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WLAN Visualization Meets GIS Mapping
martin dodge writes "The Wireless Ntwork Visualization Project (Univ. of Kansas)
has an interesting alternative to just dot maps of wlan base stations. These guys are mapping out the zone of availability using gis. nice maps using aerial photographs backdrops as well.
If you are interested, check out other ways of mapping 802.11b network infrastructure.
"
Would this mean crackers could more easily access weak networks (ie those w/o VPN)? And what about services designed for free web access through wireless LAN?
"ph34r my 1337 n3kk1d ski11z!" - largo of megatokyo
In effect, map data stored in a database. I've seen maps like those in the article before. The first I saw was in 1993, but it didn't have nice colors. It was from a company that determined FM signal coverage, when given the location of the transmitter and its signal strength.
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Those are better than the coverage maps that the cell phone providers offer. Their, almost certainly, far more accurate too.
Now, if we can just get them to do the project at a national level and post a searchable map, like Mapquest, on the web it would be awesome. Going on the road? Just grab a map before you go and stay connected the whole time, probably free of charge too! Since, so many of the WLANs aren't secured.
Combined with a database containing the address of cable modem subscribers, Comcast can now conveniently use this data to ferret out their subscribers "stealing" from them using 802.11b. Watch for the Comcast van in your neighborhood!
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Useful but check out the dynamically generated node map from http://www.pdxwireless.org It's updated as the nodes go on and off.
These were done years ago for FM radio coverage and many "more sophisticated" ham radio repeaters back in the late 80's. It's pretty cool and accurate enough. (although not very accurate inbetween distant points unless you add a topo data set to the GIS dataset.. Grass is an excellent GIS package for Linux that gives linux users the power of multi-million dollar GIS systems in their basement... and this is a great way do use that cool tool.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What is the behaviour of 802.11b cards passing multiple nodes at high speed?
Your 2.4GHz card will overclock to 4.8GHz with twice the bandwidth if you travel at the speed of light down the highway.
Why don't they use some of their research funds to lobby the Highway Administration for road signs that would clearly mark places where there was donated bandwidth to be had?
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
Hey if you look hard enough on that map you can see where the tap room and the replay would be. woohoo!
- Mighty-Troll
I don't think I'll be using their Consulting Services any time soon...
You can see it in action here
Its very handy to get a clearer idea of where exactly those pesky APs are when you blat past them in a batmobile with a pringles tin sticking out the roof...
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
Last year i took my laptop & gps & a few perl scripts and mapped out the wireless access at my campus (UCSD). I made some maps too. Pretty fun!
http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~ghamerly/wireless.html
The suggestion that 802.11b security issues may not pose a problem reflects a cavalier take on a nuanced problem.
While the benefits to data mapping wireless far outweigh the risks to facilitating users of Snort/Crack (noun, not command) apps, this doesn't mean we should forget about security. The aforementioned "crackers and script kiddiez" impose costs on the system that must be noted. It's far wiser to look down the road than to burn the bridge when we get there.
And don't think commercial ISPs wouldn't love to see Wi-Fi whacked in its infancy. There's interests lining up behind strangling the babe in its crib.
It may be cold, but at least it's clear.
hand-over is what you want, i.e. the ability to have a permanent session when you switch from one transmitter to another.
It is embedded in cellular networks (PCS, GSM, 3G, etc.) but is not (I think) a 802.11b feature, which was built for home, soho networks, not wireless internet coverage.
Besides, even if you could negotiate a transaction fast enough to keep the overhead low, the lack of a persistent ip address and connection scheme (firewalls) would make it difficult to work.
OTOH, a telecom-carrier operated wireless network is easy to standardize, and made for this type of thing (I remember having an half hour phone call on a 180mph train in France).
The real issue here is cost :
802.11b works because it's cheap and can be built by geeks, but hasn't got the features of a telecom network that's expensive to install, operate, and that nobody is really willing to pay for. (the market just isn't here yet : Metricom, anyone)
Besides, most features were supposed to come with 3G networks, but with fear of bankruptcy in the telecom sector, there is little chance we see this working before two years.
just my 0.02 euros
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Can anybody comment on the following:
.11b network has 128wep, MAC list restriction, and SSID broadcast turned off. I realise that someone can sniff the traffic and decrypt the packets by cracking WEP, but this would otherwise prevent them from doing something ON the network, right?
Linksys (and other folks) have a flag that disables the SSID broadcast 'feature' of their basestations.
According to netstumbler.com:
"Linksys' latest firmware update for WAP11 includes closed network support. It disables the SSID beacon broadcast and as a result no longer shows up on either the Boingo or CyberPixie roaming clients, nor on Apsniff or NetStumbler network discovery tools. "
Is this REALLY a security 'adder' or can folks discover the network in other ways?
Our
We're investigating adding our VPN to the mix, but it's a non-trivial network topology change for a group that really doesn't have sensitive data.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Also, most GIS work is done using ESRI's GIS and Mapping software.
The matter of concern and interest the wlan flag legal residence major shock smallness is exact inside the ticket of reverse and the substitution, is it. This person is stimulated and the ticket of the area of the provisioning the ticket where the gis. is gorgeous in the place and the curtain inside and it uses and of photography of air tak it uses. What " it is stimulated the ticket spreads out, 802.11b above the cause becomes at that outside portion gathering outside of that outside methodological control, an interest it does and it pulls,
Those are better than the coverage maps that the cell phone providers offer. Their, almost certainly, far more accurate too.
The engineering dept. at the cell providers have maps that are at least this good, often better.
The maps that the public gets to see, however, don't come from the engineers, but rather the marketing department.
That said, if you had a 3 watt phone with a properly mounted 3Db gain antenna on the roof of your car, you probably could get the coverage that the marketeers claim.
Of course, almost no real customers use a setup like that anymore.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I also betcha Cambridge maps as one, big, continuous WLAN. f*ckers.
dinner: it's what's for beer
With netstumbler, it's easy to map out your freshly discovered APs easily. After you have returned from some wardriving, simply export your netstumbler log, and upload it here. It will output a Microsoft MapPoint 2002 file which will display a pushpin covered map which shows you all the APs that you just discovered.
This would be even cooler if the maps were animated in real time.
Of course this would require monitoring total coverage in real time, an unlikely prospect given the way the data is collected, but if you could, I imagine that even small environmental influences (atmosphere, automobile traffic, signal cross-talk) have an impact, and would cause very obvious movement that could be interpolated between samples.
It's already a very organic, reactive diagram... I love the way the signal oozes down streets and between buildings. Now picture the coverage Blob actually moving on your screen: fluctuating, flowing, oscillating across the landscape. Yum.
i worked for a cell phone company a couple of years ago and the tech support was constantly tied up with calls, and the refurbishment warehouse with functioning returns, because people assumed that the coverage maps provided by the company were accurate binary state renditions of coverage (i.e. if you're within the area you can make a call, and if you're outside it you can't). for instance, if you use a road map to drive to the next state, when you cross the line, you're in that state, there's not a 74% probability that you're there (it's 100%). of course cell phone maps are only probability maps related to tower placement, signal strength, and topography, but most people choose from experience not to see it that way, as all their experience has been with road maps.
so you'd get people calling in who tried to make calls downtown/in their basement/behind a hill, or whatever, convinced that their phones were broken cuz they could not get a signal when the map said they could ... often they'd just return a functioning phone and get a replacement mailed to them. it was a horrendous waste of money. ideally the customers need to be told that there's only a probability of making a call from any particular area. but i guess the marketing dept. would put a stop to that.
...depending on the crowd. Among plenty of academics (especially geographers) GIS = Geographic Information Science. Partly this is because there is quite a bit of ongoing research into the techniques and principles underpinning the technology.
:(
The other reason is that there actually is (in an ideal world) a bit of expertise required--and familiarity with geography, and no I'm not talking about "What's the capital of so-and-so"--to fully understand what you are doing with the data.
I've found a great deal of folks in the public and non-profit sectors who are far too cavalier with their interpretations of data that they crunched on for a while...they think that because they used expensive software they must be getting some real value out of it.
Anyway, the point is that it's not some black box technological marvel. There is plenty of Science (geographic, statistical, etc etc) behind the Systems.
GRASS GIS is cool but sadly I work at a Winders shop, so it's ArcGIS for me (and plenty of contact with the abhorrent DBF file format).
When I worked for Sprint and other Clients we had mapping similar to this made using software such as Planet made by MSI. Planet was cool, it would help map out coverage for a given area. However it was still needed to go out and drive the network. I worked a project in Tijuana using some equipment made by DTI that had 8 scanners in it and would record about a thousand channels of data to be later displayed on a map. It was cool when you would look at the map and actualy see the coverage of each cell tower based on the driving that had been done.
---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
They've essentially reinvented a commercial app that's been on the market for about 5 years - deciBel Planner.
The problem I'm having with their maps is that there is no distinction between 'no signal' and 'no data'. This can easily be seen by the oddly shaped coverage oozing down a street. Obviously the signal doesn't preferentially go down the street, there is just no data within the block to know what the signal is doing there. There should really be some sort of distinction for this to be truly useful.
Its not as trivial as it seems because coverage can in fact ooze down the street due to tall buildings lining the block, for example. This can either be directly measured or maybe even modeled if one knows the the types of structures in the map.
These people http://i3.com/ have a business that cators to the cell-phone industry. They provide maps with builings, etc that can then be used by the providers when their engineers are trying to design their wireless networks (where to put antenna for best coverage).
From what I can tell, they're just taking i-cubed's idea and applying it to 802.11...something providers will surely do if they ever want to blanket areas with coverage (as cell providers do this now).
Pretty cool anyway, but I must point out prior established work in this area.
They also have some really cool images of my town from above.
I have been playing with Mapserver and it really rocks for online stuff. It only recently went sort-of-production with 3.5, but with support for PostGIS and PHP, it is great. Having tried both, IMHO, it's far more accessible than ESRI's ArcIMS.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Behold the power of the inverse square law!