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Wireless Hacks
From the back cover we find that the book is targeted towards the intermediate to advanced wireless user, and I found that definitely to be the case. Some of the hacks use a lot of technical jargon, and assume a fair amount of background knowledge from the reader. You should probably already know how to get a wireless link up and running to really benefit from the book. But don't let that be a deterrent if you're a newbie. It's still a fun read, and provides a lot of ideas for the inquisitive and creative mind.
The book is very readable, (all the Hacks series books I have read would, like their venerable ancestor, UNIX Power Tools , make for great bathroom books). Each hack is self-contained, and can be read in just a few minutes. You can read the book straight through, or browse around, find what interests you and go from there. Most hacks have references to other hacks in the book, so reading it can be like browsing a web page sometimes. Many hacks also have references to further sources of information on the topic covered.There are hacks here for UNIX/Linux platforms mainly, but all you Ti/Al-Powerbook zealots will find plenty to lick your lips over as well, with several of the hacks devoted to wireless networking with OS X. There are even some for the Windows users as well. Many of the hacks (since they deal with hardware) could be utilized on any platform. Well, ok, you might have a bit of a hurdle to get your Pirouette cantenna hooked up to your vintage Apple ][c, but this book makes a good breeding-ground of ideas for those so inclined.
The book is divided into several chapters, each devoted to a particular topic. Each chapter contains a number of hacks related to that topic:
- Chapter 1, "The Standards," covers the alphabet soup of current wireless protocols, with a brief introduction to each.
- Chapter 2, "Bluetooth and Mobile Data," covers Bluetooth technology (need to use your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to act as a modem for your laptop in a pinch? If only those phones weren't so pricey...*sigh*)
- Chapter 3, "Network Monitoring," is all about finding out what's going on on the local network, including various ways to sniff traffic, broadcast network services, perform network discovery, and analyze traffic.
- Chapter 4, "Hardware Hacks," gets down to the metal, discussing topics ranging from boosting signal strength to building your own access point from micro form-factor hardware to cabling and antenna guides.
- Chapter 5, "Do-it-Yourself Antennas," describes various ways to build your own antennas all the way from Pringles cans to milled aluminum wave guides (Don't forget to use ventilation when soldering ;-).
- Chapter 6, "Long distance Links," offers tips on setting up, well, long distance wireless links.
- Chapter 7, "Wireless Security," dispels the vendor-propagated myths of WEP 'security,' and gives practical advice on how you can avoid the guy next door from sniffing your private traffic (not that you'd have anything to hide, of course...).
Throughout the book there is a lot of information repeated from Building Wireless Community Networks, as well as a few hacks copied over from Linux Server Hacks [Slashdot review here], but all together it makes a very useful collection, and a nice addition to O'Reilly's Hacks series.
So what's my take on it? If you're doing just about anything with an 802.11x network, you'll likely find something fun or useful here. If you're brand new to wireless networking, you may want to come up to speed with something a bit more tutorial-oriented. Perhaps one drawback to the book is its recipe-style format. There's not a lot of background information offered with each hack, but rather a lot "do this, then this, and you get this." If you're not used to hacking and experimenting with things, you might find yourself a bit lost. It certainly isn't a college textbook, which can be both good and bad, depending on what you're looking for.
Overall, if you're the forward-thinking, range-extending, hardware-tinkering, soldering-iron wielding, average slashdot reader, you'll probably find it a fun read with lots of good ideas to offer.
You can purchase Wireless Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
is also a useful book on the subject, covering 'a few scenarios involving wireless access that each manage to point out a different facet of wireless security.'
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
We use nocat ( www.nocat.net ) at work. Its free, its open source, and it is highly customizeable.
I live pretty close to a Starbucks with wireless. Has anyone had any experience using their service from home? Can you do it? Is it worth it? Do they leave wireless on when the store is closed?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I'll just toss in my $.02
Working for a company where security is of the utmost concern, I don't see 802.11 taking over anytime soon. While the speeds and reliability are getting better, it's still just too easy to find a way in. Not broadcasting the link help, but even that's not foolproof for people who know what their doing.
I don't know if you'll ever see this sort of technology in main stream business, but for home Lan's it sure is cool. Personally however, I'm just not a big fan of even thinking about sharing my $50 a month I spend on broadband internet service with anyone else.
I'm questioning the purpose of wireless technology. I understand that it's more convenient than a wired network but is there anything else?
Unless you've got an office full of notebooks, the best solution still seems to be a mixture of both wireless and wired...with wireless locked down as much as possible (even to the point of having to VPN through to the internal network).
It's fairly scary that one of the main reasons people go wireless if for convenience (and supposed simplicity for home users) -- and it's these same home users that will probably not take the time and effort to learn how to secure their network.
The Linksys WRT54g basestation/firewall/router/toaster is a MIPS box with 16mb of ram and linux...
n ksysWr t54g
This guy's got snort running on it:http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g.html (with a remote nfsmount for logs)
and these guys have info on hackin 'em:
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/Li
(I'm lazy, look out for the spaces)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Ref: Amazon has this book for the same price as bn
Spend $7.50 more to get free shipping.
I read this article awhile ago. Given that so many people are setting up wireless networks in their homes/apartments, it really makes me wonder how many of them are being hacked, and allowing their neighbors to get free Internet access.
On the other hand, it could be a good defense if you actually wanted to give your neighbor free access. ;-)
--
Slash
No need to shout.
I question wired networks. They make sense for servers and backbones. For most users though, wires to the desktop do not make sense. Copper isn't free, and you have to pay someone to run the wires to each desktop. Hope you run enough wires too, or you will pay him to go back latter when one guy comes up with a good reason to run 3 computers in his cube. (I've known several good reasons to do this) Of course you could run more wire to each cube just in case, but then your costs have gone up a lot more.
I also question the idea of not having an office full of laptops. For a company of any size, having a laptop around means you get work done for the few moments that a meeting doesn't require your care.
Run wireless and be done with it. The speed is plenty fast if you use care in the design. (Though I agree that security needs to be addressed) Servers need the bandwidth of real wires, if your desktop needs that much bandwidth you need to re-think your application.
Actually, the beige 6502 Apple ][e used "APPLE ][" on its startup screen, just like the ][ and ][+ before it. It wasn't until the beige 65c02 Apple //e came out that it said "Apple //e" there, which continued into the platinum //e cases.
//e models. The nameplates of all the beige models used "//e" in Cupertino font; the platinum used "IIe" in... damn, I'm blanking on the font name.
Different people use different characters to distinguish between the
Now if I could just get wireless cards for my fleet of Apple IIes....
And I thought (curly) braces were "{" and "}" and that "[" and "]" were (square) brackets.
[i} thus, wireless, no choice.[/i][P] Actually, you still have choices. There are, for example, devices that let you send your ethernet across the AC power connection. It would let you share an ethernet connection in other rooms of the house, but not past the transformer that feeds the building. There may be security issues here too, but it would generally be much more secure than WiFi. That's not to say I advocate it (although I've seen it used well in one business where I would have had a fit if they had used 802.11b instead), but there certainly are choices, even if you perceive that you can't run wires.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If your application and network has absolutely no need whatsoever for security against outside intruders and you welcome all comers to your network, then yes, consumer-grade 802.11b wireless hardware is a valid tool for the job.
Also if it is not important to you at all that your network access stays maximum reliable..., that you are happy when it works and and don't mind random and capricious outages and packet loss due to microwave ovens and other devices in the 2.4GHz range interfering with the wi-fi hardware or objects moving around that interfere with and reflect the low power RF energy between antennas, then yes, consumer-grade 802.11b wireless hardware is a valid tool for the job.
If you are lazy and just want convenience and nothing else matters, then yes, consumer-grade 802.11b wireless hardware is a valid tool for the job.
I work for a very small private school and we have a wireless lan connecting two wired lans (we have 2 buildings). It works out great because I convinced my boss to FINALLY let me get cable here so that I could share it with the other building. Its great for me, the rest of the school has to suffer with the slow speeds, its still better than the AOL they had.
I've often wondered if any of our school's parents are smart enough to come up here with a laptop to try to get into the network, I'm not that worried about anyone else trying to take advantage of it, we are pretty remote here.
With my experiences with using wireless at work, I have toyed with the idea of setting one up in my apartment but I don't want to share my bandwidth with my neighbors. But it would be really handy to set up a little wifi and stick all the servers in a different room, they heat up my living room too much. I think this book sounds interesting and will probably go out and buy it.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
Run wireless
Isn't that an oxymoron?
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
Here's something I've wondered about - is it possible to connect a wire from the antenna port on my base station to the inside phone wiring of my house, and will the inside wiring act as an antenna of any sort?
I've also wondered about connecting it up to the old-school UHF antenna that's hanging inside my attic (if not for the HOA, it would have been on my roof), but I don't know if that will do any good either...
Without messing around physically with the innards of my access point, is there a simple way to increase its range?
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Why would you need to run more wires to the cube for 3 machines? I've four, and they all hang nicely off of a Netgear hub.
Maybe if all 3 were on different networks.....
I think wireless is more for laptops than anything else, as you have to have a power line for the desktops anyway, and they don't move much.
Fellowship 9/11
Management and network design. You can only have so many hubs on a network, at most 4 between any two points (you can have more if you use a tree design, but you still can't get very many) Allowing hubs in cubes makes it that much harder to design your wiring. (With switches this isn't quite as bad as it was when I first encountered people wanting more computers in their cub than IS wired for)
Management is the next problem. Managed hubs give IS some abilities they really like, but managed hubs are more expensive. Are they willing to give up management for you?
if you wanna download it and check it out before you buy it wink wink
Last I heard they would let you do it, but you had to handle the billing. It's still nice, most places don't want you to do that at all.
Have they changed their service or somesuch?
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/
This book will be one of the many raffle prizes being given away at See our raffle page for more info
True, true. I should have said switch. I'm using a netgear Switch, and it seems to work well.
I just like the looks of little wires, they're so cute...
Fellowship 9/11
Folks who have worked out other improvements over WEP also stressed key rotation.
So is WPA any good?
It requires FW updates on the client cards, or a card that alread supports it (several of the LinkSys "54G" (802.11g) client cards do support it).
The WRT54G router/AP and client card are on sale at Frys right now for $100 (AR) and $60 (AR) respectively. Is this worth it?
Funny that you mention that. I am literally typing this inside a Subway eating dinner while sharing a broadband DSL connection that is being piped to me by an eye care (actually called ICare) outlet two doors down!
Ijust turned on my laptop to write a letter and my console indicated a connection. How nice for them to offer this to anyone.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
here
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
The platinum IIe cases used this font too IIRC, although my IIe is beige so I can't be sure. Apple uses the same font on everything to this day...
Can you imagine a Beow--ell, nevermind.