Wireless
Networks
This page focuses mainly
on the Wireless Networks around Perth, Western Australia (Lat:
32d30mS Lon: 116d30mE) but will also cover Wireless Networking
in general.
WIRELESS NETWORK
SWAN VALLEY, PERTH
I have currently a wireless
to wireless set-up for my Laptop to my computer for whenever I
go around the house or property. But as soon as I get my Access
Point I will be putting up an external Omni directional antanna
for the general neighbourhood ftp and p2p and generally free stuff
I will provide off from one of my machines for people that come
through. Unfortunatly no internet access for outside users as
we have a very bad telephone system out here and are lucky to
connect up to 40k using standard 56k modem on copper pair.
What I will put up is
a homepage on one machine for outside users logging on. From here
there would be links to videos, music, books or other documents
in general. I will have this running on a Linux RH9 machine. Most
likely Jaguar, my PII 266 with 20Gb HDD (but will probably
install my Celeron 433 chip in there again). But will possibly
pipe through data from a shared directory on Wolf for more
storage space as 20Gb isn't ever enough to run all the files I
want to have :-)
WARDRIVING
Using software such as
NetStumbler you can drive around the neighbour hoods searching
for various Access Points around your area. There are many sites
on the net if you search through Google for topics relating to
this and some even having AP's listed for various companies and
individuals willing to share.
I will put up on here
a list of Access Points that I have found on my travels. What
I've found is that many people (and not just the public) seem
to leave their AP's totally open. This might be because they think
that no-one will actually try to get in, or that no-one has the
capability to get in. Some of these broadcast SSID's, have no
WEP or WPA, no MAC Address filtering. Even running a firewall
to the home network from the Access Point can help in many ways.
Implementing these, I will go into furthur detail later but the
SSID broadcast, WEP/WPA encryption and MAC Filtering can all be
implemented with little trouble. The potental for a person to
come do a drive by and get into these systems will be minimized.
These by no mean give you complete protection though but it is
a better start.
Most of these Access Points
are installed and set-up by corporations hiring outside *IT experts*
with their diploma in hand. Unfortunatly or fortunatly (depending
on how you lok at an Open Access point) these people seem to have
such a lazy set-up. I've even come across AP's around Perth that
Assign me an IP address from their DHCP server and log me onto
their network How can someone getting paid $50,000+pa be so lazy
in their security of Wireless access point when it allows any
other person with a wireless device log on and browse through
the network and retrieve files.
*** A year later and I still find lots of open AP's...
Joy!
And lately I've seen around the place, sometimes one
network with 2 WiFi AP's on the network.... One has encryption
turned on... And the other AP has encryption turned off.. What's
the point of locking your front door when your back door is wide
open.
SOFTWARE AND LINKS
NetStumbler
- This software you run on your laptop and will 'sniff' for wireless
access points and tell you information about them like, signal
strength, SSID, Encryption On/Off, Channel, MAC Address and more.
If you have a GPS hooked up to your laptop it will record the
location along with the AP information. The best feature about
this software is that it also uses sound to alert you when it
has located a AP so you don't have to take your eyes off the road
when driving. The sound can be set to increase in pitch the stronger
the signal which is great for wardriving. You can also get a similar
version of this for your PocketPC when equiped with a WiFi network
card.
E3
- Wireless freenet in Perth Western Australia.
Menu not on Left?? Press here to re-open homepage