Just how many WiFi access points can you find from the air?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2202653.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2202653.stm</a><br /><br />Not content to find access points using bicycles or cars, Australians have taken to the sky. "...Australians have them all beaten by using a light aircraft to fly over the city of Perth and look for the wireless nodes from 460 metres (1500 feet) up." So far they have found 95 networks. Of course, they have an iPAQ in their arsenal. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif" /> Source: Jon

[Andy Sjostrom]

If they flew over my house, they wouldn't find squat!

[Jonathon Watkins]

And the point of this would be.........? :D I take it that they are mapping the Networks somehow?

[fishd1]

I've seen a site recently that claims to have over 10,000 nodes in the USA mapped with a GPS.

[T-Will]

Just this past weekend I went to San Francisco to visit some friends and as we were walking down Market street I pulled out my E570 armed with the Socket WLAN card and I was able to see 4 access points. A couple of them were probably from Starbucks but I know at least one wasn't because I was able to cruise the net and stream some audio. It was pretty cool just walking down the street and cruising the net, without wires!

fishd, what's the address for that site?

[jconsole]

where can i find software that detects access points or better yet since i am a vbasic and evb developer, where can i find sample code that deals with wi-fi and access points.

[Hawkeyes]

where can i find software that detects access points or better yet since i am a vbasic and evb developer, where can i find sample code that deals with wi-fi and access points.

Start with netstumbler (netstumbler.com), it seems to be the most popular app for the iPaq crowd.

[T-Will]

I think netstumbler will only work with specific WiFi cards, so if you have a card that doesn't work with netstumbler then your card should have come with an Access Point browser built into the software that you can use.

[disconnected]

Given all the horror stories of people unable even to access their own networks, what do you need to do to access a public network; do you just have to change the SSID on the Pocket PC, or is there more to it?

[T-Will]

If you're in Infrastructure mode you just set the SSID as "any" and it will connect to any Access Point it finds. In ad-hoc mode I don't think you can browse ad-hoc networks, at least not with the drivers that came with my card.

[dunneldeen]

If they flew over my house, they wouldn't find squat!

Not to make light of your WiFi situation, but that was hillarious. :rofl: Hope you get it working soon tho.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Given all the horror stories of people unable even to access their own networks, what do you need to do to access a public network; do you just have to change the SSID on the Pocket PC, or is there more to it?
For more information on wireless security look at this excellent article:

http://arstechnica.com/paedia/w/wireless/security-1.html

[T-Will]

Here's another really good article on 802.11 security: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,11388,00.asp

[T-Will]

...and another about deployment and security of a WLAN: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1073,00.asp