Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:50:11PM +0000, sindi keesan wrote:
> 
> We have a pringles can.  What size dish?  Why mesh? I have several 
> stainless steel strainers of various mesh sizes.  Do you use these to 
> reflect a signal like you can do with low-quality radio signals? 
> Sometimes I pick up a station better by standing on the opposite side of 
> the radio from the source.

Look up "cantenna" using scr/google. There are all kinds of plans out there 
for making 
directional antennas for wifi from scrap. I also saw a very simple one 
someone made from 
hardware cloth attached to a couple of plywood semi-circle cut-outs that 
turned an 
omnidirectional antenna into a directional one. But all this presupposes an 
external 
antenna, which your PCMCIA cards are unlikely to have. I did once borrow an 
old wavelan card 
that had a little plastic plug in the end that, if removed, exposed a fitting 
to which an 
external antenna could be attached. There you start to run into expenses 
though: the 
fittings, of which there is a bewlidering array (usually referred to under 
various acronyms) 
and which defy traditional notions of gender (they all look hermaphroditish 
to me), and the 
cable, which is some kind of mini-coax that looks like it requires 
specialized tools to 
operate on. I did manage to find some external omnidirectional antennas for 
cheap (ca. $7) 
on newegg though--complete with 4' of cable (you need to check if the fitting 
is right for 
your card, though). I think I once ran across a site that showed a dissection 
of a PCMCIA 
wifi card, and how someone had attached antenna leads directly to the card, 
since it didn't 
have a fitting for an external antenna. There's a large wifi antenna hobbyist 
network out 
there with lots of information. 

> All these signals are 2.4GHz, same as newer (newest?) cordless phones.
> iwlist with the airo card (orinoco card does not support it) shows the 8 
> strongest signals.  First has address FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF - maybe this is a 
> cordless phone?  Next is the one I briefly picked up in the kitchen, 
> followed by two lines of 00:00:etc. which sometimes change so that one or 
> both match the second line, and four more lines.  I have picked up the 
> existence of SSID "" "Netgear" "Apple" "Linksys" and "2Wire".

The "" likely means that someone has told their router not to broadcast the 
E/SSID--which 
makes it a bit harder to tap into their network. Any that have a router 
manufacturer's name 
for the E/SSID may have been left with their default settings (as they came 
from the 
factory), which means WEP/WPA encryption may be disabled. You might also be 
able to log into 
the router administration web page and check how they have their network set 
up since they 
may not have changed the default admin username and password. All this is 
ethically and 
legally questionable, as you will doubtless understand. Of course if you can 
find out who 
owns the router, you might just ask to share their connection for a nominal 
monthly fee.

James