How to find a WiFi antenna?

Finding the right Wifi Antenna is a pain in the connector. When I meet with WLAN managers the most often asked question about antennas is, "Where can I get one that is camoflaged or hidden in some way?" Most antenna sales or manufacturers websites are really bad. Either these websites haven't been changed since 1997 or the are broken or just plain unusable.

I get a lot of requests for sources of antennas. Not high gain, site to site antennas. Not parabolic or Backfire. Not a 4 foot long ultra-high gain omni.

All the requests I get are for one simple thing. A disguised antenna. This could be an antenna that looks like a smoke detector, an alarm light, a speaker grill or anything except a wifi antenna. In almost every case the antenna must do 2.4GHz and 5GHz. More recently it also must do 802.11n.

How hard is it. I am pretty good at Google but I have a real hard time finding one. Everytime I look I get pages that look like this:

Now why is that? I searched for "camouflaged WLAN antenna" and I get the above. When what I want is this:

Anyway, here a short list of websites I have fouond for wifi antennas. If you have a better resource, especially for camoflaged antennas, please post a comment.

Wifilink

HyperLink

MoonBlink

Netgate

Pasadena Networks

PCTEL, Inc.

WiFi Antennas|| RadioLabs

WLANMall.com

WLANAntennas.com

Sub-$300 internet tablet

I like this idea a lot. No applications, just a browser in a sub-$300 tablet. Personally, I would prefer it be sub-$100. What do you think?

The Sky is Falling!!

 My Brother-in-law sent me an email the other day that made me wonder about how WiFi is progressing with most folks at home.


For me WiFi is my occupation and my hobby. I get a thrill that most people would find unbearable out of debugging wireless network problems and analyzing layer 2 management frames. But I sometimes forget that most folks just want their WiFi to work. Take note that my B-in-law is no slouch at solving networking issues. As a developer of WebBased applications via Linux and as the maintainer of a (as he puts it), "3-tier, cross-platform application development framework, written in Python atop the wxPython GUI toolkit" I am pretty sure he can handle a couple of wireless packet issues. Here is the email:

Bruce,
Of late, it seems all my neighbors are getting 2Wire/AT&T DSL wifi routers.I think their signals are interfering with mine. What channel should I put myself on given this list I just got from kismet, although I've seen the number of devices at almost twice this list:
Channel   AvgSignal   SSID
1         22       2WIRE365
1         18       2WIRE341
5         19       2WIRE248
6         18       pete
6         18       2WIRE675
9         28       2WIRE219
I've also seen devices on channels 3, 10, and 11. I'm
currently on channel 8 (previously on 3) and 8 seems better, but still not great. I'm going to be wiring fast ethernet wired connections to [name omitted]'s office and my office, but it would be nice to be able to wander around the house without the connection dropping sporadically (I watch my wifi signal go from 5 bars to 0 bars, stick there for 5 seconds, and go back to 5 bars, and 10-20 seconds later, the same thing happens). Then several hours may pass with no incident.

Maybe someone's microwave or cordless phone is interfering?

Any ideas other than putting ugly repeaters all over the house?

Thanks!

I feel for him. This is a common problem. 2WIRE and other manufacturers of consumer grade access points don't really get WiFi. If they did they wouldn't have the devices auto-choose interfering channels like channel 5 or 9. I do not mind that they sample the air and select an unused channel but please select a non-overlapping channel instead. I also have had my share of issues in my 120 year old home in San Francisco. Normal 802.11b/g doesn't like old fashioned plaster and lathe walls. It also doesn't like the 40-60 APs on my block all vying for the same airspace and sure as heck hates my 15 year old 1200 watt microwave oven.
Then I read about one of my favorite technology writers, Andy Intakho suggesting we go back to wires. I saw the first post at Glenn Fleishman's WiFiNetNews site and followed the link to Andy's. It is an amusing read but I am a little perplexed. Andy does not share the steps he tried to solve the issue. He doesn't share the equipment he was using that gave him such frustrations. We have no sense of why he made what is, IMHO, a rash decision to abandon the future for the past.

Glenn Fleishman has it right when he suggests,

"Andy, maybe you need a working 802.11n router and some modern hardware? Or maybe your apartment building is simply being bombarded by untoward RF interference.
Don’t get me wrong: I like my copper Ethernet wiring, too, especially when I’m moving big files around my network. But with Draft N, I’m more likely to have a gating factor at my Internet gateway or a particular computer’s ability to shoot files over a given protocol than I am by the network’s raw speed."

As a former Apple loyalist, I would have suggested the Apple Airport Extreme with both 2.4gHz and 5gHz 802.11n (and a ton of other high-end features). It is easy to setup, easy to use and goes really fast!
However, I also see both Andy's point and that of my Brother-in-law. It shouldn't be this hard. The average home user should not have to worry about "RF Interference" this and "Channel Congestion" that. It should just work.


So whose responsibility is this? The manufacturers? The IEEE? The WiFi Alliance guys?

Maybe I am limiting my future as a WiFi engineer but I would like to see it fixed. If a groundswell of disaffected WiFi users starts now, with WiMAX on the horizon, 3g-4g cellular becoming really popular and iPhone users now having the same bandwidth as the DSL in my last apartment, we might see the sky falling after all.

XKCD on Moving and WiFi

XKCD, funniest geek comic strip ever.

Where the hell is Matt?

There is no real reason to post this other than it made me happy.



Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Cease and Desist!

My ISP (Speakeasy) sent me a nice letter recently informing me the Eurpopean Union's copyright infringement division was displeased with me. The said that based on these allegations, I would be in violation of the Speakeasy Acceptable Use Policy. "How can that be?", thought I. I buy my music on iTunes, I do not partake in bittorrent, limewire or any other version of the now dead Napster (old school version not the new subscription based system) music/file-trading system Hell, I pay for stuff!. I have encoded all my purchased CD's and boxed them away but I keep them to myself. In fact I am a true supporter of "legitimate" digital music use via iTunes or any other service that, in some way, supports the artisits that create the music I love. This includes freely distributed music a la Radiohead.

So why was the European Union comin after me? Speakeasy's Tech Support and Security groups were very helpful in pointing out to me that they could track streams of file sharing originating at my IP address. So I thought deeply about this (for 2 seconds) and arrived at the most logical conclusion. My neighbors were connecting to me via Free The Net, the Meraki based San Francisco free wifi network and uploading/downloading music to their hearts content. I have 2 repeaters on my roof and 4 others in houses nearby providing firewalled access to the Internet. This made me sad. I was very pleased to provide an un-asked for service to my neighbors who may not have - or may not be able to afford - Internet access. I wrote to Meraki explaining my dilemma and asked of there was someway to restrict my neighbors from conducting file trading on my network.

People in my hood are sharing music over my wireless network and
abusing my speakeasy acceptable use policy. Speakeasy.net has warned
me that any continued abuse will result in disconnection of my
service. Therefore I must inform you that unless you can lock it
down so only port 80 is being used I will have to disconnect the
Meraki repeaters and access points from my network.

I am very sorry. This seems like a real shame. I was very eager to
participate in "Free the Net" but now I am a bit saddened that folks
are abusing it.

Please get back to me and let me know if there is anything you can do
on your end.

They replied back with...

Hey Bruce,

grr. that's really irritating. but actually what's surprising is that
we haven't had to address this issue so far. as far as blocking
everything but port 80: I don't think any of us would be happy with a web-only Internet connection, so that doesn't seem like a good answer. to me it seems the real solution here would be to figure out who the culprit is and block them.

I looked on your gateway and didn't see anyone transferring an
inordinate amount of traffic. do you happen to have any idea who it is? do you know if it is bittorrent they are using? maybe they are using a different gateway at least part of the time (probably mine, hehe).

next week I guess we can figure out how to set up the right counters on your gateway so that we can figure out who it is (any insight or additional info you can provide would obviously be super helpful). hopefully Speakeasy can wait that long. if you need to unplug, we understand, but leaving your repeater plugged into power would at least soften the blow.

ugh,

So far they have found no way to track or stop the activity and I love my Speakeasy service. So I have no choice. Until such a time as I can trust my neighbors not to conduct activity that the European Union deems as illegal or until Meraki finds a way to filter this traffic out, I must disconnect my network from "Free the Net". I still have repeaters on my roof but they are no longer connected to my network, file traders now siphon off some other guys pipe or tube or truck that backs up and unloads Internet.

Comments and suggestions, as always, are very welcome.

Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis

Probably somewhat off topic, but I am a fan of Al and I aggree we are at a crisis crossroads. Time to get busy.

WiFi Enabled Bag!

OK, Admission. The previously lauded WiFi enabled Shirt SUCKED! It had this big plasticky velcro'y patch on the front. I just couldn't wear it. I thought it would be more integrated. So...

My wife the genius (BTW, she is a geek, too. She really wanted me to order her one. So I did). She takes one look at her shirt and says, " I am not going to wear this but I have an idea."

She tears the shirt apart and buys herself a new bag/backpack/purse. She cuts a hole in the front of the bag for the cable. Sews the felt backing used to secure the velcro to the front of the bag. Puts the battery pack and cable into an internal pocket and away we go. WiFi enabled bag!!!

This is way more cool than the lame shirt. Now she carries this to work proudly, letting all around her know if they can surf via WiFi or not.

WiFi enabled shirt?!!!

As if some geeky clothing designer and an Uber-RF-Nerd had a dorky lovechild, ThinkGeek has launched the first WiFi enabled SHIRT!!!

I am not kidding. this a a wearable WiFi detector that illustrates the strength of the WiFi signal with glowing bars and antenna and the words, "802.11" underneath.

I cannot wait to wear this to the next, "I can't get a date with nobody/Star Trek/D&D/comic book/video game/networking convention"

Look, Drool and count the days till it is released.

WLAN IDS and the bizarre world of security exploits

If you make security software (or any software, for that matter) sooner or later you will create what I technically refer to as a booboo. A security vulnerability in your software that raises the ire of your customers and make you feel foolish and sad. Not to worry, mateys, this happens to all software manufacturers. The important thing to remember here is how you handle it. Are you going to be a Pro or a shmuck? Recently, AirDefense (why no dot com?), a WLAN IDS manufacturer had just such and incident. Is this uncommon? Relatively so. Is it dire? Not really. Are you just sniping at your competitor? Kind of, but in the interest of disclosure, we had an incident a long time ago as well so, dear friends, I feel their pain.

Let's talk about what happened first. The vulnerability as explained here happens when you send a specially crafted HTTPS request, which will cause the HTTPS service on the system to crash. It appears from my quick glance as if you need to authenticate first and also be on the segment from which you can administer the system. So what is this? Granted it can bring down the sensor but actually it appears to be a "tempest in a teacup". You need to be the admin or snarf the admin login in order to cause a denial of service to one of probably many tens or hundereds of sensors. Unlikely at best.

So how was this handled? Professionally, in my humble opinion. AirDefense contacted the people who reported the exploit and directed them to a patch for it as reported here, "Solution: Update to the latest firmware version"

AirMagnet had a similar experience Last October. And we handled it the same way. Here is our official response to the problem from back then:


Re: Airmagnet management interfaces multiple vulnerabilities
AirMagnet vendor response below -

(1) The vulnerabilities are tested against an over-a-year old AirMagnet Enterprise product,
(2) Some of these vulnerabilities have been patched and fixed in AirMagnet Enterprise version 7.0.x,
(3) All vulnerabilities are now completely fixed by AirMagnet Enterprise version 7.5 build 6307 and later.
(4) AirMagnet customers can download patches from MyAirMagnet support web site (http://www.airmagnet.com/my_airmagnet/index.php)

So to summarize, there are a lot of security professionals out there who are trying to make a name for themselves and do it in an industry, like the WLAN industry, that is going places. They spend all their time looking for these exploits and I, for one, am glad they do. They keep us honest and ensure that we are doing our very best to protect our customers. Are their motives pure? Debatable but mostly. Do they sit down afterwards and talk amongst themselves about what l@m3rz those software guys are? You bet! Should I take it personally? Nah.