Most routers released in recent years are at risk, due to a vulnerability discovered in the WPS (Wireless Protected Setup) feature. WPS makes it easy for people to connect their computers to their router without having to get very technical about it, but – it turns out – security was sacrificed for simplicity, as an attacker can gain full access to the network by using a brute force attack.

Millions of devices are potentially affected, and it could take a long time to fix them all. That said, the solution is simple: disable WPS.

You can disable WPS by logging into your router over the network and changing the setting.

There are many tools that are freely available to eavesdrop on network traffic, and can take advantage of this fault in WPS, and if a brute force attack is successful, intruders can connect to devices on a network, or monitor the internet traffic in hopes of learning passwords or other information.

This serious vulnerability was discussed in full detail on the latest Security Now podcast, hosted on the TWiT.tv podcast network. As soon as show notes are made available, we will link to them in this post.

WPS is often activated by pressing a button on the router, allowing Windows to quickly and easily connect to the wireless network and automatically figure out the relevant settings, requiring only a PIN and the wireless password.

If you’re unsure of how to disable WPS, refer to your router manual, or ask a tech-savvy friend or professional (such as a Nerd) to help you turn it off.

Hopefully vendor will quickly provide software upgrades to rectify the problem, and the newer products will have rectified and correct this flaw in WPS, making it safe to use again.

An estimated 75% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the border to our friends to the south, United States of America. This is why we often travel there for various reasons from business ventures to vacations or shopping and dining. Our Australian and South African clients are also frequent international travellers.

One painful inconvenience of international travel is the high costs of mobile phone operation – both voice and data. Here’s a text message I received as soon as I crossed recently into USA:

Quick math tells me that 100 minutes of talk time will cost me $145 – wow! My main smart phone in Canada is with Rogers, and they do offer Travel Paks (www.rogers.com/roaming/). With one of those purchased in advance, you can get as low as $0.50/minute if purchasing a bundle of 100 minutes. Still very limiting and costly if you plan on staying for several days or weeks.

Value of Unlocked phones

The value of unlocked phones becomes obvious when you realize you can purchase a pre-paid or monthly plan from a number of carriers for about the same price as 100 discounted roaming minutes with Rogers. If you purchased a smartphone at a discount with a contract extension, likely your phone is carrier-locked. It means that using a SIM card from another carrier will not work. In Canada/US, iPhone 4 and 4s models are unlocked only when purchased from Apple directly or authorized retailer (not mobile phone stores). SIM locks vary from country to country, but generally speaking, unlocked phones do not qualify for purchase subsidy, and therefore cost more.

If you are an international traveller and plan on purchasing a new phone, make sure it is not carrier-locked, but rather a complete unlocked phone in which other carrier SIM cards will function.

The next step is to simply purchase a pay-as-you-go SIM or MicroSIM card for your phone when you reach your destination. In my specific example as a Canadian travelling in the USA, the best option was to purchase a $60/mo T-Mobile plan with unlimited talk, text, web up to 2GB of data.

For the frequent international traveller

These guidelines apply if you travel internationally frequently and don’t find it is practical to give a large group of people a temporary foreign contact number at which to reach you while away. You want international travel to be possible without disruption to your important circle of associates and friends and family to be able to reach you.

1. Establish your main contact number to be PBX-driven, not your mobile phone. Having your main number be a virtual number is important for you to establish customized call routing rules. In the US, a popular service is Google Voice, and in Canada a similar set of features (except SMS) is available via RingCentral. If you have an established network of people who only know your mobile number, many countries offer number portability. In Canada, see http://www.wirelessnumberportability.ca/.
2. Use Find-me, Follow-me features on your PBX (or virtual PBX service) to forward your main phone number to the country and mobile number you’re currently at.
3. Avoid SMS messaging from your mobile phone directly as it starts to fragment your phone number identity. Many countries now have services of virtual SMS numbers that integrate with email. It means that SMS messages you receive are translated via email, and you can use email or web interfaces (or apps) to respond. Google Voice does this well (available only in the US).

The difficulty in seamless international travel is that phone systems have their roots in a geographically-zoned world, but the modern virtual and international entrepreneurs don’t know such borders, so it’s a major problem still to be solved.

Have I missed anything valuable in international travel that you want to contribute in the comments?

We are thrilled to be working with the folks over at London LAWN (@londonlawn) to bring free WiFi to downtown London, Ontario. Local businesses are working together to make downtown London a WiFi enabled area, and here is an article from their perspective.  A BIG thanks to our London computer repair team!

Here is a page showing real-time usage of the London LAWN WiFi network. In the past week along, 544 clients transferred 68.14 GB!

“Launched in September  2011, LAWN (The London Area Wireless Network) currently covers three blocks of Dundas Street, from Talbot to Wellington Streets,” mentions the article. “It is an open and publicly accessible WiFi network that provides free access to the core’s growing population of smartphone, tablet, and laptop users. Whether you work, live, or shop in the city’s core, or just welcome an extra incentive to make the downtown experience better, LAWN is providing a viable and valuable service.”

We helped with a similar project in Lethbridge, Alberta.

If this sounds like something your city or town would be interested in, please let us know!

This week, we launched NerdSpotting.com, which is a fun (and free!) iPhone app (direct link to App Store) that lets anyone instantly take a photo of a Nerd from Nerds On Site, of their NerdMobile, or both! It’s a cool way to show that we have Nerds helping business owners with their technology around the world!

Nerds On Site is a GLOBAL team, and now you can see just how global we are! Check out the website to see some of the places our Nerds and NerdMobiles have been spotted!

Thousands of people will be downloading iOS5 today and excitedly activating the iCloud features, especially the iCloud Backup feature, which everyone should enable!

However, what many will experience is that their entire office or home Internet connection will slow to a crawl and that is very frustrating.

The iCloud backup activates when both of these occur:

1. iPhone/iPad/iPod screen is locked
2. Device is plugged in (to electrical outlet or computer)

If that’s what you tend to do when you’re at home or the office, the iCloud Backup will start working hard and will consume all of your available outbound bandwidth to send the backup to the cloud.

Most consumer-grade routers (which are commonly used in offices, too, by the way) don’t have any intelligent traffic management capability. The result is that when your outgoing capacity is at its maximum – what we often call saturated – it affects your incoming traffic as well, because part of the protocol of Internet data transfer is the continuous outgoing confirmation packets your computer sends to acknowledge to the source that you received what you were looking for. When those acknowledgements are wedged in between the iCloud Backup packets, it slows them down, and therefore your downloads and just plain web browsing are dramatically impacted.

Here is a traffic graph example of a fairly common North-American Business Grade Internet connection with 6Mbps download and 640kbps upload capacity. When a file is uploaded with absolutely no traffic control (some aspects referred to as Quality of Service or Traffic Shaping or Bandwidth Control), this is what it looks like. All the available outbound traffic in this particular example is consumed by a Youtube upload. Astaro’s Traffic Graph is great for simple real-time visualization of where traffic is going to and coming from.

So what can you do about it?

The simple answer is: get a better, smarter router, or even a Unified Threat Management appliance. Three products that we provide with guaranteed results are:

• ClearOS as a gateway with Bandwidth optimization subscription and optimization
• Cisco Routers with Quality of Service features enabled and tested
• Untangle as a Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliance with Bandwidth Management subscription
• Astaro Security Gateway appliance – even the Free Security Essentials offers Quality of Service features

This may seem like too many options, but of course we have nerds standing by to help you choose which product is a better fit.

What can Apple do about it?

Most products that consume significant amount of outgoing bandwidth have a bandwidth throttle feature where you can specify the maximum number of kilobits per second to consume. It would be great if Apple could include that in a future iOS5 update.

What’s your experience so far?

[UPDATE: added ClearOS as an option with some additional details]

Chester’s hockey rink (and Curling Club), which is located in Chester, Nova Scotia, now has free wireless internet access as part of an advertising deal for a 3 year term.

Our Nova Scotia team has installed the proper equipment, and will support and maintain the Meraki wireless network with repeaters in exchange for 3 Years of sponsorship of the local Junior C hockey team, and get prominent display on the “splash page” of the guest wireless network.

The “splash page” will be seen by every user of the free Wifi (no password) BEFORE they can start using the internet. If you are using a Smartphone, you will need to load your web browser to view the splash page before any apps will be allowed to access the internet. This is not unlike many other free WiFi networks.

Those wishing to use the free wireless network can log on to the “Rink WiFi by Nerds On Site” network.

Today, the Lethbridge Downtown BRZ organization authorized Nerds On Site to add additional wireless access points to the Galt Gardens to cover the park with free wifi for the public. This is perfect timing as we head into the August long weekend!  One radio is already up, with additional units now on order.

Nerds On Site spend the weekend (July 8-10) the Vancouver Island MusicFest! We sponsored the event and provided FREE wireless internet to those in attendance! We had over 821 devices connected overall, transferring over 60 GB of data. In addition, there were 8,500 attendees this year walking past 2 Nerdmobiles parked at the entrance. So, plenty of people saw us! While there, Tim and Dian also worked with CKUA radio and gave them a better connection then they usually have when broadcasting remotely in their home city.

VIMF is a quintessential “west coast fest” featuring roots and world music performers from across Canada and around the globe! It’s 3 days and 6 stages FULL of music, interactive workshops, roving performers, funky crafts and delicious food, on site camping, major eco-initiatives, participatory art projects and more….

The event is held each July on the banks of the Tsolum River in the beautiful Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, Vancouver Island MusicFest welcomes over 1000 volunteers and over 7000 audience members for a magical celebration of music and culture!

Please check out http://www.facebook.com/vimusicfest for more of updates and information, and please “like” it to show your support!

The Nerds of Lethbridge gathered today to join the City of Lethbridge, Downtown Lethbridge BRZ and Heart of Our City to launch the new Downtown Lethbridge free wireless network. This network was built and is maintained by Nerds On Site. This project is one of the first in North America, and will become a template for cities for the future. Phase #1 is now complete, and we are very excited to be working with the City on Phase #2, which includes two large downtown malls, an 8-story office tower, two museums, and 7 small business already interested in being part of this new phase.

Thank you to Trever Hollian and Erik Eckert for being part of today’s press conference!

UPDATE:

Here are some links to news stories about this initiative

CJOC FM – Free Wireless Internet in Downtown Lethbridge

Country 95 – Groups Launch Free Wireless Internet Downtown

Lethbridge News – Free wifi downtown

[this post from Louis Grigsby]

“After having a meeting with the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi, discussing wireless internet access solutions, they agreed to my proposal of 45 units, 45 five year licenses, and 45 Power over Ethernet (POE) connections. They agreed to the proposal! While finalizing this deal, I talked to the Director of the State’s Department of Parks and Recreation, and set-up an appointment to demonstrate the wireless capabilities of Meraki outdoors for people that visit the parks, such as using their smart phone to look up a plant…or bird…or the “splash page to tell the story of that special park their in”.”

This all came as a result of Louis introducing himself, having a conversation with them and identifying they had an issue with wireless connectivity, and arranging a meeting to discuss Meraki wireless solutions, as that is the product that best suits their needs.

Meraki is a partner of ours, and for good reason, they have excellent products that work really well for our clients!