Slightly addicted to war driving or relaxing hobby.

Talk about whatever

12 posts • Page 1 of 1
I am lucky to live in one of the most populated cities in the country for wardriving, "Los Angeles". I work 30+ miles from home and the side streets are sometimes as fast the frwys.

So I decided to take my laptop and war drive on the way home one day. Then I realized that driving side streets is actually more relaxing than the frwys. Always something new to see.

Sometimes I get 400+ sites within 3 blocks, that really pushed the stats up.

Upgraded to an Alfa USB 500mw from the Senao. Made a huge difference.

Sitting at my desk at home, I ran a test. My laptop, stationary, with the Senao picked up 12 hotspots. Hooked up just the Alfa and with a 9dbi antenna, it found 29 sites.

Next, changing the OS on the laptop from windows to Linux and run Kismet.

The addiction, is seeing the next person on the stats page that I have to beat. I'm going to be doing this for a long time to get to 2,000,000.

Russell is on my heals right now, have to go and wardrive.

Postby whitedice » Thu Nov 13, 2008 10:43 pm

2 million.... eh? That's an interesting number choice.

You will like the switch to Kismet. I recommend modifying the channel sequencing and speed.

You are well on your way to being "OCWDD" which has sporadically been mentioned on here. Very good.

Welcome to the Top 10.
I am lucky to live in one of the most populated cities in the country for wardriving, "Los Angeles". I work 30+ miles from home and the side streets are sometimes as fast the frwys.

So I decided to take my laptop and war drive on the way home one day. Then I realized that driving side streets is actually more relaxing than the frwys. Always something new to see.

Sometimes I get 400+ sites within 3 blocks, that really pushed the stats up.

Upgraded to an Alfa USB 500mw from the Senao. Made a huge difference.

Sitting at my desk at home, I ran a test. My laptop, stationary, with the Senao picked up 12 hotspots. Hooked up just the Alfa and with a 9dbi antenna, it found 29 sites.

Next, changing the OS on the laptop from windows to Linux and run Kismet.

The addiction, is seeing the next person on the stats page that I have to beat. I'm going to be doing this for a long time to get to 2,000,000.

Russell is on my heals right now, have to go and wardrive.
This is a hobby that you get or forget in the first few weeks. I agree the stats keep me going always looking up to see who's next :D I live in a small town (15000) so I don't have a big pool to dig from but I'm getting there. My goal top 10.

Only using one radio don't know what your missing.

Postby Croshack » Mon Nov 17, 2008 3:13 am

Well....Kismet is running...made the changes to the conf file.

After thinking a bit, kismet is a little slow on scanning, but will live with it for now.

1. Commented out 802.11a because my card does not support that, just 802.11b/g.

2. Set the channelvelocity to 4. Which means that it will complete just one scan every 6 seconds. This gave me the best results, once I slowed down to a respectable 25 mph. Anything over a channelvelocity of 5 and the network count dropped significantly.

3. I am not sure if I need three nics, however. One nic for 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. Then a complete scan can be accomplished in around three seconds. Have to do more research. Also, since Kismet is passive, the antenna is important, not the nic's mw power.

On the good side. Kismet is finding more networks than Netstumbler.

It is going be a fun week.

Postby whitedice » Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:41 am

It has been 2 years since I messed with my config, but what you said about #2 sounds a little off, though with a better explanation might make sense?

#1. I wouldn't worry about scanning for "802.11a." I can't believe there are that many out there to make it even worth getting an 802.11a card.

#2. Channel velocity is the number of channels scanned per second, right? So 4 means it scans 4 channels per second? So how is one (complete scan of channels) scan taking 6 seconds? I assume this is what you mean by "one scan"? Do you have a complicated scanning sequence of 24 numbers? I am using a channel velocity of 7, so I am curious about your statement of setting 5 and over? I'd have a hard time saying that 7 isn't working, as I can drive 30mph around my campus, and collect 3000+ with just a Senao 200mw card, and a mobile mark antenna. I've also probably collected most of my #s at 55+ mph with this kismet config since I pretty much started.

#3. Again, I would say 802.11a is not worth trying to collect (Unless someone can state some reasonable statistics). I would think "g only" networks are pretty rare also, so a 802.11b or b/g cards should be sufficient. A "b" card will detect the "g" network. Wigle's statistics do not keep track of the type or speed of networks anyway.

With regards to mw power, you make a good point (I have no technical background to justify why I use what I use), though most will say the Senao 200mW card is one of the best to use with Kismet, and so I got it, and would concur that it works very well. Other 200mW and 300mW cards I have purchased and mentioned on this site also work very well. My mindset tells me a card that can send at 200mW needs to be able to receive from the distance it is sending to, so it matters in this respect (no idea if this is right)? Why get a 500mW device if this wasn't somewhat true?

If you are going to get multiple devices, the idea is to scatter the sequence over devices, or get directional antennas to focus on certain directions. 2 panel antennas, one facing out each side of your vehicle works very well.

Postby argh » Mon Nov 17, 2008 3:51 pm

I am unfortunate (for wardriving), in that I live in the country, ten miles away from the nearest Pepsi machine (and that's a town of 200). I commute 15 minutes to a town of 50k. I am fortunate however (for life in general), that I love living in the country, and I can see only three other houses.

I don't travel anywhere regularly, but whenver I go outside my normal area, I set up the rig. Fortunately the wife is patient, and enjoys it.

Probably the majority of people in the stats get their first GPS, get hot on wardriving for a month, then forget about it.

Postby Croshack » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:51 pm

It has been 2 years since I messed with my config, but what you said about #2 sounds a little off, though with a better explanation might make sense?

#1. I wouldn't worry about scanning for "802.11a." I can't believe there are that many out there to make it even worth getting an 802.11a card.

#2. Channel velocity is the number of channels scanned per second, right? So 4 means it scans 4 channels per second? So how is one (complete scan of channels) scan taking 6 seconds? I assume this is what you mean by "one scan"? Do you have a complicated scanning sequence of 24 numbers? I am using a channel velocity of 7, so I am curious about your statement of setting 5 and over? I'd have a hard time saying that 7 isn't working, as I can drive 30mph around my campus, and collect 3000+ with just a Senao 200mw card, and a mobile mark antenna. I've also probably collected most of my #s at 55+ mph with this kismet config since I pretty much started.

#3. Again, I would say 802.11a is not worth trying to collect (Unless someone can state some reasonable statistics). I would think "g only" networks are pretty rare also, so a 802.11b or b/g cards should be sufficient. A "b" card will detect the "g" network. Wigle's statistics do not keep track of the type or speed of networks anyway.

With regards to mw power, you make a good point (I have no technical background to justify why I use what I use), though most will say the Senao 200mW card is one of the best to use with Kismet, and so I got it, and would concur that it works very well. Other 200mW and 300mW cards I have purchased and mentioned on this site also work very well. My mindset tells me a card that can send at 200mW needs to be able to receive from the distance it is sending to, so it matters in this respect (no idea if this is right)? Why get a 500mW device if this wasn't somewhat true?

If you are going to get multiple devices, the idea is to scatter the sequence over devices, or get directional antennas to focus on certain directions. 2 panel antennas, one facing out each side of your vehicle works very well.
Still learning this, but I came up with 6 seconds because of the 24 total channels for b & g.

In the conf file I am scanning 12 channels for "b" and 12 channels for "g". I assume it will 1st go through the 12 "b" channels which would take 3 seconds and also 3 seconds for the "g" channels. Which takes a total of 6 seconds.

I have an old compaq m300 laptop, which is running pretty much at 95%-100% with kismet.

For channel velocity, I parked the car for a while. Changed to a channel velocity of 4 and received 17 networks. After upping it to 5 and higher would, the results would slowly creep up from 12 to 17 after about 30 seconds. The delay is probably caused by the laptop I am using.

Postby littledave » Tue Nov 18, 2008 12:23 pm

Still learning this, but I came up with 6 seconds because of the 24 total channels for b & g.
80211b and 80211g use the same frequency. So there is only 12 channels not 24.

I have an old compaq m300 laptop, which is running pretty much at 95%-100% with kismet.


My first linux box was a 233mhz toughbook and it scanned slow,even worst with a 2nd card.

Postby Croshack » Mon Nov 24, 2008 2:48 am

I've been using Kismet for about two weeks.

Drove around areas that I already covered...and WOW!

Before I picked up about 700....with Kismet over 2,000.

Made a huge difference.

Believe it when someone says Kismet is better than Netstumbler.
I too find war driving very addictive. My stats went up every single day with my equipment. My linux laptop with a kismet picked up over a thousand since i was stationary at home and at the office. The package really made a huge difference with respect to my old setup. I'm still starting out but ideally I will reach the same mark sooner or later.

John Russell
Vitamix | Vitamix 5200 | Vitamix Recipes
I'm just using my cellphone, because it has the GPS built right in. And its always there. I can pick up about 1,000 sites on the way to work. And the points seem to accurately average where they should be. Beautifully populated maps.

I have one of those fancy phase array yagi antennas (vagi) and had lots of fun with it. Just sit on top of a hill and point it at the city. Thousands of access points in minutes and they kept beeping in. If I had a GPS, there would be a few thousand spots in one location. It was pure cheating. I experimented with the kernel wifi driver by expanding the receiving range to cover the card's limits of about 2.1-2.8GHz. The highest channel I found being used somewhere in this city was 14.
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I live in one of the most densely populated areas on the east coast. Just a few miles away from NYC. I am completely addicted to wigle on my android phone. I like many others here, constantly look at stats to see who is above me. While 2 million is a number that I am far away from I think that within the short amount of time I have been uploading my files to wigle I've done pretty well. My short term goal is to be within the top 50 within the next 2 months. Something that is very attainable at my current rate

Most of the discoveries are made while I drive, but I have noticed that certain areas that I stop to walk around gives me way more discovered networks. So come summer time, I will be able to get a substantially higher number from building complexes that I pass by when I push my son in his stroller as opposed to driving by in my car.

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