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----
-title: >-
- Why Do We Have WiFi Passwords?
-description: >-
- A possible UX improvement.
-tags: tech
----
-
-It's been longer than I'd like since the last post, and unfortunately I don't
-have a ton that I can actually show for it. A lot of time has been spent on
-cryptic-net, which is coming along great and even has a proper storage mechanism
-now! But it also still has some data specific to our own network baked into the
-code, so it can't be shown publicly yet.
-
------
-
-Since I don't have much I _can_ show, I thought I'd spend a post diving into a
-thought I had the other day: **why do we have wifi passwords?**
-
-The question is a bit facetious. Really what I want to ask is the adjacent
-question: why do we use usernames _and_ passwords for wifi networks? The
-question doesn't make much sense standing alone though, so it wouldn't do as a
-title.
-
-In any case, what I'm proposing is that the vast majority of people don't need a
-username/password authentication mechanism to secure their wifi network in a
-practical way. Rather, most people could get along just fine with a secret token
-mechanism.
-
-In the case of wifi networks, a secret token system might be better named a
-secret _name_ mechanism. Using this mechanism a router would not broadcast its
-own name to be discovered by the user's device, but rather the user inputs the
-name into their device themselves. Existing hidden wifi networks work in this
-way already, except they also require a password.
-
-I'm not going to look at this from a technical or cryptographical perspective.
-Hidden wifi networks work already, I assume that under the hood this wouldn't be
-appreciably different. Instead I'd like to highlight how this change affects the
-user experience of joining a wifi network.
-
-The current experience is as follows:
-
-* USER discovers the network name and password through external means.
-* USER opens "add new wifi network" page on their device.
-* USER finds network name in network list, possibly waiting or scrolling if
- there are many networks.
-* USER selects the network name.
-* USER inputs password into text box.
-* USER is connected to the wifi.
-
-What could this look like if the network name was secret and there was no
-password? There'd be no network list, so the whole process is much slimmer:
-
-* USER discovers the secret network name through external means.
-* USER opens "add new wifi network" page on their device.
-* USER inputs secret name into text box.
-* USER is connected to the wifi.
-
-The result is a 33% reduction in number of steps, and a 50% reduction in number
-of things the user has to know. The experience is virtually the same across all
-other axis.
-
-So the upside of this proposal is clear, a far better UX, but what are the
-downsides? Losing a fun avenue of self-expression in the form of wifi names is
-probably the most compelling one I've thought of. There's also corporate
-environments to consider (as one always must), where it's more practical to
-remove users from the network in a targeted way, by revoking accounts, vs
-changing the password for everyone anytime a user needs to be excluded.
-
-Corporate offices can keep their usernames and passwords, I guess, and we
-should come up with some other radio-based graffiti mechanism in any case. Let's
-just get rid of these pointless extra steps!
-
------
-
-That's the post. Making this proposal into reality would require a movement far
-larger than I care to organize, so we're just going to put this whole thing in
-the "fun, pointless yak-shave" bucket and move along. If you happen to know the
-architect of the next wifi protocol maybe slip this their way? Or just copy it
-and take the credit yourself, that's fine by me.
-
-What's coming next? I'm taking a break from cryptic to catch up on some house
-keeping in the self-hosted arena. I've got a brand new password manager I'd like
-to try, as well as some motivation to finish getting my own email server
-properly set up (it can currently only send mail). At some point I'd like to get
-this blog gemini-ified too. Plus there's some services running in their
-vestigial docker containers on my server still, that needs to be remedied.
-
-And somewhere in there I have to move too.