Synopses & Reviews
It's an increasingly wired world, but many people are finding that the best way to get connected is to do away with wires entirely. From cable replacement to universal Internet connectivity, wireless technology is changing the way we connect to our machines and to each other.
As with any new technology, buying your gear is only the first step. Understanding how to make the best use of it is another story. Wireless Hacks offers 100 industrial-strength tips about wireless networking, contributed by experts who apply what they know in the real world every day. Each Hack can be read in just a few minutes, but can save you hours of research.
Inside, you will find a wealth of useful techniques for making the most out of wireless technology, including:
- Making sense of the alphabet soup of the 802.11 standards, and understanding which technology makes sense for your solving particular problem
- Using Bluetooth, mobile radios, mobile data networks, and other exotic methods to keep you connected, no matter where you are
- Practical methods for detecting, analyzing, and monitoring wireless networks
- Extending the range of your network, and making the best possible use of the available radio spectrum
- Designing and building your own antennas
- Engineering long distance network links that span several miles
- Understanding the security issues of wireless networking, and protecting yourself and your users from unauthorized access and eavesdropping
Written for the intermediate to advanced wireless user,
Wireless Hacks is full of direct, practical, ingenious solutions to real-world networking problems. Whether your wireless network needs to extend to the edge of your office or to the other end of town, this collection of non-obvious, "from the field" techniques will show you how to get the job done.
Synopsis
Continuing with the successful Hack Series, this title provides real-world working examples of how to make useful things happen with wireless equipment.
Synopsis
It's an increasingly wired world, but many people are finding that the best way to get connected is to do away with wires entirely. From cable replacement to universal Internet connectivity, wireless technology is changing the way we connect to our machines and to each other.As with any new technology, buying your gear is only the first step. Understanding how to make the best use of it is another story. Wireless Hacks offers 100 industrial-strength tips about wireless networking, contributed by experts who apply what they know in the real world every day. Each Hack can be read in just a few minutes, but can save you hours of research.Inside, you will find a wealth of useful techniques for making the most out of wireless technology, including:
- Making sense of the alphabet soup of the 802.11 standards, and understanding which technology makes sense for your solving particular problem
- Using Bluetooth, mobile radios, mobile data networks, and other exotic methods to keep you connected, no matter where you are
- Practical methods for detecting, analyzing, and monitoring wireless networks
- Extending the range of your network, and making the best possible use of the available radio spectrum
- Designing and building your own antennas
- Engineering long distance network links that span several miles
- Understanding the security issues of wireless networking, and protecting yourself and your users from unauthorized access and eavesdropping
Written for the intermediate to advanced wireless user,
Wireless Hacks is full of direct, practical, ingenious solutions to real-world networking problems. Whether your wireless network needs to extend to the edge of your office or to the other end of town, this collection of non-obvious, "from the field" techniques will show you how to get the job done.
About the Author
Rob Flickenger has been a professional systems administrator for more than 10 years, and all around hacker for as long as he can remember. Rob enjoys spreading the good word of open networks, open standards, and ubiquitous wireless networking. His current professional project is Metrix Communication LLC, which provides wireless hardware and software that embodies the same open source principles he rants about in his books. Rob also works with the U.N. and various international organizations to bring these ideas to places where communications infrastructure is badly needed. He hopes that all of this effort is contributing toward the ultimate goal of infinite bandwidth everywhere for free. He is the author of two other O'Reilly books: Linux Server Hacks and Building Wireless Community Networks (which is in its second edition).
Table of Contents
Credits; About the Author; Contributors; Acknowledgments; Foreword; Preface; Why Wireless Hacks?; How to Use This Book; How This Book Is Organized; Conventions Used in This Book; How to Contact Us; Chapter 1: The Standards; 1.1 Hacks #1-12; 1.2 802.11: The Mother of All IEEE Wireless Ethernet; 1.3 802.11a: The Betamax of the 802.11 Family; 1.4 802.11b: The De Facto Standard; 1.5 802.11g: Like 802.11b, only Faster; 1.6 802.16: Long Distance Wireless Infrastructure; 1.7 Bluetooth: Cable Replacement for Devices; 1.8 900 MHz: Low Speed, Better Coverage; 1.9 CDPD, 1xRTT, and GPRS: Cellular Data Networks; 1.10 FRS and GMRS: Super Walkie-Talkies; 1.11 802.1x: Port Security for Network Communications; 1.12 HPNA and Powerline Ethernet; 1.13 BSS Versus IBSS; Chapter 2: Bluetooth and Mobile Data; 2.1 Hacks #13-19; 2.2 Remote Control OS X with a Sony Ericsson Phone; 2.3 SMS with a Real Keyboard; 2.4 Photo Blog Automatically with the Nokia 3650; 2.5 Using Bluetooth with Linux; 2.6 Bluetooth to GPRS in Linux; 2.7 Bluetooth File Transfers in Linux; 2.8 Controlling XMMS with Bluetooth; Chapter 3: Network Monitoring; 3.1 Hacks #20-42; 3.2 Find All Available Wireless Networks; 3.3 Network Discovery Using NetStumbler; 3.4 Network Detection on Mac OS X; 3.5 Detecting Networks Using Handheld PCs; 3.6 Passive Scanning with KisMAC; 3.7 Establishing Connectivity; 3.8 Quickly Poll Wireless Clients with ping; 3.9 Finding Radio Manufacturers by MAC Address; 3.10 Rendezvous Service Advertisements in Linux; 3.11 Advertising Arbitrary Rendezvous Services in OS X; 3.12 "Brought to you by" Rendezvous Ad Redirector; 3.13 Detecting Networks with Kismet; 3.14 Running Kismet on Mac OS X; 3.15 Link Monitoring in Linux with Wavemon; 3.16 Historical Link State Monitoring; 3.17 EtherPEG and DriftNet; 3.18 Estimating Network Performance; 3.19 Watching Traffic with tcpdump; 3.20 Visual Traffic Analysis with Ethereal; 3.21 Tracking 802.11 Frames in Ethereal; 3.22 Interrogating the Network with nmap; 3.23 Network Monitoring with ngrep; 3.24 Running ntop for Real-Time Network Stats; Chapter 4: Hardware Hacks; 4.1 Hacks #43-69; 4.2 Add-on Laptop Antennas; 4.3 Increasing the Range of a Titanium PowerBook; 4.4 WET11 Upgrades; 4.5 AirPort Linux; 4.6 Java Configurator for AirPort APs; 4.7 Apple Software Base Station; 4.8 Adding an Antenna to the AirPort; 4.9 The NoCat Night Light; 4.10 Do-It-Yourself Access Point Hardware; 4.11 Compact Flash Hard Drive; 4.12 Pebble; 4.13 Tunneling: IPIP Encapsulation; 4.14 Tunneling: GRE Encapsulation; 4.15 Running Your Own Top-Level Domain; 4.16 Getting Started with Host AP; 4.17 Make Host AP a Layer 2 Bridge; 4.18 Bridging with a Firewall; 4.19 MAC Filtering with Host AP; 4.20 Hermes AP; 4.21 Microwave Cabling Guide; 4.22 Microwave Connector Reference; 4.23 Antenna Guide; 4.24 Client Capability Reference Chart; 4.25 Pigtails; 4.26 802.11 Hardware Suppliers; 4.27 Home-Brew Power over Ethernet; 4.28 Cheap but Effective Roof Mounts; Chapter 5: Do-It-Yourself Antennas; 5.1 Hacks #70-79; 5.2 Deep Dish Cylindrical Parabolic Reflector; 5.3 "Spider" Omni; 5.4 Pringles Can Waveguide; 5.5 Pirouette Can Waveguide; 5.6 Primestar Dish with Waveguide Feed; 5.7 BiQuad Feed for Primestar Dish; 5.8 Cut Cable Omni Antenna; 5.9 Slotted Waveguides; 5.10 The Passive Repeater; 5.11 Determining Antenna Gain; Chapter 6: Long Distance Links; 6.1 Hacks #80-85; 6.2 Establishing Line of Sight; 6.3 Calculating the Link Budget; 6.4 Aligning Antennas at Long Distances; 6.5 Slow Down to Speed Up; 6.6 Taking Advantage of Antenna Polarization; 6.7 Map the Wireless Landscape with NoCat Maps; Chapter 7: Wireless Security; 7.1 Hacks #86-100; 7.2 Making the Best of WEP; 7.3 Dispel the Myth of Wireless Security; 7.4 Cracking WEP with AirSnort: The Easy Way; 7.5 NoCatAuth Captive Portal; 7.6 NoCatSplash and Cheshire; 7.7 Squid Proxy over SSH; 7.8 SSH SOCKS 4 Proxy; 7.9 Forwarding Ports over SSH; 7.10 Quick Logins with SSH Client Keys; 7.11 "Turbo-Mode" SSH Logins; 7.12 OpenSSH on Windows Using Cygwin; 7.13 Location Support for Tunnels in OS X; 7.14 Using vtun over SSH; 7.15 Automatic vtund.conf Generator; 7.16 Tracking Wireless Users with arpwatch; Deep Dish Parabolic Reflector Template; Colophon;