Filip Norrgård’s blog @ filips.net
Filip’s blog about mobile technology, tech itself and other stuff

Man, The WiFi and Bluetooth Space Is Getting Crowded Around Here
9 May 2007 in Root & Security | Comments enabled

Looks like the 2.4 GHz spectrum is getting crowded around my apartment these days. Way back, ’bout 2 years ago, when I moved to my current apartment, I was the only one using WiFi in the building. Well, except for someone in a neighboring house who also had WiFi, but I only saw that access point near the windows.

Today, when I tried to use my Bluetooth Plantronics stereo headphones to listen to some music in the kitchen but it turned out to be more difficult than previously. All was well for a few seconds and then…. silence… I quickly checked that the headphone and transmitter were connected and the power on — and yes, they were on and the music was still playing.

The music came back for a second, silence, some music for a bit more than a second, silence… and some music now until the track changed and more eerie silence. Aaand finally the music came back on.

This is probably what it sounds like when the headphone and transmitter try to find a less congested channel to broadcast on. I had thought there were quite few WiFi access points that could interfere with my Bluetooth headphones, but boy was I wrong! Using my Pocket PC and a program called WiFi Graph I checked out the number of APs it could find in my vicinity. The sum: 7 (including my own). So, all of my neighbors seem to have now!

Funny and scary bit was that 4 of those APs used the same WiFi channel number 6, and two of them had their manufacturer’s name, Zyxel, as the SSID. I’m afraid that those who didn’t change their SSID didn’t fix the password from the factory default either. Even more worrying is that only I and another WiFi user have enabled some sort of WiFi encryption (WPA or WEP), the others don’t seem to have any encryption in effect (unless they are using IPSEC or VPN, which I doubt they are using).

It is somewhat unfortunate that Bluetooth has to share frequencies with WiFi on the 2.4 GHz band, but what can you do when there is nothing left really for them to use? Plus, me being a sort of “bitten by the Bluetooth”-fanatic it probably doesn’t help that I have a good number of Bluetooth devices in good daily use: my computer, phone, Pocket PC, keyboard and mouse. (Sure, I have a bit more Bluetooth devices here also, but they are not always on. )

I wonder how long before the 2.4 GHz band will be over-crowded in apartment buildings by all of the super-converged-devices. Five years, perhaps?