I am currently spending the week at the Ramada Inn of Burr Ridge. One of the perks they offer is free high-speed wireless Internet access in the hotel. This is a very nice service, and they even offer wireless network cards for use if you do not have compatible hardware.
Not bad for a lower-priced hotel. I ran a speed test and results indicate something in the area of a 640k upload and download speed.
A free tip: when shopping for a room, check rates both over the phone and online. The rate I was quoted over the phone was $79 per night, but the rate I confirmed online was $66 per night.
Feeling adventurous, I decided this evening to repeat my wardriving experience on the way home from work once again. I'm not quite certain what I thought would be different, but I was quite surprised at what I found.
The same six mile drive this time yielded 132 (that's one hundred and thirty two) access points. I could hardly believe my ears (NetStumbler makes a distinct sound when a new AP is located). I had about 20 located as I left the parking lot, and that trend continued as I made my way home. There were a few times where I was not within range of an AP, but never for more than a couple minutes.
The route I drive goes past some small businesses, a hospital, and a lot of homes. My office is not far from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, so I am assuming that some of the APs are located in student housing. The hospital spit out about 10 or so; the majority of the rest seemed to be in residential areas. Still not much in my neighborhood, though I have found that upstairs in my house I am able to locate 2 APs (though I can connect to neither -- and in the interest of being a good neighbor, I will not try to "hack" my way in).
NetStumbler gives me the following breakdown:
- 80 APs not using encryption
- 35 APs showing the default vendor's SSID (1 "belkin54g", 6 "default", 17 "linksys", 1 "mshome", and 10 "netgear")
- 43 APs running at 54 Mbps, 6 at 22 Mbps, the remainder at 11 Mbps
- 16 APs did not return a SSID
To further my experiment, I parked outside a building that was giving a good signal and attemped to connect. Sure enough, in a matter of seconds I had an IP address on the network and was browsing the web from my car.
So what was different this time from exactly 1 week ago when I only discovered 10 APs? I am assuming it was some combination of the following:
- I installed Windows XP SP2 on the laptop. I know it made some changes to the wireless network settings, perhaps the drivers for the card were updated as well?
- There may be some new ones that were not set up a week ago. While I highly doubt this makes up the difference between 10 and 132, there may be a few that were not there originally.
- With the switch back to standard time from daylight savings time, it was now mostly dark during my drive. My ham radio experience tells me that radio waves at certain frequencies can propagate better at night (due to the ionosphere moving farther out from the earth)... however, I believe WiFi uses frequencies in the UHF band which as far as I can remember are not as prone to be affected by the atmosphere.
I cannot think of anything else that would make such a difference. The trip was at the same time of day, on the same day of the week, following the same route, and taking about the same amount of time.
The more I play, the more I am getting bitten by the WiFi bug. I have a lot to learn, so I will try to post some of my learnings here from time to time.
The Boston Red Sox won the World Series of Baseball on October 27, 2004. This purportedly breaks "The Curse of the Bambino", which began in 1920 when Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees; this curse had kept the Sox from winning a World Series since 1918.
"The curse is broken!" fans cry.
However, within one week after the Sox winning the series, the New England Patriots (whose home is Massachusetts) had their NFL record 21-game winning streak ended, and Senator John Kerry (from Massachusetts) lost the U.S. presidential election... an election that many indicators suggested he would win.
Is the curse broken?