Greg In The Desert

Truth Or Consequences, NM blogger Mikey Sklar came up with a metal bowl and Alfa WiFi adapter
to scan for an open wireless networks when his internet went out.

We suffered from two disastrous outages last week. First a data line was cut somewhere north of TorC and south of Albuquerque. We had no cell service (AT&T) or any internet in all of town for a full work day. Nobody could use credit cards, ATMs, or even purchase gas. This was closely followed with our home internet connection dying. I called the cable company on day 3 to complain and they fixed it almost immediately. The issue was a dead amplifier used to boost the signal to all the trailer hookups on our property. In order to keep our sanity through this week of dead connections I rigged up a 1W Wi-Fi card to pickup the free internet signal in a nearby park about a 1/3 of a mile from my home. I was blown away to discover 50 other Wi-Fi networks being available at the same time. About 50% of those are open or using easily defeated WEP. I highly recommend picking up a 1W alfa card for less than $40. Now I just need a bigger dish. Works fine with all platforms and has a recent driver release for OS/X which makes it much easier to use.

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