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Wireless Networking Hardware

Open Node In A Bag 95

Posted by timothy from the bring-batteries dept.
adelayde writes "You're a wireless network engineer and you work on the run. You need a kit that gives you flexibily yet is light and portable. Style is also important to you. This article (mirrored here) describes just the kit you need, based on modifying the Apple AirPort base station with suggestions for a range of handy antenna attachments and includes component part numbers and prices as well as a complete set of range test results. Just the Jobs for the wireless engineer on the go." Update: 04/08 00:06 GMT by T : Here's another mirror, thanks to the story submitter ;)
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Open Node In A Bag More

Open Node In A Bag

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  • Clearly kismet is an essential component....no?


    -Rob

  • why apple? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by akb ( 39826 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:37PM (#5681964)
    This article is pretty pointless to focus on Apple. Unforuntately clueless people will read it and assume that in order to use wireless they'll have to drill and void their warranty. The fact is there are plenty of other products for which none of that is necessary.

    The first time /. ran one of these "Mod your Airport" articles however many years ago it was cool but the wireless product landscape was very different then.
    • Unforuntately clueless people will read it and assume that in order to use wireless they'll have to drill and void their warranty. The fact is there are plenty of other products for which none of that is necessary.

      My office got a shiny new "Airport Extreme" about two weeks ago. Not only does it have a built in print-server, but it also has an external antenna jack. I wonder how many Airports were returned to Apple service/repair with hole drilled in the sides before the company decided to spend the $0.07
    • >This article is pretty pointless to focus on Apple.
      >Unforuntately clueless people will read it and assume that >in order to use wireless they'll have to drill and void their
      >warranty. The fact is there are plenty of other products
      >for which none of that is necessary.

      Sorry you feel that way, it's true. I just happened to have one and what's nice about it is that because it's round with a flat bottom, you can stick a pigtail on it and have a nice solid N type coaxial connector on the top.

  • Wireless Engineer (Score:5, Funny)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:39PM (#5681974) Journal
    I think anyone who calls themselves a "wireless engineer" should be able to figure out how to put an N connector on an Airport. Unless you mean "engineer" in the "sanitation engineer" sense.
    • Reminds me of the article they just had here recently about what really is an engineer and who is NOT really an engineer.
    • I installed my cordless phone all by myself. Do I qualify as a "wireless engineer"?

    • Re:Wireless Engineer (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Engineer & Style are mutualle exclusive - always have been - always will.... ie: if style matters to you, you are by NO MEANS an engineer. This one needs one of those red stary stickers on it - "As seen on Slashdot."
      • Engineer & Style are mutualle exclusive - always have been - always will.... ie: if style matters to you, you are by NO MEANS an engineer.

        Bzzt. Let's have a look at Architecture, for example... style and engineering are equally important.

        I award you no points.

    • "I think anyone who calls themselves a "wireless engineer" should be able to figure out how to put an N connector on an Airport. Unless you mean "engineer" in the "sanitation engineer" sense."

      Psst, this is an Apple product we're talking about. Titles like engineer are decorative. ;)
  • I wanted to read the article, but I couldn't. One thing to note, Linksys has Airport-like connectors, that you can plug a NIC into and go wireless.


    Vertical

  • some Airports have an antenna connection (Score:5, Informative)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:45PM (#5682012) Homepage
    Some of the newer Airports (AirPort Extreme perhaps) have an external antenna jack. There's even a company [drbott.com] selling a matching external antenna, no drilling required.
    • My Extreme base-station does not sport an external antenna connector. Upon internal inspection, the circuit board(s) have the same connector as the original tiBook Airport/Orinoco cards. So buy a pigtail, external antenna, drill the hole and plug it in.
      • My Extreme base-station does not sport an external antenna connector

        Weird. Do you have the model with the USB port (print server) ?
        • Yes, that's the main reason I bought it. But after several calls to Apple over the last 60 days it still doesn't work with my Epson Stylus Photo 820. IMHO they were thorough in their attempt to resolve the problem. It's too bad Epson won't update the driver for them. So Apple removed the 820 from the approved printer list.
          As for the base-station itself I opened it up and found a similar, not identical antenna to the one at the site. The metal case inside has a cable running from it to the dividing netwo

        • Weird. Do you have the model with the USB port (print server) ?

          There are two airport extremes, one with a modem and an antenna port (for for 249 [apple.com]) and one without the two (for 199 [apple.com]). Which never made sense to me, I would think the user who wanted the antenna, would be the one who connected the airport to the LAN, and wouldn't ever use the modem.

          • Re:some Airports have an antenna connection (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            There are two airport extremes, one with a modem and an antenna port (for for 249) and one without the two (for 199). Which never made sense to me, I would think the user who wanted the antenna, would be the one who connected the airport to the LAN, and wouldn't ever use the modem.

            What if you're net connection is via dialup (so you need the modem), and you want clients to have a larger roaming area (so you need to antenna)? Seems like a likely scenario. Plus, having more available models would be more con

          • There are two airport extremes, one with a modem and an antenna port (for for 249) and one without the two (for 199). Which never made sense to me, I would think the user who wanted the antenna, would be the one who connected the airport to the LAN, and wouldn't ever use the modem.

            You can use the modem to establish a dial-in connection to your network from the road. That's the reason that its on the higher-end models rather than the lower-end ones. Using it to dial out to connect to the internet would be

      • Ah, you bought the cheaper model then. the $200 one doesn't have the antenna port, the $250 one does.
    • man, why would you pay $100 for a 3.5 dBi antenna when you can get a 5 dBi antenna for $20 here [hyperlinktech.com]? ok, so i understand cool matching looks, but there's a limit, especially when you can get so much more performance for less...
  • Does anyone happen to have made a working mirror of this site yet? How many millions of hits does it take to knock down both a site and its mirror??

  • So what exactly stops you from (Score:3, Funny)

    by happyhippy ( 526970 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:52PM (#5682060)
    being arrested every time someone sees you carrying that thing thinking its a bomb?
  • Both the original site and the mirror /.ed in under 30 minutes!
    • Both the original site and the mirror /.ed in under 30 minutes!

      Heh! For sure you meant seconds.

      It makes me wonder if this whole thing about people not reading the articles is due to the frequency with which articles are /.ed. After a while, people get tired of trying. Not that that's a valid excuse. Nor would everyone do it, otherwise the /. effect wouldn't exist!

      So perhaps a response to "RTFA" could be "I'm saving their bandwidth by not reading the article." Donno.

      </offtopic>

  • Wow... that's some mirror... (Score:5, Funny)

    by loucura! ( 247834 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:55PM (#5682073)
    It's so good, it even mirrors the slashdotted state of the original...
  • ...of any mirror with "Flakey" in it's URL...

  • I wish (Score:5, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:09PM (#5682127) Journal
    "You're a wireless network engineer and you work on the run...."

    No I'm not, and I don't even want to get started down that path to fantasy. I'll just be depressed again when I open my eyes and realize that I'm still in this tiny office , with a job description that is nowhere near as exciting as "wireless network engineer".

    I go through these bouts of depression too much as it is with my constant, recurring, and haunting "you are a porn star that will be filming a scene with Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez....." day dreams.

  • Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by nelf ( 192284 )
    Another mirror:
    http://ds.dial.pipex.com/psand/airport/ [pipex.com]

  • For all the effort... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:18PM (#5682179) Homepage Journal
    For all the effort to do this, it is worth it to pay the extra 50 (or so) bucks and get the Airport Extreme with the antenna jack.

    How much is your time worth after all?

    If it's not worth it then by all means, go ahead and drill.

  • flakey.info? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mattkime ( 8466 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:20PM (#5682190)
    does anyone else think its a bad idea to name a server "flakey"?
    • "does anyone else think its a bad idea to name a server "flakey"

      The place I used to work for did that. The product we sold was "Smoothmove'. The sysadmin, who had a sense of humor about it, named his servers Bran, Flake, Fiber, Psyullium, etc. Clearly scatological references, but he got away with them. Too bad I got busted when I named a server 'Butthead'.
    • Reverse psychology.

  • US Laws? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Based on the laws in the US, and my understading (I am NAL), because of the part 15 the antennas are illegal because they have to be certified good by the FCC as well as the unit itself which has been modified from the original spec. Article [isp-planet.com] talking about this for wireless ISPs, but the part 15 would still apply to individuals I believe. While it is unlikely that they would randomly come across you this is always a good deterent:

    Julius Knapp, FCC deputy chief of the office of engineering and technology,

    • umm, read the article. The article was written by a guy in Barcelona, Spain not USA.


      US laws don't apply in Spain (yet... is Spain with the US or against it?...). Fair comment to suggest people should check their national laws on microwave antennae but "Off Topic" to suggest a Spanish poster should be aware of US law.

  • More ways for me to crash my car while wardriving and endanger pedestrian warchalkers...

  • I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:39PM (#5682325)
    "Wireless network engineers on the run" generally use something like a PocketPC or Zaurus, together with a CF WIFI card and a collection of wireless and network tools. That's smaller than the AirPort, battery operated, and far more flexible.
  • Of the two types of Extrreme base-stations, one comes with an external connector as wella s a 56K modem. Where on the unit does the optional antenna connect?

  • Hack wireless engineers (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, if a "wireless engineer" showed up with an Airport with a hole drilled in the top, I'd kick him out and tell him to get some real tools. Check out some of Fluke's [fluke.com] stuff for starters, like the OptiView [flukenetworks.com]. Professional engineers use professional tools.

  • Style is also important to you? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Style is also important to you

    Hrm. These must be Apple engineers.

  • blah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kwj8fty1 ( 225360 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @07:40PM (#5682681) Homepage
    This is a pointless /. story.

    1. First of all, this 'airport', is really just an RG1100 with a different cover. Sure, you can connect antennas to it. But it's not a "MAC Only" think it's a "Windows thing" that just so happens to have MAC OSX drivers. Google on rg1000 + linux/windows. You'll find several java config tools. Moron.

    2. Anyone who really has the title 'wireless network engineer' would know that building homebrew antennas just isn't worth the time. most of them end up sucking, and it's MUCH cheaper to just purchase one online.

    3. Anyone who cared about the FCC regs wouldn't do this.

    4. To do real LOS tests, you want antenna systems with known gain & radial patterns.

    5. You'll want kistmet, as some other posters highly under-rated posted.
    • Just another note on point #2: if you're going to build yourself an antenna (which is perfectly doable if the topic interests you), be sure you do it properly. A poorly made antenna, not tuned for the frequency you're transmitting on, can reflect much of the RF energy back into the transmitter. This has the effect of slowly frying the amplifier circuitry in your equipment. It's still worth it to experiment, if you're into experimentation, but if you're going to be doing this a lot, or many times, buy a S
      • Just a point on the durability of cantennae. Was involved in this wireless project posted to /. in the autumn [slashdot.org] and we used J&B Whiskey tins as cantennae. They were put up last June and are still up and working nearly a year later, with no signs of failure. They even survived one of the worst gales seen in the west of England for several years (100mph winds if I remember correctly!).
        • I didn't say this explicitly in my other comment, but there's an efficiency loss here too. If your antenna is reflecting a lot of the energy back into the transmitter, that's energy that isn't being pumped out into the ether. Build your antenna well, and your transmitting coverage area could increase dramatically over a similar, untuned antenna.
  • or looking inside the cantena when its powered?
  • Brokaw: This just in, a recent Slashdot posting appears to have provided links to mirrors, reportedly within the posting itself. Is Slashdot finally taking responsibility for proactively avoiding the dreaded "Slashdot effect"? We turn to our Internet correspondent, Last Mile, for analysis. Last?

    Mile: Thanks, Tom. After a series of early morning explosions across the continental United States, in which unsuspecting webservers literally burst into flame following attempted access by over 45 million Slashdot
  • Does that picture remind anyone else of drug paraphenalia? Looks like some sort of hookah, maybe a small bong on the left...

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