taking place in our world of internet and wireless existence, a person may never consider that the 'holy grail' is in the field of battery life. You might have thought that it would be the next generation of wireless devices that allow you to project holographic images of the Google screen so that you can do web searches in mid-air in the airport. Yep, it's true - it's in the works! The restricting problem is that little-considered power source we simply take for granted. The simple battery. It has been confounding for a century now.

Thomas Edison said, "I don't think that nature would be so unkind as to withhold the secret of a good storage battery if a real earnest hunt for it is made. I'm going to hunt." That was more than a hundred years ago and the foxes are still out. In fact the hunt is getting very intense.

In a recent article in 'Wired', John Hockenberry states that, "In the last 150 years battery performance has improved only about eightfold. The speed and capacity of silicon chips, of course, improves that much every six years."

In curious irony, as I write this article on my laptop, on an airplane, on my way to Charlotte, my battery has declared bankruptcy and I now have to resort to my back up power source - pen and paper. How Neanderthal! My hand is actually aching because my fingers are apparently out of shape for these calisthenic demands. I thought that my two-fingered typing was just as good as a Gold's membership for these types of events but I am woefully wrong. It's just another reason that better batteries are required - we can't write anymore, opposable thumbs or not, - it's just an evolutionary thing.

It seems that our insatiable demand for self-powered consumer electronics is driving the battery wars to new heights. Suffice it to say that the spoils of this war will far exceed the wampum that Edison received for that light bulb thing.

As devices miniaturize in size, yet enrich in features, the hapless battery is forced to produce more power in less space. If battery capability stagnates, as history has dictated so far, then portable device capability will follow suit. Yet our demand, and the ability of manufacturers to supply, indicates a burgeoning market for wireless devices to make our lunch, tie our shoes, entertain us, and generally make our lives dependent on such units.

The problem is that all that functionality is dependent on the development of more efficient, more powerful, and smaller power sources. Oh yeah, and safety seems to matter as well, as evidenced by the recent spate of spontaneously combusting laptops caused by the fire-starter known as the Li-ion battery. Thermal runaway is the name of the culprit, and it means that the chemicals in the battery break out of their metal casing, which causes the lithium to ignite when it makes contact with moisture in the air.

Without getting technical, voltage and current are created chemically to generate power through the movement of electrons from pole to pole in the battery. As we have progressed through lead acid for car starters, to alkaline and mercury for transistor radios, to nickel and cadmium for the first laptops and video cameras, to lithium rechargeables for current electronics, including MP3 players, camcorders, and Blackberries, the digital demands keep multiplying. In fact digital calculations themselves require steady voltage to maintain memory, and power fluctuations can be catastrophic for the device functionality.

Backlit screens, hard drive demands, and graphics needs are mounting the pressure on the development of power sources. At the same time, the thermal runaway risk must be managed which tends to create wasted resources within the battery, and batteries that destroy themselves before they ignite.

The war rages for alternatives. The venture capitalists are betting big in a number of areas. They are driven by the demand for laptops with dual processors and eight-hour run times. They are driven by our consumer demands that we have wireless devices on our hip that store and play music - 1000 songs at a time, guide us over highways, and send attachments via email. Actually, the device should be in your pocket and not on your hip unless you're a nerd according to insinuations by Kevin Sintumuang, associate editor for GQ.

Among the warring factions for battery supremacy are:

1) Lithium batteries with their own chip to manage power resources.

2) Fuel cells, which have always been challenged with practical design. Proponent Rick Cooper feels that notebooks will have both a fuel cell and a lithium battery engineered into the next generation.

3) Silver & zinc chemistry is also on the horizon. Backer, Ross Dueber, makes the point about current lithium alternatives; "It's the only rechargeable battery technology that uses flammable liquid."

4) Lithium polymer uses an advanced gel to create a power source as thin as paper. Prototypes have been designed to power a new breed of smart card.

5) Then there's Nanograss. It's not a Robin Williams football field, but it is a radical approach to power supply. It allows cells to carry their own power and to turn on and off chemically. It provides for a solution where there are fields of tiny batteries as opposed to a single power source. This one uses charges to effect the surface tension of fluids by basically making them appear and disappear (into the Nanograss, which is actually metal) depending on conductive requirements.

Regardless of who wins this war, the riches will be great. And regardless of who wins this war, it seems that re-design of electronic devices will be required to allow for the new optimum power delivery system. That means it won't be overnight.

Now let's take the battery war to another level beyond electronic devices with a 'what if' scenario. What if battery technology advanced to the level where a reliable, safe, and powerful field of such tiny units became the source of power for our furnaces, air conditioners, and cars? Not just cars that look like you're driving a phone booth, but real cars - and SUVs. Wouldn't that just change the environment, both figuratively and literally?

Let's just hope there is a winner in the battery war as opposed to continuing stagnation. Let's hope that the hunt that began in earnest with Edison is rewarded with success. Let's hope that new technologies, dependent on battery capability, can continue to develop so we can sate our desire for electronic nirvana. Otherwise we may be stuck in this backward time where battery capability restricts our Columbus-like voyage of discovery of the electronic universe.

Dennis Schooley is the Founder of Schooley Mitchell Telecom Consultants, a Professional Services Franchise Company. He writes for publication, as well as for http://schooleymitchell.blogging.com and http://franchises.blogging.com, in the subject areas of Franchising, and Technology for the Layman. http://www.schooleymitchell.com, 888-311-6477, dschooley@schooleymitchell.com.

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Wireless Security: 6 Ways to Stop and Catch Hackers and War Drivers

War drivers are in the business of finding wireless access points, documenting them and uploading their locations to the web. Why would someone do this, well for several reasons:

First they want free internet access. Next they could just be war driving as a hobby; finally they could be targeting your network for financial gain.

One of the most asked questions is how do you stop hackers from trying to hack your wireless lan and how to catch them in the act.

Stopping Wardrivers:

1. Use directional antennas: One of the most under stated uses of directional antennas are how they keep your wireless signal within your area of operation. If you are using a Omni directional antenna that is causing half the signal to travel outside your building, you have a major security problem. Also while using your wireless directional antenna turndown transmit power to reduce your signal strength if you can.

2. Blend your wireless antennas into your buildings architecture or keep them low profile. This is not expensive, the whole point is not letting your antennas stick out like a sore thumb so anyone driving by doesn't say, wow they have a wireless network. Once again the best way to stop people from trying to hack your wireless network is to keep it hidden.

3. Use Kismet or Airsnort - Make a cheap wireless Intrusion detection system. Use an older desktop computer install Linux, install a USB wireless adapter or PCI wireless adapter and boom you have your wireless war driver stopper. Both Kismet and airsnort will alert you when wireless clients are probing your network. If a wireless client is using netstumber and not joining networks they will be found by Kismet. Their wireless adapters MAC address will be logged and other details of the operating system. Most of the time these could be false hits but if you notice a pattern of the same MAC address probing networks you could have hacker issues.

4. Security Cameras - No matter how hard you try not to have your signal bleed outside your operations area it will...to a point. Probe your own network as if you were a wardriver. Don't just use a standard wireless adapter to find out where you still can detect your network. You will want to use a highly directional antenna to see how far away you can detect your own network. Once you know your weak points setup some cheap security cameras to monitor those areas.

5. Setup a Honey Pot - Give the Wardriver what they want, a network to hack. Take an access point connect it to a standalone switch with another junk computer connected to that switch. Name the SSID something sounding important like server WLAN and name the computer Database. Finally use a weak password or just leave the access point without any security. Script kiddies who say they "hack networks" really are only connecting to open wireless lans with no security. If you give them a "Important sounding SSID with a "database to hack" this will keep them occupied until you can track them down. There are many honeypot programs free and commercial that will simulate networks or servers but are really just recording all the hackers' information and types of attacks.

6. Use a RADIUS Server - RADIUS servers require Wireless clients to authenticate with a username and password not just with a PSK (Pre- Shared Key). With out a RADIUS server you really don't know who is on your WLAN. With a RADIUS server you know who is accessing your WLAN and when they accessed it. Also a RADIUS server gives you the ability of creating policies for times your WLAN can be accessed and other required security features the wireless clients must have enabled their computers.

Now let's put this all together to catch our hacker. First you are going through your daily routine of checking logs on your Kismet IDS server and you notice the same MAC address probing networks but not joining. Next you check your help tickets and notice that in one area of the building clients were having trouble connecting to the wireless network or they had trouble staying connected.

Flags go up in your head, so you go over to your honeypot server and check that . You notice it was accessed around the same time of the Kismet logs showed a client probing the network. The honey pot recorded the MAC address of the WAR driver and the operating system and the computer name.

Next you check your security cameras for that time but don't really notice anything. So for the next couple days you keep monitoring your honey pot server and watch the hacker try and crack the WLAN and the database server. The whole process of cracking wireless encryption is actually two steps. The first step is gathering enough packets for your cracking program to crack. This whole process of gathering enough packets can takes days or weeks not five minutes. Now once you do have enough packets 64 bit WEP encryption can be cracked in less that five minutes. 128 bit encryption can take many times longer, WPA with TKIP and AES encryption can takes months to crack.

My whole point is that you have some time to catch your hacker because he will be back many times, assuming that you already have at least the basic security features in place.

Now once you have all your logs compiled and your honey pot data you should have a good idea how the hacker behaves. Check your security cameras and you probably notice the same car or person in the area around that time. Take that information to your in house security and tell them to watch for that vehicle or person and call the police.

If you are lucky security or police will spot him and apprehend him. Convicting him or her will be tough but with your compiled logs and video you should have a lot of evidence to help your case.

Simple and secure wireless solutions. Join the most popular wireless networking newsletter on the internet at http://www.wirelessninja.com Keep your home and family safe with Ninja certified wireless hidden cameras [http://www.wirelessninja.com/wireless_hidden_cameras.htm]

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