Saturday 30 September 2006 at 6:59 pm
Well. Guess what? I'm ranked at 190 on WiGLE. Excellent.
5,394 networks discovered.
About 2000 of those, without the help of anything special (PCMCIA cards or external antennas).
And another surprise:
When I said that I was going to stumble on the way to Victor Harbor I was met with some strange looks... as if nothing much would be found. 162 new networks. Still, for the distance we drove, that's not particularly good, but more than I expected. 162 new networks isn't that bad anyway.
The sunroof was open, and there was my 6dbi antenna and the GPS, right in the slipstream. At 110km/h, it sounded like it was in a plane. Only to me though, as I was directly behind it.
Still, the antenna and GPS didn't move a single bit, which was very good. Strong magnets.
Tuesday 26 September 2006 at 9:27 pm
Well, my old ADSL modem died. Farewell, Linksys AG241. You served me well (except when you didn't, which was slightly more often than I wanted).
My network has been a huge mess for three days - everyone still connected up to the AG241 (the ADSL modem inside it doesn't work, but the switch/router still does), and my old SpeedTouch 530 connected to one of the LAN ports.
That SpeedTouch 530 was actually a very nice modem. Too bad it had a Netgear router hanging off it bringing it down all too often. It's ultra-reliable - it has NEVER dropped out on me. It's web config interface may not be the best, but you can telnet in and set anything you want. Why don't I still use it? It's not ADSL2 - only ADSL1. That'll get me 8mbit down, and 1mbit up.
If you're reading this from Australia, you're probably wondering how ADSL1 goes that fast. The answer is that Telstra artificially limit their ADSL to make it not compete with their cable internet. The maximum you can get inside Telstra's world is 1500/256. The maximum we can get outside that is 8000/1000. So if you are on another ISP's DSLAM, probably for ADSL2 (because hellstra don't offer that), you can actually get the full ADSL1 speed by using an ADSL1 modem, or in the case of Internode, where you can easily change your line profile, setting it to ADSL1.
Which reminds me of something else - the best way to annoy a Telstra tech is to ask them why their ADSL won't go over 1.5mbit. Maybe even hint that it's due to their technical incompetence.
Internode have a great graph of the ADSL line speeds you could get at various distances from the exchange
here. Note the red box in the bottom left? That's Telstra's cage. Still, there is an advantage to this - it's fairly likely to work for everybody.
Anyway, I've gone way off the path here.
What I was meant to talk about is my new ADSL modem. Billion 7404VGP.
As for ports on the back, it's got a full complement. RP-SMA antenna socket (yeah, it's also a wireless AP too!), 4 LAN ports, one FXO port and two FXS ports, and a phone socket for the ADSL.
The phone is now wired through one of the FXS ports, and the analog phoneline goes through the FXO. When Internode send me back the setup details for NodePhone, I can then use that to make outgoing calls. 18c untimed, to all of Australia :D
Now, why does this thing own?
• The inbuilt wireless AP
• The VPN server in it
• The VoIP support within the router (plug it through phoneline, plug phones into it).
But, unfortunately, it has the odd problem:
• No WPA in the WDS mode (not many devices can do WPA and WDS though, AP Extreme can though).
• PPTP VPN server seems to have a nasty bug... it crashes the router eventually. Streaming radio over it kills it nicely.
• VoIP can be a little tricky to mess with, and get behaving. 18c untimed nationwide calls via NodePhone now!
But overall, it's a nice router. The AirPort is now WDS'd with it, half way up the hallway, so there's housewide wireless (and now AirTunes to a place that doesn't need it at all).
Only disadvantage is that if it blows up, out goes the main phone. Which kinda annoyed someone today when I crashed it with the PPTP strangeness.
Oh, and BTW, I've only made the blog page show 15 posts. Hopefully, it loads faster.
Friday 22 September 2006 at 10:42 pm
Number: 208
Username: themacuser
New Nets found with GPS: 4,818
% of total: (0.065%)
Total found: 6,067
Found this month: 2,645
Joined: 10-Apr-2006
Last posted: 22-Sep-2006
208 on WiGLE!
That's nearly 5k networks that are new.
Saturday 16 September 2006 at 11:13 pm
Wildfire is an awesome jabber server. It's Java based, and I initially went for jabberd2 because it was written in C, and I thought it would be much more efficient. Damn, was I wrong. Jabberd2 + Berkeley DB = unstable mess. Fast, but unstable.
Compiling jabberd2 + mysql was a complete mess too. Somehow, it messed with OpenSSL - every time I compiled in mysql, SSL would break. Every time I didn't compile in mysql, SSL would work. Go figure...
Wildfire worked completely out of the box with mysql. Works very well. And the web config interface is awesome - adding plugins is so easy. You just browse through them, hit the + button, and it's installed right in front of you. Really cool.
I just got the presence plugin working. So that means:
Jabber me at gm@stackunderflow.com:
My status is:
Or the Pismo, now living (wardriver@stackunderflow.com):
On my Palm TX (gm-palm@stackunderflow.com):
Well, this is enough for now... except for one thing.
253 on WiGLE!
Thursday 14 September 2006 at 7:32 pm
First of all:
Pismo guts everywhere, during repair.
Note
Whirlpool up in Safari! The wireless card is working through the card slot that we fixed!
And the Atheros card that met with a slight accident. I'm sure if you glue it back together, it could bend pins much more effectively than before :)
Thursday 14 September 2006 at 6:38 pm
Ok, so, we had something unfortunate happen to the Pismo. Atheros card, with a bent PCMCIA connector. PCMCIA slot. Bent pins in PCMCIA slot.
So, we took the pismo right apart, disassembled the cardcage, and put it all back together again. And what do you know? It doesn't boot!
We got a startup chime out of it later, but the screen never started. After many hours of fruitless searching, and repeated assembly/disassembly cycles, with Nat, Simon and I trying over and over again, we found nothing...
I gave up hope on whether it was still alive.
But there was one thing that annoyed us. The CPU card was very hard to pull up the first time, but now comes up very easily.
... turns out it just needed a good push. A very good one - almost what would seem to break it. Out of what was probably annoyance, Simon decided to give it a good push, and it locked into place!
We re-assembled the rest of the Pismo, and it booted. Only to have no mouse button!
Disassemble over again! Simon found the problem again. The power board that has the mouse button on it was slightly too high, and the mouse was permanently stuck down.
Putting it back together, and the mouse works. But the battery won't go in the right bay properly. Pushing it in at a slightly different angle got it... but why? The bottom right hand corner of the keyboard wasn't properly in place.
To see what we had to go through (3 times!), look at:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/6.0.0.html
Anyway, the Pismo is back to working again. In fact I am on it now, typing this post. And the PCMCIA slot pins got unbent, and the slot works again. I'm connected to the internet through a wireless card in that slot. (Motorola G card that gets recognised as an AirPort Extreme)
And that pin-bending Atheros card met with an unfortunate "accident" involving a flight across the room, a collison with a table leg, and four pairs of feet. I kind-of regret that, it was actually a good card, it was the only one we had that could do channel 14. But still, it caused all this trouble. And will never do so again.
Maybe when I go to Japan I'll pick up another one, of the non pin-bending variant. Or if we are feeling insane, we could mod the firmware on the Senao card to enable it. It's not hard, but if you screw up, you end up with a nice brick of a card. Well, Senao saved us the trouble with the prism3 variant, even when that thing works, it still is a brick.
Except I tried it on my MA111 a while ago, and failed, rendering the adaptor unable to be used with KisMac. Strangely, it still works with the driver as a . I'll try unbricking it when I get Ubuntu 6.06 going on the Pismo - the Windows utility BSODded during the firmware flashing. How nice of it! I'll try the Linux ones next. Maybe we will manage to get this thing going on channel 14.
Either that, or we just find the Japanese version of the senao card. Or we just make do with the ETSI variant. Although the Senao is sensitive enough to actually pick up networks on other channels to the one it's on, at fairly low signal levels. That's either good or bad... Still, scanning from channel 1-11 found a few nets on 12, and 13.
And my WiGLE ranking took a jump:
http://wigle.net/gps/gps/main/stats/?pagestart=300&sort=discovered
I'm on 304! Let's hope I get above 300 soon :P
Oh, and I've been doing some more Python coding. A script to grab large areas of WiGLE's map. I made a KisMac map of WiGLE's map, so we can see which areas already have a lot of APs, and avoid those areas, for obvious reasons :)
And finally, KisMac users, the GPS status pane is about to get even better.
Oh, and I think I might learn to code in another programming language - Java. I'd like to be able to program some J2ME apps for my phone, and my Palm. For my phone, it's the only option, and for my Palm, it's got to beat C.
Anyway, I guess this is a long enough blog post. I'll post some pictures in the next post of various things.
Monday 04 September 2006 at 10:27 pm
(Ok, I lost this post by forgetting it wasn't fully typed and restarting my machine, quitting Safari in the process... so this post isn't as good.)
Got some new toys today - one being a new phone.
My brick of a 6210 died, so I had to get a new phone. Checked the phone shops.
First Hellstra. Talked to someone there. Their offering: Motorola V3X or Samsung something-or-other. As for the phone plan, $20/month for voice ($15 of calls), and $10/month for data (3MB). Well, that sounds reasonable.
Although, it made me suspicious something was up... "telstra" and "good deal" don't quite fit together, just like "windows" and "reliability". Turns out my suspicions were confirmed later on.
Came back the next day to get it. Turns out the salesperson didn't know what he was selling (classic telstra), and that he sold me a CDMA wireless card dataplan with the GSM phone. I asked about the possibility of getting that plan on a CDMA phone, and they said "We can't allow that". I asked if it was technically possible, and if it was their regulations that prevented it... but got no answer on that one.
Then he asked me if I was still getting it. To get a 2MB data plan (I initially was offered a 3MB), I would have to pay $15 (initially offered $10). That turns out to $7.50 per MB. According to the Telstra person, those are the kind of prices I should expect to pay for GPRS, and even more for 3G.
So, I walked over to Vodafone. They, for some reason, were completely unable to offer me a data plan above 250kb on the phone... as that's not what the average user wants. Well, I'm not the average user. I could, however, get a larger dataplan if I had the data in a data card as the main part of the plan, but this of course means I get a data card I can't use (It's a crappy Windows only one - not one of the decent ones that OS X supports), and no new phone. So much for that. And I couldn't get another plan attached to my voice phone unless I got an expensive smartphone from them... bought outright! Ouch. So much for their supposed freedom of choice.
Well, I walked into 3, expecting no better. And was I wrong! $29/month, Motorola V3x included in the plan, and $4/MB 3G data! Excellent! And it's a $120 cap, meaning I get heaps more calls than Telstra!
Comparison:
Hellstra:
$20/month voice plan. $15 worth of included calls.
$15/month data plan - GPRS only, no 3G. 2MB - $7.50 per MB.
Without a data plan - $22/MB, plus 22c session fee.
Vodafone:
$20/month voice plan, $20 worth of included calls.
$3/month data plan - GPRS only, no 3G either, 250KB - $12 per MB.
Must purchase phone outright, on top of all this!
3:
$29/month voice plan, $120 worth of included calls - cap plan.
Smallest data plan is 200MB for $29/month (~14c/MB). Without a plan, $4/MB.
Hmm, I think Telstra has the best plan here, don't you?
Anyway, the phone is great. Motorola V3x.
Only problems I see with it are:
• Strangely arraged menus (All motorola phones have this...)
• When LED light on back is on, it bleeds into the camera's image...
• Data cable, charger and headset all take up the same port on the phone, and so you can't use them at once...
Apart from these, the phone is awesome.
As for the other toy - a really decked out PowerBook G3 Pismo. 500MHZ, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD, Combo drive.
Also has a NewerTech battery - which lasts for ages. Got 7 hours out of it today. Imagine that with 2 batteries!
We fired up a Senao NCD-2511-EXT2 in the PCMCIA slot, with a 6dbi antenna attatched to it. 130db SNR - almost twice as good a signal as my AirPort Extreme gets right next to the base station! Prism2 is an awesome chipset!
In fact, the senao does better with no antennas than the orinoco card does with it's internal one!
Now, all we need to do is find one of that particular model of Sony wireless card (It's a rebadged orinoco card, let's hope Sony didn't add some explosives somewhere inside it), and put it in the airport slot. (Full-length orinoco won't fit like in the iBook :( ).
Should make for some interesting stumbling. Especially with a 12dbi antenna on it.
