802.11b Homebrew Antenna Shootout (Pringles Wins!)

http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/has.html ^

[Reactionary]

I think I like it...

[AnAmericanMother]

The "Beer Can Vertical" has been a mainstay of amateur radio homebrews for years.

The fun part is, you get to drink the beer. Hopefully, at some time OTHER than while assembling the antenna.

[narses]

Cool, yes?

[narses]

Berr, more beet. Power, more power.

[narses]

Beer, more beer. (Maybe enough already? Nah!)

[SeeRushToldU_So]

My network IT manger lives around the corner from me. I caught him using one of the Pringle's devices last halloween. He was giving out candy and checking the neighborhood for unsecure computers.

He also uses it at work to see if any of computer savy bluecollar types have set up a wireless network.

[AnAmericanMother]

Well I was going to say that you might have looked on the wine when it was red (or the beer when it was golden), but decided against it . . . ;-)

"In vino veritas;
Im Bier ist auch etwas."

[narses]

:)

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

http://www.arrl.org/

The best in antenna design with all formulas.

[InterceptPoint]

I built probe fed coffee can antennas 30 years ago to pick up the MDS band at (as I recall) about 2.1 GHz. This is pretty close to the 2.4 GHz 802.11 band. You can up the gain of this antenna to about 20 dB by adding a yagi type director that is about 2 feet long and consists of a series of washers about 1.25 inches in diameter and spaced about an inch and half apart or so. The exact dimensions can be had from antenna design handbooks. Rock solid design assuming that you are after antenna gain and not omni coverage.

[steplock]

This looks like FUN~!

Maybe I can get my D-Link 614+ to transmit UP one floor!

[jokar]

Very interesting.

[TopQuark]

And the import and relevance of this article is... what?

[Psycho_Bunny]

And the import and relevance of this article is... what?

...theft.

[quietolong]

bump

[TopQuark]

Theft of what? You are not a bunny of many words.

[Musket]

Internet access I think.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Most of the time these antennas are used to "War Drive" - which is driving around with a laptop using one of these antennas to see what wireless access points and routers you can connect to.

Sometimes it's innocent, but it's mostly an activity associated with malicious cracking....these people are seeing if they can get into business networks where the network admin was sloppy and didn't properly secure the WiFi connection.

With the proliferation of WiFi in the home sector, people are starting to use these types of antennas to steal internet connections from their neighbors.  I can usually see three WiFi routers in my apartment building with the stock D-Link antennas on my server and my gaming machine although, my laptop card is only strong enough to see one of them. 

If I wanted to get out of my monthly DSL bill, I'd build one of these antennas and piggy-back on someone else's connection.

 

[soundbits]

kitchen sink armory bump for later detailed reading.