Re: Aesthetic ceiling mounted wi-fi access points

[Doogie Brodie <ukhad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dean Barrett wrote:

> It must be to do with the WAP that is being used. At home i have two
and if
> i move more than two blockwork walls away the signal drops
tremendously.

Partly also due to the location of the AP etc... basically the higher
the AP, the wider the signal radius.... I'm sure there's some
complicated formulas out there describing it properly ;)

> However i was sitting outside a customers building today, in my tin
box car
> then their brick and blockwork offices and managed to utilise net
> connections on 3 open Wireless networks one of which had 100% strength
on my
> Dell Axim !!
>
> I was a little suprised by this, especially as i was informed that the
> networks belong to Computer specialists :)

Hehehehe..... in these things, there's using, and there's using.......
it might be that they're intentionally set up as free net access points
(possibly even on something like consume.net - try the postcode) and are
properly firewalled from the rest of the LAN (or requiring VPN or some
other reasonably secure form of authentication), so that the worst you
could do is use the net/ sniff the passwords of anyone else using that
wireless point for net access.

Or it could just be that they unwrapped, plugged in and left it
(potentially giving anyone in range access to their entire LAN!), in
which case you want to go down and as well as the service you're
currently doing for them, offer them IT security consultancy :-D

Cheers
--
Doogie