Extend your wifi range from a public hotspot for ham radio
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- Опубліковано 27 сер 2024
- This is a short video i made just to show how we utilized wifi internet from a public hotspot and shared it locally among 6 computers, totally legal, totally free during our ham radio field day event. This process can be applied to any event in the field given the ability to utilize a public wifi hotspot. Stealing wifi is not legal, and i do not condone any illegal or malicious reception from a secured wireless internet access point.
I won't comment on the legalities, because I have no earthly idea about the subject. However, I do have a comment on how totally cool that setup is! One day maybe I will get to be smart enough to make things like you do.
Wow! as a person that is just getting into this I am blown away! I can see a lot of benefits to the WIFI booster! Was disconnecting and reconnecting the internal to external antenna "simple" or did you have to solder to the circuit board or make your own connector? I'm wondering if a person could put an SMA IN/OUT rather than the USB out to put this in-line with an antenna to a cell modem. Thanks for sharing!
si muy bien ya hay tecnologías de mas bajo precio y más rápidas pero en su momento es la mejor solución. Felicitaciones
Pro tip.... dont use your callsign as your gmail lol.
Very nice! I'm looking at something similar, to bring WiFi into my ham shack located about 100 yards from the house. I do have a line of sight but the signal is just too weak for a reliable connection. I was thinking about connecting and external, directional antenna to my wireless router at the house. It's the same router, with two small antennas. One question no one was able to answer is how the two antennas work. Are they phased or totally separate (RX and Tx separated ). How did you know which side to connect the Yagi antenna to?
I think they are both TX and rx, I know when yoy flash these routers for Hamnet mesh networking, with the custom firmware on that router you can designate one antenna for TX and one for rx, but I think stock they both TX rx
Im pretty sure i can do any of this legally without ever hearing a peep from the fcc. I dont understand what KC8rwr's problem is.
Ham guys don't know about Wi-Fi. Two different antennas , lol
www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless-mobility/wireless-lan-wlan/27147-multipath.html
Well not only do i work for a company installing wifi and fiber daily, i have built antennas out of a lot of different materials... So i don't understand your logic..
By the way, i just got done teaching classes on WLAN for 2 months.
Happy 4th of July
What does it matter where you work or what you teach? You don't understand effects of multi-path on 802.11g and reason for antenna diversity. Also 12dB yagi to go 20 feet? Really?
Read the link... expand your mind
i agree, but a couple of guys argued with me they needed the 12dB antenna for them, so i just set up their own router there with their antenna to make them satisfied. But the trailer on the other side of the place there didnt have wifi without that yagi, so it gave them 38% signal inside the metal trailer with it...that was over 100 feet away. Not 20 feet.
And i am familiar with multipath, we experience this with good propagation on HF, short path 1200 miles point to point and long path all the way around the world, resulting in a slight "echo" of received signal but of course no error correction or anything on HF bands, but why do i even care about that while using my wifi dish, when it successfully brought us the same speeds as being 10 feet from the router? This video isnt here to explain to anyone how WiFi works, or understand radio waves and theories, its here to get people to click on it, build an audience, and sell ads for the people that are interested.
This is legal? I wish it were but sorry, it isn't! You should know that after passing your test!
It is true that in the US WiFi bands are shared with amateur radio bands. It is also true that a ham may and do repurpose WiFi gear for amateur use and even get to use a higher output power. Using that higher output power however means that the amateur must comply with all of the part 97 (amateur radio) rules rather than part 15 (unlicensed) rules that normally cover WiFi. That opens these users up to 2 issues that I am sure about, probably a 3rd too.
- Part 97 does not allow for encryption. That link was using WPA2.
- Part 97 requires the amateur to identify themselves with their callsigns at least every 10 minutes. Usually when hams use wifi gear as ham radio they make the SSID their callsign.
I would imagine that these two rules would make it impossible to connect to an Xfinity hotspot. Can the SSID be changed and encryption turned off?
- Also I'm not 100% sure about this but I don't think stations operating under parts 97 and 15 are allowed to communicate with one another. Maybe somebody can confirm or deny this for me.
It might be possible to legally get internet access. If you talked to the owners of one of the homes you might have been able to set up a non-encrypted gateway with the club callsign as SSID not unlike how they shared the connection among their camp.
Even so most ham wifi networks do not include internet access for a reason. As soon as somebody uses any encryption they are no longer legal. That means no webpages via https. I supose you can check your email but the password, messages and everything have to be sent in the clear, not a good idea. Also, don't even think about checking your work email as you have a pecuniary interest in that making it also illegal over part 97.
Some might point out that you probably could have done this with an ordinary lower power dongle. If he had to use any kind of aftermarket antenna with higher gain than the original or even mount the dongle with it's stock antenna in a reflector that would still be breaking part15 rules as they are written in terms of Effective Radiated Power, not transmitter output power. You would still have to operate under part 97.
Honestly I don't mean to spoil anybody's fun by posting this. I really do wish there was a part15 band that allowed greater distances. I do not wish to see part 97 opened up to allow it though. Free long distance internet would use up all of our bandwidth fast!
I actually do apreciate WiFi hacks assuming they aren't interfering with anybody. I'm not sure it fits with field day though. Hams are usually pretty big sticklers about the rules because we don't want the FCC to ever see us as a hassle as then we would likely start losing privileges.
What the he'll are you talking about.. we were using the Internet to log contacts. Hundreds of thousands of free public wifi hotspots are available to me because I am a subscriber... how do you have wpa2 on an unsecured hot spot anyways?
I'm sorry, you are right, you weren't using WPA. I saw the little yellow mark around 2:06 and mistook it for the WPA symbol. Also at one point you hovered the mouse over a different WiFi network and I saw WPA there. I didn't realize the first time around that it was a different network.
I guess it would be hard to use WPA and keep the network open unless they gave the key to all their customers (unlikely) or required the installation of some sort of connection manager program (they don't).
According to Comcast's FAQ the login page you have to go to enable the connection uses encryption so i guess there is that and also the identification issue. It's not nearly as bad as I thought though.
+kc8rwr so back to the original question... what does encryption on wifi have to do with operating HF on field day on the amateur radio bands?
Still waiting for your answer...
+HamRadioConcepts Dude, really? A full watt into those antennas? That's an ERP of way over the limit for part 15! But you claimed to be legal. I assumed you thought you were operating the WiFi under part 97 which can be done since the wifi band overlaps the 2.4ghz ham band. But then you have to id on your wifi, can't use encryption to enter your passwords and probably can't connect to something they us running under part 15 such as the Xfinity router. This has nothing to do with the field day contacts you were making on your radios.