Roaming WiFi

[davehc]

This looks like it could be of great interest to travelling salesmen, or other frequent travellers:

http://microsoft-news.com/windows-phones-wifi-sense-feature-spotted-in-leaked-windows-9-build/

 

[Ian]

Sounds interesting, but my first thought when I read this was about security. I wonder if it will only connect to wifi that is verified as secure in some way?

 

[davehc]

I am not clear as far as the suggestion on th e link, that this is innovative.

My son is a roaming Dell technician. It day is a very busy one and demands contact with customers and head office frequently. He leaves his tablet on, as he travels around, and uses (Should I be telling - lol), stray wireless connections he picks up in order to communicate. So what more will 9 offer???

 

[Shintaro]

You know I heard (rumor) that retailers track users via the MAC address on their phones that have WiFi Discovery on.

Makes sense, if the WiFi AP only covers a small area, then they would be able to track where the majority of their customer base was going.

I think (rumor) that by knowing where you were in the shop, they could target ad's via their *free* WiFi. I remember hearing that a WiFi vendor was injecting ad's as part of the use policy of the WiFi.

 

[ChristineBCW]

This technology - er, this service - is sometimes referred to as "Zero Handoff" or "ZH" or "ZHO" as in "Users don't have to do anything - nada, zilch, zip, zero - to traverse across WiFi boundaries."

Cell towers have been handling this with some capability for a while, but there's an important Client Side Service that must be able to respond as they roam, and this seems to be a bigger stumbling block - the ability for an Adapter to select the New Strongest Signal while it's historic emphasis has been on "maintain a Lock on this One Signal forever and ever."

If the Client-Side can move far enough away so their Original Signal crumbles and there's an ACK/NoACK transmission that can reach the New Stronger Signal, this also means some lag in a web-page, and that server's responsiveness has to accommodate this 'stall' - which probably looks like a "time-out" to the server. "Well, I'm not going to waste my resources on that Client - he's exited without logging out. Fine!"

All of this makes me appreciate it when it does work! And it's interesting to read the foibles of some vendors who are appeasing this demand. (After all, THEIR execs are now their target market. Whew - that's good news for the rest of us.)