24 Wireless Networks - A Quick Survey out my window in Palo Alto
During lunch yesterday, I spent a few minutes with Netstumbler to test a simple cantenna intended for use for low cost rural community networks. I will write about the cantenna separately, it’s based on this design and provides around 8dB of gain. Even more valuable for a cluttered RF environment (such as around here), the directionality of the antenna reduces the noise floor substantially. With the directional antenna, the noise floor was around -88dBm, vs around -66dBm with the built-in omni.
An informal survey from my office (sitting in my chair with the antenna and revolving through 360 degrees a few times) turned up 24 access points, 11 of which were unsecured. I expected to pick up a few networks while pointing toward the window, but I was surprised at how many popped up while pointed through the opposite side of the building. It probably helps that I’m on the 2nd floor, but this was more than I expected. A similar experiment a couple of years ago turned up only 2 SSIDs, not including mine.
SSIDs picked up:
143Rinconada, 2WIRE517, 2WIRE626, 2WIRE778, Alma Zone,
Andrew's Network, bmillin, dolev, Home, Home,
hughes-wi-fi, hughes-wi-fi, linksys, linksys, Linksys,
linksys-g / Palo Alto, Linksys-PA, LR, NETGEAR, NETGEAR,
settlers, spyfox, TASAR-HOME, zephyr
Perhaps I should see if anyone’s interested in setting up a bandwidth co-op, since Palo Alto Fiber-to-the-Home seems to be stalled. It’s sometimes frustrating to see how slow and expensive internet service is here by comparison with Korea, among other places.
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