Tired of neighborhood wireless dropping you from your own network?

[Your Amish Daddy]

I live in a small town. Waco. We've all heard of it.

In the last two years, from one or two every other block, there's now 81 in a four block radius, and I doubt there are that many houses. I'm sick of their signals interfering with my fun, so I'm going to do something great, and possibly epic. I'm going to blanket the whole town (Roughly ten miles) in a 802.11G signal. I estimate it's gonna take about 3 watts (at 40 feet at 25 miliwatts for best signal). Yes, this is a giant Rogue AP attack. Out of the 81 networks, there are 77 unsecured. I guarentee I'll even get the secured ones too, since my signal will be stronger. I've alreay got the computer-side ready, built a mini-itx system just like I built my first foxbox, it's got two wireless cards, both D-Link 520V2's and all I really need is an antenna design, and the wire schematic for the plug. I'll take any advice/input.

[kryyst]

Very cool experiment. If that doesn't work there are a couple other ways around it.

The first is switch over to Wireless A that will pretty much guarantee you won't be seeing anyone else's signals and they won't be seeing yours either. If signal strength though is your goal you'll want Wireless N AP's and cards. They by default have the most power and greatest range.

[Your Amish Daddy]

Yeah, they do. At 100mW. I'm tired of these other signals screwing with me. So I'm gonna do this right the first time.

[Zuntar]

I honestly do not understand what it is that you are going to do. Are you going to flood them with a bad signal?

[Cyclonite]

I'm confused as well. Are you trying to interfere with other people's wireless networks because they're messing up yours? If so, there may be a few legal implications.

Aside from the fact that you're going to cause issues to all the folks within your range, FCC regulations could get you into some trouble, especially if people begin reporting the problem.

[kryyst]

For those who don't understand.

A wifi card will go out and find available signals. It then will start prioritizing them in order of strongest to weakest. Once you tell it to latch on to a particular signal (normal the one in your building) it will stick with that one because it's usually the strongest.

The problem in this case is that there are sooo many signals competing that the card - while trying to do it's thing is being bombarded with other strong signals. So it's hiccuping between a couple equally strong signals before remembering that Oh Yeah I'm supposed to only use this one.

So what he's going to do in theory is put out the strongest available signal so that his card doesn't have this desire to jump around. Which should work. It's also not illegal if he doesn't go out of spec, which he shouldn't even if he's hacking the firmware and boosting the strength.

Oh one word of warning if you are boosting the signal strength you'll want to put some active cooling on your router or it'll burn out.

[Zuntar]

AHHHHhhh, I see. Wouldn't that enable them to use your signal.....but I assume you would have it lock down, right?

[Cyclonite]

For those who don't understand.

A wifi card will go out and find available signals. It then will start prioritizing them in order of strongest to weakest. Once you tell it to latch on to a particular signal (normal the one in your building) it will stick with that one because it's usually the strongest.

The problem in this case is that there are sooo many signals competing that the card - while trying to do it's thing is being bombarded with other strong signals. So it's hiccuping between a couple equally strong signals before remembering that Oh Yeah I'm supposed to only use this one.

So what he's going to do in theory is put out the strongest available signal so that his card doesn't have this desire to jump around. Which should work. It's also not illegal if he doesn't go out of spec, which he shouldn't even if he's hacking the firmware and boosting the strength.

Oh one word of warning if you are boosting the signal strength you'll want to put some active cooling on your router or it'll burn out.

There's still a limit to the available spectrum. If there are 20 WAPs that can be picked up from a single point, at some point something is going to interfere.

[kryyst]

That's true they will overlap he can't prevent that but the key here it for him to have the strongest signal. Which as long as he's not boosting out of spec isn't illegal.

[Cyclonite]

Hmmm... I understand it's still within the legal range, but if it messes with other users, especially those that don't know how to deal with interference, it's not necessarily a good thing to do.

I don't know. I think it's a really cool idea, and I'd love to see how it works out, but not at the risk of upsetting other people's wireless networks.

[kryyst]

Other people are probably already suffering from interference in the same way he is. He's not really doing anything that isn't being done, the big difference is that his will just be at the top of the list for anywhere in his broadcast range.

The less bull dog way of getting around this would be to try and find a channel that no one else is using (remember it goes from channel 2 to like 15). Then check if your network card has a setting that will tell it to not look for best possible signal strength. Close your network, make it private, don't broadcast and then boost your signal strength if you still have issues.

Keep in mind if he did absolutely nothing and put in an N class router he could still be causing interference at neighbouring houses.

[Cyclonite]

Alright, you convinced me. Haha. Good luck, YAD. Let us know how it turns out.

[Zuntar]

This is why i love having a "wired" house, no worries of all this stuff.

[kryyst]

My house is half and half and I don't have any of these issues either. But then again I'm only sitting on 4 other networks within range of my equipment.

[Your Amish Daddy]

Alright. here's my results. I can blanket all of waco with 2.6 watts on a nice antenna. I've managed to propigate a bad key sixteen blocks. I've got all of north waco in the palm of my hand..

Is what I'd like to say. But I can't. My god damn power supply for my small machine cought fire and toasted it. Project's back a month or more..god damn Thermaltake.

[Timberwolf]

I have a suggestion for you! Maybe you have tried this, and maybe you haven't. When I first got my wireless router I had the same problem - interference from the neighbors. I decided I wanted to make my wireless network more secure so I changed over to WPA encryption, and hid my SSID. After that my interference problems seem to calm down.

Of course this solution may not be as exciting as yours, and maybe you have already tried this without luck. But if you haven't gone down this road its worth a try.

BTW - Was thinking about a Biostar board but went with Gigabyte in my pc.

[Your Amish Daddy]

I'm gonna do what I have planned because I've already gotten everything I'm gonna need to do it. But sad part is; if I do it I lose the equipment. I'm gonna build a disposable device for this.

[NYCDrew]

Instead of spending money and time on building your project, just drive around with a laptop and upload some....errr...illegal pictures on all the unsecured networks. As part of their probation, the network owners won't be allowed to use the internet and have to take down their networks. :D

[Your Amish Daddy]

And, How would that do me any good. They'd have to be reported. And how would I know that those pictures were there unless I broke the law to interact with the unsecured network.

[NYCDrew]

I'm only kidding about actually doing it, but if they were uploaded to a public website, say flickr.com, and people reported it, the IP address would come back to whoever's network it is and they'd get in trouble. :eek:

[Timberwolf]

I made this suggestion before - did you ever try switching to WPA encryption and hiding your SSID? Was just curious? Also, use the config utility that came with your hardware as opposed to the Windows XP zero config service.

[Timberwolf]

Here's another idea for you! Why don't you go into the unsecured routers that you can see and, secure them for the users? Of course they may be inconvienced a bit, but you are actually teaching them a lesson! :)This way they won't interfere with your network? You may have to do it a couple of times, but people will eventually learn to keep them secured?

How can you do this? Most routers out of the box use their brand name as their SSID. Just go to the manufacturers site and look up how to get into the configuration interface :)