LAPD Deploys 1,500 Symbol Pocket PCs With WLAN [Archive]

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Ed Hansberry

03-23-2003, 09:00 AM

<a href="http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109945,00.asp">http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109945,00.asp</a><br /><br />"Believing that heightened homeland security requirements demand higher-bandwidth communications systems for public safety agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department plans to install 27 wireless local area networks (WLANs) at police stations throughout the city in the next three months, according to Roger Ham, deputy chief for communications at the LAPD. Ham says he plans to equip police cars with handheld computers from Symbol Technologies. The handheld devices will be equipped with 802.11b WLAN cards that communicate in the unlicensed 2.4-GHz band with access points installed in police stations at a raw data rate of 11 megabits per second-far faster than the 19.2-kilobits-per-second throughput in the department's 800-MHz wide area network (WAN) installed by Motorola two years ago and covering the city."<br /><br />Hmmmm... I wonder if they can VPN into the WLAN from external access points. Does Krispy Kreme have hotspots? :wink:

Janak Parekh

03-23-2003, 07:10 PM

Does Krispy Kreme have hotspots? :wink:
Ed, you are a bad, bad man for suggesting that. :lol: Fortunately the answer is no... so far. Whew!

(For those of you who have never had a Krispy Kreme (www.krispykreme.com) donut, you have missed out on the greatest donuts in the US, possibly in the world. Makes Dunkin Donuts taste like plain bread. Just don't read the nutritional info on that site. ;))

--janak

js415

03-23-2003, 07:22 PM

Man, here in Georgia, where Krispy Kreme is famous, that would be the greatest thing in the world.

I dont drink coffee, so Starbucks is not a place I would spend a buck or two, and use my Axim. But if Krispy Kreme had net access.....man, I can see the possibilities!!!

Jerry

kettle

03-23-2003, 09:49 PM

when I was in Ranger school I had some buddies who would dumpster dive just to get a half-eaten Krispy cream donut.

ctmagnus

03-23-2003, 10:14 PM

David C

03-23-2003, 10:46 PM

802.11 aren't known to be the most secure protocal out there. Does that mean I can just stand outside of the the police station, and erase all my criminal record from a wireless device? :devilboy:

Janak Parekh

03-23-2003, 11:37 PM

802.11 aren't known to be the most secure protocal out there. Does that mean I can just stand outside of the the police station, and erase all my criminal record from a wireless device? :devilboy:
There's various solutions to WEP's weaknesses. I'd be surprised if they're not using one of them (LEAP, 802.1x, or even IPsec).

--janak

kfluet

03-24-2003, 12:29 AM

(For those of you who have never had a Krispy Kreme (www.krispykreme.com) donut, you have missed out on the greatest donuts in the US, possibly in the world.

--janak

I've never been to Ontario so I wouldn't know about Krispy Kreme, but apparently Tim Horton's are even better.

I've had both. Krispy Kreme (big US donut chain) and Tim Hortons (big Canadian donut chain) are very similar. Add enough sugar and fat and people can't get enough. I remember seeing a science show where the showed an experiment where they gave rats a choice: healthy food or pure blobs of fat. They ate the fat until they couldn't get any more down. Mmmm, nothing like an "old fashioned sour cream"...

ON TOPIC: I note that they are talking about 11Mbit in the press release. Anybody able to get anywhere near 11Mbit (1375 KiloBytes per second) transfer rates to their PocketPC with WiFi? My experiments show no better than 1Mbit. Yes the radio will say 11Mbit, but apparently the PocketPC hardware can't do the throughput. Is it faster with a proper PC-Card/PCMCIA WiFi card?

On the security side, it always cheeses me when people complain that WiFi isn't secure. They don't complain about the fact that DSL or cable modem connections aren't secure. Set up an encrypted VPN and you are pretty darn safe.