Find Mentor Wireless
Some of you already know where “Mentor Wireless” is located. Some of you don’t. This goes out to everyone who doesn’t already. Wardrive, find Mentor Wireless, and you’ll have the opportunity to purchase: Read more
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Mentor Wireless
108mbit Wifi
Looks like D-Link and Netgear have bumped up wireless speeds to 108Mbit on some of there 802.11g networking products. Its about time wireless speeds are are up to par with average wired speeds. I’ve already filled my budget for wireless products This year, maybe next year. Read more
Wardriving Page Updated
Mentor Wireless is now using WiGLE: An online database which accepts “stumbles” or “WiLDs” in the “wi-scan”, “wi-scan with extensions” and “CWGD” formats (GPS tagged data about wireless networks). NetStumbler, DStumbler, Kismet and other clients generate data in these formats. Data is stored in a database, locations are triangulated, and data is shared via web requests. Submit your wardriving results directly into WIGLE or email them to Mentor Wireless Read more
Re Dlink Range Extender
I’ve been using my setup of DWL-800AP+’s and my AP-200 long enough to give an update on functionality. There is no doubt in my mind that the DWL-800AP+ is compatible with Orinoco access points and client cards. There are, however, a few hiccups. The biggest problem I have, is getting the client card to connect to the right mac address. Normally, it will connect to the weak signal of my AP-200 instead of the DWL-800AP+. It takes some tinkering, to get my card to finally connect to the D-Link repeater. Now, once I’m connected to the D-Link repeater, everything works perfectly. I have no problems with wireless connectivity, and my signal is excellent. I will be using all D-Link on the server side (ap and repeater) in the following weeks, days. This will better help me to determine if my connection problems are compatibility issues or otherwise. Read more
Driving Around Mentor
Apparently I’m not the only one doing some wardriving. Here is a work in progress wardriving page started by someone I’ve been talking with over Aim. All the spots are clickable. Send us your kismet/netstumbler data (gps please!) to incorporate it the Mentor Wireless map. Read more
Dlink Range Extender
The D-Link AirPlus DWL-800AP+ is an enhanced 802.11b Wireless Range Extender that can operate as a Wireless Access Point or Wireless Repeater. I personally bought two of these to use in repeater mode with my Orinoco (yes, it works) AP-200 access point. Now I can sit comfortably and maintain an excellent wireless signal. Read more
Case Free Wifi
CLEVELAND – In what could be the largest public wireless service in the world, Case Western Reserve University is opening more than 1,230 Cisco Aironet 1200 Series wireless access points on September 1, providing free Internet access to faculty, students, staff and visitors to the Case campus and University Circle. Read more
Mhs Wifi
I was let in on the news that Mentor High School will be installing wireless access points this school year for the use of the schools staff. It will be interesting to see how far outside the building the coverage area may be. Apple Airports will be used. Updated information will follow in the future. Read more
Non Line Of Sight
I’ve been in contact with a company for a few months now that may be bringing a non line of site wireless solution to Mentor, Ohio. They say they could cover approximately 95 percent of the city and sell their services for the prices of DSL. I will keep everyone posted and release the name of and website of the company when the time is right. Read more
Mapping Software
We are looking for good mapping software, inexpensive, that will work well to display Wardriving and GPS data. Contact Mentor wireless if you have any recogmendations. We want the maps to be of great quality. Read more
Looking For You
We are improving our site. Wardrivers in Lake County - send us your map data. Wireless Internet Providers - send us a description of what you provide; include your website. Consumers, Businesses, and anyone else - send us what you know, and what you want to know. Contact us using the link on top of this site. Read more
War Driving Cle
I did some war driving in Cleveland this Christmas Eve. Check it out on the Nodes page. As usual, I found a lot more than expected… Also, just as I predicted Cleveland has a lot more wireless than Mentor. Read more
Irc Applet
I’ve added a IRC Java Applet from JPilot.com to the website. This way those of you without an IRC client can jump on to freenetworks.org’s IRC Server and start chatting with other wireless geeks from around the world. The applet is very configurable, I’ve added a few channels to chose from: wireless, wardriving, freenetworks, mentorwireless. As in any other IRC Client type /list once connected to find other channels to join. Besides, I find it very cool, and convenient! Read more
Orinoco Ap 200 Antenna
Have an Orinoco AP-200? Want to add an external antenna? Check out the Mentor Wireless FAQ. Read more
Metamorphosis
As many regulars to the website may have noticed over the past couple of days I can’t seem to make up my mind how I want it to look anymore! I keep changing everything. The apearance has improved (I hope) and will continue to improve as I decide what I want and where I want it. It hopefully will apear more professional. My goal is to arrive at something comparable to the amazing NYCwireless front page. Read more
News Archived
I’ve just finished archiving the old news, and updating the header of the page. I’ll working on giving Mentor Wireless a face lift and adding more content over the next few months. As for the counters on top of the screen - they are static, I have to manually update them, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Please feel free to send Mentor Wireless some emails, per the questions in the new header… Your input is appreciated. Read more
Get Connected
I went war driving friday and saturday. I picked up many more access points than I thought I would - and with only the internal antenna of my Orinoco card! Anyways, I made these part of the new Get Connected page. There are three color codes on the page. Yellow - Unknown if we can use them, Red - Don’t use them, Green - Go ahead and use them. Obviously, I had to put that disclaimer out there. I don’t want anyone getting themselves in trouble and blaiming it on me. The locations are in the general area of where I got the signal. I was going anywhere between 25 to 50 mph. The map was made with and old mapping program StreetFinder ‘97 and Paint. I did my best to pinpoint the location, but the map is not that good, and like I said, I was going pretty fast. Read more
Take A Peek
It’s what all have you have been waiting for! Check it out here. It’s still a prototype, but will be online by next week. Read more
Wireless Arrived
I’m typing this, wirelessly connected. It took some time finding the right (temporary) postition for my access point, but its up and running. I’ll do some more extenstive testing over the next few weeks. If you happen to see ‘mentorwireless’ popup while war driving (very doubtful) feel free to jump on! Everything is Orinoco here, silver cards (WEP is flawed anyways, we don’t need 128-bit) and AP-200. I just got done installing netstumbler and should be posting reports about the Mentor area soon. Likely, I’ll need to construct an antenna to get any good results… Transmission Closed… Read more
Cantenna
Stumling around on the new Google News I found a link to a link about How To Build A Tin Can Waveguide Antenna. I thought it may be of interest to some. I plan on following this website and building an antenna once my new Orinoco cards arrive (sometime today). Read more
Un Advised
There’s an article on the BBC about how the UN is being briefed on the problems of wireless networks. Predictable conclusions - security is mainly compromised through human, not technological factors. Read more
The Wireless City
This week’s NY Times City Section has an article on wireless access in New York City’s busiest park, Bryant Park. The director of the park has installed a free 802.11b network with complete coverage of the park with help from NYC Wireless. From the article: ‘With some clever engineering and hardware from Cisco Systems and Intel, the wireless park was born. Just as park users could sit wherever they liked, so too could they gain access where they liked. The eight-megabytes-per-second connection was as free as the sunshine and the green grass.’ NYC Wireless is currently working with the Parks Dept. to put similar networks in Madison Square and Tompkins Square Parks. Read more
Access Point 1
I’m in the process of purchasing an ORiNOCO AP-200 and two ORiNOCO Silver PC Cards. When these arive Mentor Wireless will have an access point up, at last. The site will be changing at that time and should become much more active. The mailing list will be restarted, the members list trimmed, and the news kept current. Since I have had a hard time finding people willing to help out over the past year, I’m going to see if I can get things going on my own. After that, we’ll see if anyone wants to help out. The most troubling part about getting Mentor Wireless started, as much as I hate to say it, is the location. It’s not like New York, or Seattle… its a suburb. Read more
Coming Soon
In the works are various improvements that will bring Mentor Wireless back to life. (1) An Access Point/Hot Spot submission system is under development. This will allow users to submit locations where access points are available for usage. This is the area in which the Mentor Wireless website has been useless in the past. Hopefully this will allow the site to become more popular, and ultimately, more useful. If you run, or know of any of these access points, please contact Mentor Wireless today! (2) The Member directory is currently being improved to allow filtering and sorting by column headings. In the past this had to be done manually. The member directory itself is losing its value, but will be kept for historical purposes and record keeping of Members (obviously). Read more
Ibm Us Wide Network
IBM, INTEL, AND a number of wireless services operators are considering building a wireless data network across the U.S., according to The New York Times. The scheme, called Project Rainbow, would enable users of handheld and portable computers to access the Internet and corporate networks at high speed using wireless links based on the 802.11 standard, the newspaper said on its Web site Tuesday morning. The companies involved – which also include AT&T; Wireless Services, Verizon Communications, and Cingular Wireless – would build access points in public places such as airports but would not try to supply access to people’s homes, according to the report. The companies will take several months to decide whether there is a workable business model for the plan, the report said, quoting an executive involved with the scheme. Read more
Cable Companies Say No
According to this story from CNet, Time Warner Cable is going after people who share their wireless connections via NYC Wireless or other public share networks. This is just bad news for everyone… Read more
Missing Emails
Looks like my mail filters were preventing any email from getting to Mentor Wireless staff from the website for most of the month of June. Sorry for ignoring anyone, it wasn’t intentional. If you sent a email and did not get a response, please send it again! Read more
Long Range Wireless
TechTV has an article on standard wireless products reaching ranges of 50 miles. How? All this is done by modifying the existing wireless cards to act as repeaters. The men behind the project are attempting to establish a national program for longrange DSL-type service. (This post is a repost of the Garage Tinkerers Claim Wireless Last-Mile Solution article) Read more
New Wireless Tech
The Economist has an article on 4 emerging wireless technologies: (1) Smart Antennas for improved base-station capacity, (2) Mesh Networks to make each wireless reciever also be a relay, (3) Ad hoc networking to use network devices as routers, (4) Ultra wideband to transmit 100 mbs wirelessly (but only for distances of 10 feet…). Some of these are already in use while others are still in the lab. Read more
Last Mile
This article on Yahoo talks about the FCC looking into licencing the 70 - 95GHz bandwidth spectrum. Which would provide “12.5 gigabyte Internet access to homes or businesses as many as 12 miles away from an antenna.” Another option for bringing bandwidth over that last mile?” Read more
Faster Wireless Networking
There is a current PC Magazine article, both in print and online that tests Netgear and Linksys 802.11a Access Points and PC Cards head-to-head. 802.11a, for those of you that don’t know, is different from the 802.11b standard. 802.11a is 54Mbps, and 5ghz. 802.11b is 11Mbps, and 2.4ghz. This causes incompatibility between the two. Also, it is important to point out that while 802.11a is faster, 802.11b gets a better range. Additionally, many 802.11a access points do not communicate well with each other as manufactures have tweaked the standard in their own products. Read more
Wifi Lightbulbs Fcc
802.11b WiFi wireless networking is going to get in lot of troubles when Fushion Lightning starts marketting low-power light blubs which causes interferences with Wifi signals. Read about it at I, Cringely. Supposedly the new kind of light bulb is a real electricity saver and can wreck havoc to wireless networks in a half a mile radius. So what would you prefer? Wireless networks or low cost light bulbs all around the country to save more and more on electricity? Read more
Garage Tinkerers
The NYTimes is reporting that two guys in their garage have designed a low-cost wireless broadband solution that can transmit up to 20 miles. (A previous story described a 7km achievement in Australia.) Their company is called Etherlinx and they use the Wi-Fi 802.11b standard in a repeater antenna that people can attach to the outside of their homes. The technology, which apparently costs under $100, has been operating in a small for-pay trial in Oakland, CA for a year. Is this a solution to the ‘last-mile’ problem, hope for rural areas, and the death of cable/DSL? Read and be the judge. Read more
Home Grown Dsl
The folks in rural Ruby Ranch got tired of lame dial-up server. They fought the phone company for use of their un-used lines and installed their own DSL service. The costs were high, but evidentally will come down for subscribers as the service is non-profit and is just trying to recover startup costs. Read more
Non Line Of Sight Broadband
IEEE Spectrum has an article about nifty wireless adapters that don’t require LOS. At first, NLOS wireless may not sound like a big deal. After all, ordinary radios and cellphones are non-line-of-sight devices. But they don’t carry broadband data. What makes the latest generation of NLOS wireless technology worth talking about and having is that it delivers data at high rates over substantial distances. Read more
Wireless Networking Tutorials
There are two great tutorials on wireless technologies found on New Order which is part of the Box Network. The first tutorial introduces the reader to the Wireless world and discussed Wireless devices (mobile phone, PDAs etc.), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), WML and more. This second tutorial deals with Wireless Networks (WLANs), IEEE standards for WLANs, topology of WLANs and other topics. Read more
Overlapping Networks
An article entitled Congestion wears on wireless on CNN.com describes how that in dense areas wireless networks are already getting crowded as neighboring companies don’t watch where there signals are brodcasted. You’d think with as much bad hype as wireless networks got for WEP security flaws this wouldn’t be happening, but it is. Read more
Caught In A Slow Web
Today’s Sunday edition of The News-Herald newspaper has an article describing how many cities in Northeast Ohio are without wide-spread high-speed Internet access. One of my close friends has DSL, only about 10 miles away in my area, it’s not yet available. I suggest reading the article online, Caught in a Slow Web. If you can, pick up the paper, there is a nice map of communities with and without widespread Internet access. Read more
Ethernet Goes Electric
NYC businesses will be able to get internet access via ethernet routed through electrical conduits from a subsidiary of Con Edison. This is a very different concept from powerline products. Powerline products use existing powerlines (like the ones in your house), while this company uses new wiring, but not for electricty, for ethernet. Con Edison Communications is targeting business customers and telecommunications carriers with its PowerLan Ethernet services as part of a larger strategy to become the premier provider of high-bandwidth transport services for New York. Check out the CNet article, In New York, Ethernet goes electric Read more
Wifi On The Beach
A great step-by-step story of how one man got started with 802.11b wireless is found at the San Francisco Wireless Broadband website. The site describes how he bought Linksys WAP11 access points, set one up at his home, and went down to the beach 1.2 miles away. With off the shelf hardware, and the tin can waveguide antenna he was able to connect wirelessly to his home with no problems. He goes on to describe other distances he attempted - up to 4.7 miles with a reliable connection, up for two weeks. Other observations include that while he achieved 1 Mbps downstream and 300-400 Kbps upstream with the home made antennas, commercial 24 dBi parabolic grid antennas made by Pacific Wireless give him 3.5Mbps both directions. Regardless, I found this article fasinating, and incouraging. The only disapointment I have, is that The line-of-sight in Mentor, Ohio is nothing like San Francisco, most likely thwarting any large wireless networks… Read more
Updates On New Site
The new site is coming along nicely. It will allow us to have automated updates, additions, etc. This will allow us to use our time in other areas of need. Read more
Working On New Site
Mentor Wireless is working on a new site, at an undisclosed location. The new page will feature cgi, dynamic content, paypal donations, user contributed articles, and more. When it is ready, you will automatically be transfered to the new site. So be prepared to update your bookmarks! Read more
Wireless Cash Registers
John writes, Best Buys wireless cash register systems caught broadcasting unencrypted credit card numbers at stores nationally and gets the retail electronics giant loads of press: Read more
Geocities Blocked
Yesterday, an employee of Tyco Electronics sent the following to Mentor Wireless in an email: Read more
Site Updates
Pages for Wireless Vocabulary, a FAQ, the Legal Issues of sharing bandwith, and a Community Survey were added to the site. Some of this was old content that we brought back, some is new. All of these pages are under construction and available from either by clicking on the links in a page’s updated header or footer. I hope to have some better content for them soon. Read more
Access Point Plans
Updated the meta tags on the Message Board, Shorturl, and Geocities pages to be more consistant. It is very easy to find Mentor Wireless from Google now. The Wireless Links page had a major overhaul. Read more
New Laptop
I recently purchased a Toshiba Satellite 1805-S207 laptop. In the chaos of switching from my desktop computer to my new notebook I lost a few ‘Join Us’ email submissions. I am very sorry. I updated the directory today with all those I still have and those I’ve recieved since. If anyone out there tried to join, and is still not listed, you will have to resubmit your request. Once again, I am sorry. Read more
Networking Without Wires
I just uploaded a paper I wrote for my Business Telecommunications class at Lakeland Community College a few months back. The paper is called Networking Without Wires and serves as a general introduction into wireless networking. Read more
Increased Traffic
Lately many people have been joining Mentor Wireless. Therefore, updating the directory is starting to take more time than before. In response to the increase in traffic, I’ve decided to let the directory additions ‘pile up’, if you will, so I can make all updates at once. I am actually putting more time into the site now than before so don’t worry. Read more
Linux From Scratch
I finally got around to updating the directory with all the member submissions I’ve gotten lately. Additionally, I fixed a few minor annoyances I found while browsing the website. Read more
Design Updates
A temporary logo, style sheets, and various other tweaks to the website including a nice table listing all the Members. Updating was complete around 10:30PM. More to be done including a professional logo and a more fluid color scheme… goodnight. Read more
Things Are Picking Up
Things are beginning to pick up. Emails are coming in daily. Some slight modifications have been made to the site’s design. There has also been an inquiry on the progress of the Mentor Wireless logo. Anyone willing to make a logo is incouraged to contact us soon. Read more
Directory Growth
More people interested in wireless have added their names to the member directory and others continue to contact us with various wireless news. An wireless article on Hawaii has really been getting people interested in 802.11b networks. Also, anyone interested in designing the first Mentor Wireless logo, for free, should contact us as soon as possible. Read more
More Traffic
Another month, more traffic. No ‘group’ to speak of yet. Conducting a few conversations regarding wireless networks through email. The members directory is beginning to grow. Both a mailing list of some sort, and a Message Board, are being discussed. Please test the message board out and let us know what you think. Also, there is a poll available now… Check back for more information soon. Read more
Search Engine Submission
Many visual changes were made to the site including a Shockwave Flash navigation bar from FlashButtons.com. The site was also submitted to a handful of search engines and a “short url” from ShortURL.com was created. Now you can access the site through the old GeoCities address, or the new mentorwireless.shorturl.com link. This new subdomain still points to the same location at GeoCities, but is a little nicer to look at and easier to remember. Read more
Steady Traffic
The Mentor Wireless website has been recieving a steady, miniscule amount of traffic each day. We have setup more links to the site, and have been able to add a name to the group directory… If you build it, they will come. Read more
Inbound Links
We have begun to get links to the site from other wireless pages, especially those with Wiki that are editable by the public, grin. The website has also been submitted to many search engines, and has already been found by Google! Typing “Mentor Wireless” as the search phrase brings us up as the first choice! How about that! Read more
Mentor Wireless Launched
The Mentor Wireless website has officially opened! Webspace is being provided by Yahoo! GeoCities. The free service comes with Statistics, Email Forms, and many other great features. The only downside is the random, slightly annoying, javascript ad that pops up each time a page is loaded. Read more
android
Tasker Recipes for Nest
Since switching back to Android I’ve found the Tasker app useful to automate some of minor aspects of my always connected life. Read more
tasker
Tasker Recipes for Nest
Since switching back to Android I’ve found the Tasker app useful to automate some of minor aspects of my always connected life. Read more