Neighborhood Hotspots

Tue., Sep. 13, 2005 22:29:25
I recently discovered that my neighborhood has a number of public wifi hotspots. This means that if my internet is slow for some reason, I always have a backup with one of them. The way I came about this discovering is really quite simple. I point my cantenna out the window at the neighbor's house, and Windows XP automatically connected to their unsecured wireless network.

The Setup

Pictured on the left, the setup consists of my Dad's old gateway laptop (500 Mhz, 64 MB ram, barely running XP Pro), my Buffalo 802.11g card, pigtail connected to another short piece of coax, which connects to the cantenna. The extra piece of coax just extends the pigtail enough so that the laptop can sit on the bed while the cantenna is propped in the window. This extra length and connection points does attenuate the signal, but luckily not enough to affect connectivity.

The Goods

This antenna, commonly dubbed a "cantenna" by wireless enthusiasts, is the key to it all. It is somewhat directional and has a higher gain than the antenna built into the card, so longer connection distances are permitted. The antenna consists of a regular tin can (steel) with a short piece of wire connected to a coaxial connector. This antenna took me 10-15 minutes to make, mainly spent smoothing the hole I drilled so I wouldn't cut myself on the can. The hole is precisely placed in the can and the wire sticking out of it is precisely sized. I was impressed by the time spent to benefits received ratio of this antenna. I didn't expect it to work this well.

The Results

So what does this actually do for me? Well, it allows me to access these public access points that my neighbors have graciously provided. Once I connect to their network, there's a number of things I can do. Mainly, access the internet, but there are other things available too. I went to check on their router settings by going to http://192.168.1.1/. This is of course password protected, but for this password to do anygood they have to change it from the default of a black username and 'admin' for the password. Of course, they haven't done this, so I basically have complete control of their network. Luckily I'm a nice person.

Here's a picture of their router settings screen.

Comments

Wow, you are such a geek. But that's cool, because geeks are sweet. I'm suprised, this time I actually understood everything you were talking about. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

You should blog more. It's been two months!
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