Lab Notes

ISO meetings are taking on the flavor of Cold War era diplomatic summits. China walked out of a recent Wi-Fi security standards meeting in protest over the group's refusal to fast track China's WAPI proposal. WAPI is China's alternative to 802.11i, and the fear amongst all non-Chinese Wi-Fi developers is that the encryption specified in the protocol contains a backdoor that can be opened by the Chinese government.

Fortunately, WAPI is a complete non-starter everywhere outside of China. My main beef — in addition to using encryption algorithms created by the Chinese government — is that Wi-Fi product vendors must "partner" with Chinese companies in order to sell WAPI products. This entails giving Chinese companies closely guarded microchip designs, not a attractive prospect given the Chinese record on intellectual property protection.