Questions from a newbie

[drgibson]

Hey, I'll admit it, I'm a newbie around here and I don't yet understand the lingo. I read about this site in PCWorld and I have a wireless router at home, at my office AND at my dad's house. Believe it or not, THEY ALL WORK!! I also think they are all secure but that's part of why I came here. I want to be sure that wardriver can't log onto one of my networks and do some damage, although I find the wardriver games quite interesting as I have heard of them. A few days ago, I installed Netstumbler onto my laptop and that has certainly been interesting to turn it on in different places and see what pops up, although I don't understand everything I am seeing. So, my questions are many, I'll hold it to two at the moment.
1. I understand there is information here about "hotspots" that are basicly open for public use, whether they were intended that way or not. How do I find those?
2. Is there a way to better understand Netstumblers info? The help files seem to be non-existant.
3. OK, I lied, one more. Do good members here upload info obtained with Netstumber or another product for sharing? I get the impression from looking around here that they do . . . which is where the info in question #1 comes from I suppose???
Be kind to me. I speak English and some Geek but not a lot.
David

[uhtu]

Thanks for showing an interest in our project!

1. WiGLE provides a graphical view of networks observed from the real world. This is NOT a licence to use a network (only the network owner can give you that right.), We're just mapping what people have seen in passing. Things that are being broadcast into the world.

2. http://www.netstumbler.com/ is a great resource for netstumbler.

3. People who post their stumbles to WiGLE (which is where all those dots on the maps come from) do so from almost every piece of client software we know about, and we accept almost every file format we know about as well. netstumbler is a very popular one for windows.

[Guest]

OK, I understand that this not a forum to encourage illegal use of wireless networks. No question about that. It is interesting how many are unprotected however. At my house, there are 3 AP's showing on netstrumbler and only mine appears to be protected. I have logged into the others just to prove I could but got off quickly as I figure if I can see them, they can see me, besides, my internet connection is quicker.
Three more questions:

1. What is the program Jigle used for?

2. Since there are networks where the owner allows anyone to log on, are those indicated somehow in something members can see here?

3. Is a "stumble" a file of visible networks that someone has submitted? I would be curious to see if any of my 3 show up in your data.
David

[uhtu]

1. JiGLE (along with DiGLE and a couple of others) are mapping clients. they
draw maps and plot data from WiGLE.net on those maps. I use JiGLE
as an amateur cartographer, but it integrates with Kismet (and DiGLE does
with Netstumbler) so it can be an aide when exploring for networks.

2. the only way to be sure is to check with the network owner. anything else
is questionable. in the JiGLE and DiGLE clients (and the online query)
you can ask to only see "freenets", but these are just networks that have
been marked as such in wigle.net, and that dosen't grant you access to
them.

3. yes, sorry for the terminolgy jump. a "stumble" is a log of networks and
where they were seen. you can query our site from the query
link at the top of the page: http://wigle.net/gps/gps/GPSDB/query/

[drgibson]

Thanks for the help. If I don't have a GPS tied to my laptop, is the stumble not useable? Can GPS data be entered by hand. I have a GPS but not it doesn't tie to a laptop to my knowledge.
David

[arkasha]

The stumble's still interesting, because your trace can corroborate someone else's stumble (past or future) if you upload it.

[Guest]

OK, I'll start collecting some. If I have no GPS data, do you list an address or what??
David

[drgibson]

OK, I'll start collecting some. If I have no GPS data, do you list an address or what??
David

Sorry, I replied without logging in first. That's my post directly before this one. I wasn't expecting guests to be able to reply to a message.
David

[arkasha]

nothing as sophisticated as an address; just seeing the data confirms the observations of others (example: "address 000D00D000D found by another person"). if we were REALLY smart, we'd look at your clock, see if your observations correlated with observations of others at the speeds that humans can actually reach close enough to the ground to see networks, but we're not that good YET.

[drgibson]

Well . . I'm not sure I understand what you said there. If you don't want the address, then how do you know where I was when I saw the networks?
David

[bobzilla]

We'd very much prefer data that has GPS coordinates attached so it's known somewhat accurately where the network is. Converting from a street address to GPS coordinates is a very tedious process (but we do have a geocoder, so if you want to you can write down the address where you saw the network, look it up a geocoder, and put the lat/long into the export file of whatever package you are using).

I've seen people doing this, and wept for them, because a GPS is fairly cheap, does everything automatically, and is more accurate. But if you're willing to do the work, we'll take the data.

[phiberop]

Thanks for the help. If I don't have a GPS tied to my laptop, is the stumble not useable? Can GPS data be entered by hand. I have a GPS but not it doesn't tie to a laptop to my knowledge.
David

Do you have a serial gps or usb? If your gps will take a serial cable you can purchace a serial to usb adaptor that comes with driver software to make your usb port on your computer work like a serial port, or check with your gps manufacture and see if they have a driver that supports virtual comports. The later is for usb. All of this is for a computer that does not have a serial port. See the link below. This is similar to what I use.

http://www.usbgear.com/item_288.html

[Superman3]

What is the best GPS to use? Do most of them work with net stumbler?

S

[bobzilla]

I and others are very happy with Garmins. I have a Garmin GPS III which works really well, but doesn't do the ground-station adjustment (WAAS). I've found that an external antenna on the gps really helps keeping lock, especially in ark's faraday cage mobile. Make sure whatever you get says 12-channel somewhere, meaning it can keep track of 12 satellites at a time (the max number you could see in the hemisphere). I have a single-channel gps from a long time ago and it takes a long long time to get a lock as it slowly downloads data from each satellite.

Also, for general GPS info Garmin has a nice page: http://www.garmin.com/aboutGPS/

[Superman3]

I'm a newbe and it shows, what is SSL? and what is the benefit of using libeay32.dll with DiGLE?

S