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Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

802.11 for Vehicles? 53

Posted by Cliff from the hope-you've-got-a-good-car-alarm dept.
mantid asks: "I am about to do a long trip (1 year) in a VW Vanagon, and would like to set up wireless net access from within the vehicle. What is the most effective system for hassle-free, permanent, long-term installation? Note, this is not just for wardriving, many truckstops, netcafes, and coffee shops are now offering legit net access. I just don't want to have to bring laptop inside to do it. Please suggest tried and true antenna types as well as tips/concerns/issues."
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802.11 for Vehicles? More

802.11 for Vehicles?

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  • Instead of typing all your thoughts and experiences into your computer, why not write it down on paper? You can draw big sketches of the people you meet and the things you see. Of course it makes sense to bring along a digital camera and a big hard disk to hold your photos.

    Write about what thrills you out on the road, and write it on paper so that it is personal and intimate, and when you've finally worked it into a polished gem release it to the world.

    Imagine your trip as your being born a second time.

    • Re:Bring some sketch paper instead (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DjReagan ( 143826 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:07AM (#8111129)
      Which is all very nice and well.. but it is not what he wants, and doesn't answer his question.

      One shouldn't project ones own values onto everyone else.

    • Re:Bring some sketch paper instead (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Peridriga ( 308995 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:34AM (#8111206)
      Why not bike?
      -- Smell the smells, hear the sounds.

      Why not fly?
      -- Quicker way to get there

      Why are these answers wrong? Because he didn't ask the question....

      He said "I am about to do a long trip (1 year) in a VW Vanagon", he didn't say I'm driving around the US drawing big sketches of the people I meet and things I see what are some tablet PC's or good drawing tablets for my PC.

      What is he's a traveling salesmen that needs to keep up w/ his email, or log his sales, create invoices, surf the web to keep up w/ news etc.

      It's usually good when someone asks a question to answer it...

  • Why Wi-Fi? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @03:54AM (#8110399) Journal
    My boss has a wireless account with Verizon, and a self-contained PCMCIA device to access it. All-you-can-eat bandwidth from wherever you happen to be in the US that you can see a tower from for ~$70/mo.

    It seems reliable, and fast enough that I didn't get pissed off doing typical web browsing.

    For double-extra-special bonus points, add an external antenna.

    Or, just go ahead and do the Wi-Fi thing. Might be cheaper, and is sure to be faster and less available.

    Build an antenna, or buy an antenna, or whatever.

    If I were feeling cheap, I'd start with a cell phone antenna and then cut it to length for the correct frequency. If I were feeling spendy, I'd buy a high-gain omni from Tessco [tessco.com] and invest a lot of time mounting and cabling it.

    Then just plug the kit into your Proxim/Orinoco/Lucent card, drive to town, and waste half a day looking for a legitimate hotspot.

    • If I were feeling cheap, I'd start with a cell phone antenna and then cut it to length for the correct frequency.

      If you were going to do that, you could just get a rod from a hobby shop (made of that springy stuff, I think they use it in RC planes), and cut it to length.

      For a nice cheap omni, one can construct a 2.4Ghz discone antenna, or buy one from Ramsey electronics (hit google). Discones are really simple to build, I think Ramsey's are made from a cake tin and a conic section of metal (probably als
    • Sprint offers that as well. Heres a little page with more about it: http://www.patents.com/pcs/ it has quite a bit of pricing. I recomend the sprint, iv used there wireless internet access before and it was quite nice. BTW: I relize this is not the answer to the real question.

  • FlyingJ (Score:5, Informative)

    by astrashe ( 7452 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @04:12AM (#8110461) Journal
    (This is a little off topic, but hopefully not too far.)

    I've used FlyingJ hotspots on the road, and you don't really need a special antenna -- in general, the reception is fine from inside the car with a normal pcmcia wifi card.

    The parking lots are pretty big, and there are places where the reception isn't great, but it's usually pretty easy to drive to another part of the lot to improve your signal. I worked under the theory that the networks were designed to provide the best signals to the truckers, so I tended to park closer to the truck section.

    Most of the problems I had seemed to be caused by mistakes on the FlyingJ side of things. I think they had a fairly bloody roll out. In order to user their system, you have to create an account and login.

    You do that by pulling up a browser, and letting it detect the proxy server settings automatically. If you haven't logged in, the proxy server redirects you to a page where you can submit your cc or login if you already have an account.

    I found that at a lot of locations, things weren't working. My computer couldn't find the proxy server, or whatever. At a couple of locations the system was just open -- there was no login, and it worked fine.

    In general, though, it's pretty cool. The FlyingJ's were spaced out so that I could check my email and surf the web a couple of times a day. It's not expensive, and when it works, it works pretty well. I could use ssh and vnc to pull up my home desktop, and it was useable.

    I bought the cheapest accounts, 15 minutes at a time. That turned out to be a good plan, mostly because some truck stops didn't have working networks.

    It's tempting to look at your route and tell yourself, "I'll be able to hit these two other truck stops in the next 24 hours -- so I'll save money and buy a 24 hour account." The problem is that sometimes the next truck stop didn't work when I got there. It would have sucked to have paid more, expecting to be able to use a wireless net that was down.

    I took two road trips, one maybe 8 months ago, and another about 6 months ago, and the FlyingJ system was substantially more reliable the second time around. So I'd expect them to have something reasonably solid now, But I wouldn't pay for a long term account until I *knew* it was solid.

    • Re:FlyingJ (Score:3, Funny)

      by mjpaci ( 33725 )
      Cool. Many Starbucks have wireless LANs. However, you don't want to use Starbucks' WLAN as they are large, faceless, and only out to make money--the bastards. Instead, look around for another coffee shop close to the Starbucks--they may have installed WIFI as well to compete with the large, faceless, and only out to make money--the bastards Starbucks.

      Go inside, buy a large coffee and a muffin, and then sit in your car and browse away. You don't have to eat the muffin or drink the coffee--that's just to kee

    • If you are doing a year long trip, it might be worth buying 1 year access, assuming you will be near a flying-J often enough to use them.

    • Flying J Internet Access info [tonservices.com].

      Pricing:

      1 Hour ............. $1.95

      1 Day ............. $4.95

      1 Month ............. $24.95

      1 Year ............. $199.95

      And a map with their service locations [tonservices.com].

      It looks like Internet access is provided by TON Services [tonservices.com] which provides drivers and travelers easy access to pre-paid calling cards, load/equipment posting, freight matching, advertising services, truck insurance, and other driver related services all through the RoadLink System located in Flying J Trave

    • I worked under the theory that the networks were designed to provide the best signals to the truckers, so I tended to park closer to the truck section.

      It just so happens that my GF works at a Flying J. She just confirmed to me that they locate and point their WiFi antennas to give the best reception to the truckers in the truck lot.

      Also, she tells me that (as would be expected) that the best reception is inside of the building. A fair number of truckers carry laptops and take them inside.

      LK
  • Just drive up and use the antenna on your laptop... If you need more than that get a cantenna. Why the hell would you want to mount the whole thing on your car ?

  • Brings me back (Score:3, Interesting)

    by d99-sbr ( 568719 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @04:26AM (#8110527) Journal
    Brings me back to the summer of 2001, when my friends and I went on a road trip for a few weeks. In the vehicle we had a setup consisting of:

    * 5 laptops
    * 802.11b network
    * 1 GPRS cell phone (~20 kBit, and free of charge at that time)
    * 1 Bluetooth card in one of the laptops, interfacing the cell phone.

    So in essence all but one of the laptops relied on three separate radio links: WLAN to the gateway, bluetooth from the gateway to the cell phone, and GPRS/GSM to the "net". Funny thing was it actually worked surprisingly well.

    We didn't do any serious latency or throughput tests, but everybody was able to use IM and email, and the more patient of us could even browse the net.
    • That reminds me of the time I hung out with rich kids who would sit in a room together, talking to other people and each other, only through AIM.

      When I suggested we go out and actually do something, they looked at me funny.

      They had the biggest and best machines with nice expensive flat panels...soley to run AIM on.

    • That sounds like a car thief's dream
  • Another place you might be able to get a connection is nearby Circuit Citys and Best Buys. I was in each recently and was fiddling around with the cool laptops and discovered that both places were running totally unprotected WiFi Access Points. Not sure if it was to allow customers to access the Internet or not, didn't try, just noticed that the hot spots were totally open.

  • Hotspot finders (Score:5, Informative)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @08:27AM (#8111391)
    You might consider using wifinder.com [wifinder.com] or wi-fihotspotlist.com [wi-fihotspotlist.com] to find out where your next hotspot will be. Just make sure to copy down several locations for possible next destinations -- you'd hate to get to your next spot and discover it missing and have no way to access the internet to find a hotpsot.

  • If you're willing to do a permanent mount... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tvsjr ( 242190 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @09:04AM (#8111552)
    The best way to get 802.11b/g coverage from your vehicle is to use a real external antenna. This leaves you with two options - buy something that's magnetic mount (easily available on the Net) or punch a hole in the roof and put a real antenna and mount in.

    For my 2.4 solution, I installed an "NMO" antenna mount on the roof of my Expedition (drilling holes doesn't bother me - there's a total of 15 antennas mounted on the roof using NMO mounts, each of which requires a 3/4"-diameter hole).

    First, find you an 802.11 card with an external antenna connector. The Orinoco 802.11b-only Gold works very nicely. Buy a pigtail to convert from the little push-on connector on the edge of the card (MCX?) to something more standard, like an N.

    Next, buy the appropriate mount and antenna. The mount coax will be somewhat inflexible and will have a solid center conductor, so you'll need to be careful not to crush/damage it.
    Maxrad mounts [maxrad.com]

    And an antenna:
    Maxrad antennas [maxrad.com]
    I use the BMAXC24503 model. The 5db gain is nicer, but longer.

    Drill a hole in the roof, install the mount, run the coax down through one of the pillars, connect to your pigtail, and connect to the card. You'll be amazed at the difference over your internal "antenna" (more like a dummy load.)

    Installing antennas (drilling holes in the roof) is not for the faint of heart. Check with your local 2-way radio installers, and they might be able to put the antenna in for you for not too much money.
    • Note that NMO's come in much more than thru-hole setups; you can get anything from a mag-mount NMO base, to a clamp-style trunk lid mount (my favorite), etc.

    • First, the connector on the Lucent/Avaya/Orinoco/Proxim equipment is known as "MC" or MC-Card". Cisco and others use MMCX, which is just a hair bigger and slightly differently shaped. IIRC, the Senao card uses MMCX, and you should consider it for your trip because it has higher output power and better receive sensitivity than any of the others.

      Second, yeah the card's integrated antenna is crap. Anything external that's even close to the right band will do better. I disagree that external mounting is a big
  • Get a magnetic mount antenna from HyperLink Tech [hyperlinktech.com].

    Alternatively you might consider getting one of their pole mounted 12dbi omni antennas, it might not be that noticeable if you place it on the side of your vehicle, perhaps near the bumper.
  • I remember reading from somewhere that an old DSS dish will give you even better directional signal than a cantenna. Although pulling up in a van and pointing satelite dishes at places may raise some questions...

  • DashPC (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lcde ( 575627 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @11:46AM (#8113023) Homepage
    A good site is www.dashpc.com [dashpc.com]. Although this guy has a lot of stuff in his, a simple setup of a computer and such may be all you need.

    I am looking for a simular setup and plan on using the Senao 200mW wireless card to boost performance from within the car.

  • Vehicle-mounted ACCESS POINT?... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @01:43PM (#8114260) Homepage

    I've been toying with a related idea - but instead of setting up a 'client' system, I was considering trying to set up a portable "access point" and internal "network" in a vehicle.

    I find it odd that even today nobody blinks if someone says they're building a LAN and doesn't mention internet access, but if someone says "wifi" it's automatically assumed it's only for The Internet(tm)...

    I'm thinking of taking a "scrounged" ancient laptop, Prism 2/2.5/3-based 802.11b card, hostap [epitest.fi] (is there a hostap-type linux driver for prism GT chipsets yet?), and a trimmed down linux distro running dhcp, dns, and web servers (maybe even Samba) to provide 'local network only' connections to passers by as I travel, just as an experiment. Maybe even some sort of 'chat' facility. (Mainly just because I'm curious how many people would notice, how many people would immediately disconnect when they got the "this doesn't provide internet access" page, and how many would browse the [legally] free downloads, "sign" the guestbook, and so on...)

    On the other hand, I'd also like to figure out how to interface with Kismet [kismetwireless.net] so as to "pause" it when a potentially-open network is detected and have a script check to see if it's REALLY open (a lot of "open" networks seem to still restrict by MAC address, or aren't running DHCP servers, or otherwise are not designed to be connected to by just anyone) and perhaps "burst" a quick email send/recieve as I drive by before having Kismet resume scanning...

    • I've had that sort of idea in my head for a while now as well. Let me know if you find anything useful :).

      --
      lds
    • I've been toying with a related idea - but instead of setting up a 'client' system, I was considering trying to set up a portable "access point" and internal "network" in a vehicle.

      What a very cool idea! If you and your extended family were on a trip in multiple vehicles, you could have a multi-vehicle mobile LAN. Kind of like having CB or FRS radios, but more geeky.

      As for passing motorists... here's a service you could provide, though it would violate any number of TOS: provide internet access to fell
    • is there a hostap-type linux driver for prism GT chipsets yet?

      Just a followup to this part of my own post - evidently, according to the January 8th 2004 "News" post at www.prism54.org (Prism GT driver for Linux) [prism54.org] they DO have "Master" mode working and you CAN use supported cards as an access point. Nifty, now I've got an excuse to upgrade my "main" laptop's wireless card to an 802.11g and use the 802.11b that I'm currently on for my little project...

    • What a fascinating idea. I used to set my SSID to something odd while driving around just on the off chance that someone would notice it.

      Serve DHCP, intercept all HTTP requests, and have fun. Maybe an IRC server too, along with an instant Java client for the visitors who don't have one installed already.

      On more than one occasion, I've used my laptop and Nextel Packetstream data service to provide a local 802.11b hotspot where none existed. It's dialup speed, but adequate for my friends to check their emai
    • Sounds a lot like an old-school BBS, using 802.11 as a transport, instead of POTS.

      Cool idea.

      S
    • I do exactly this. When on long trips in the RV, I just turn on the inverter and change the SSID to my "RVNet [my email address]". I have actually received messages from wardrivers who saw the AP.

      If you see this SSID (or my regular "No Beer and No TV Make Homer..."), look around for a large tan/brown striped motorhome. (38' Fleetwood Discovery Diesel for those interested)
    • This reminds me of programming competition trips in college. We'd always have an inverter or two running. On one trip, we thought about running an access point in the full-size van and playing Counter-Strike or something on the trip. We were going to call it a Vehicle-Area Network, or VAN.

      That's about when our Bender instincts kicked in: "I'm going to make my own VAN...with blackjack, and hookers! Ah, forget the VAN! In fact, screw the whole thing!"
  • Use a Pringles can antenna (http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448)

    Cheap, Portable, and a definite chick magnet!

  • WiFi access (Score:2, Insightful)

    by damitbill ( 66375 )
    My wife and I recently did a two month trip thru Canada and Alaska and we were able to get wifi by wardriving in almost every town. I have a Zaurus with kismet running and we'd drive thru a town with the Z running and it would beep on every 'hit'. It was easy to then get details about the AP. If it was WEP then I figured they locked the door (although AirSnort would have worked) and we'd go on to the next one. There was one available in every town we visited. Grocery stores all have them although many are W
  • In some states they're making it illegal to have any active displays present in a vehicle where they are visible from any front seat, whether or not the vehicle is in motion. This should be kept in mind when considering any permanent installations in a vehicle.
  • There are several external antennas that you can buy that would work well, I'd look for a mag mount unless you really like to drill holes in your car.

    As to which 802.11 nic you can use, it won't be a cheap one. I don't know if you're using a laptop, or a "customized" desktop installed in the car, but I'd look for cards like the Cisco AIR-PCI352 for the desktop, or the Cisco AIR-LMC352 PC Card.

    The PCI card has a standard RP-TNC connector. The PC Card has a smaller MMCX connector, but both will allow you to
  • right now a cellular modem is the best idea. but to use WIFI, get a router that runs a 12v (linksys makes one) then power that from your car (unless that VW is a wierd 9v model) get a wireless router with NAT to secure your computers and then a few directoinal anntennea for the best signal, pluss some mounting hardware for it. You should be good.
  • Get a laptop that can do both Bluetooth (either built in, like most PowerBooks, or with a small dongle) and Wi-Fi. Then get a T-Mobile cell phone service and a Bluetooth-enabled phone. Any T-Mobile voice plan of $40 or more comes with free T-Zones access, which gives untimed, unlimited access to ports 80, 110, and 143. If you need ssh and can't tell the daemon to listen to one of those ports, get the $19.99 Unlimited Internet option that gives complete access to all ports. Either way, you get roughly 33.6K
  • Jam a satellite dish on your vehicle, get an 802.11 access point and cards for each pc. Check your friendly yellow pages for a satellite ISP that covers the States, dont forget your power supply (generator). Then its only 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark and were wearing sunglasses... hit it!

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