Gallery with USB Keys for automatic connect to free WiFi in action (with free Internet access)

Gallery with USB Keys for automatic connect to free WiFi in action (with free Internet access)	Hier gibt's auch die Deutsche Version	SSL-URL of this Site

With Knoppix 6.3

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with the USB WiFi adapter Zydas 1211B (Minitar) at the right side and a 5 dB omni antenna for a better WiFi connection, with a 16 GB USB Key. The antenna is right in the briefcase.
It also works with the integrated WiFi, a RTL8187 adapter.
On the desktop you can see the start page of the Knoppix project, which was downloaded via the free WiFi with the name coffeefellows.
Location: Middle of the first floor in the main railway station Nuremberg, Germany. Here, at http://www.coffee-fellows.de/, you can get coffee and snacks.
July 2010.

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with the USB WiFi adapter Zydas 1211B (Minitar) at the right side and a 5 dB omni antenna for a better WiFi connection, with a 16 GB USB Key. The antenna is right in the briefcase.
Also at http://www.coffee-fellows.de/, but in the Franken-Center Nuremberg (Germany), at the north end of the first floor. The free WiFi here has the name WLAN and you can use it even at the cellar and at the south end of the first floor, at Karstadt.
July 2010.

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with the USB WiFi adapter Zydas 1211B (Minitar) at the right side and a 5 dB omni antenna for a better WiFi connection, with a 16 GB USB Key. The antenna is right in the briefcase.
The name of the free WiFi, which was used here, was free-hotspot.com, and seems to be configurated by that company. The free WiFi is in one of the Caffees here in the Franken-Center Nuremberg (Nuremberg, Germany), at the south end of the cellar, north from Karstadt.
July 2010.

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with the USB WiFi adapter Zydas 1211B (Minitar) at the right side and a 5 dB omni antenna for a better WiFi connection, with a 16 GB USB Key. The antenna is right at the top of the briefcase.
Here, at the Aufsessplatz in Nuremberg (Nuremberg, Germany) i could successfully test the switching to the next free WiFi with IRIS-PC_Netzwerk, NETGEAR and TG!.
Because of the sun at noon, it is hard to see the desktop with the start page of the Knoppix project.
July 2010.

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with the USB WiFi adapter Zydas 1211B (Minitar) at the right side and a 5 dB omni antenna for a better WiFi connection, with a 16 GB USB Key. The antenna is right in the briefcase.
Location: Nuerbanum (Nuremberg, Germany), at the Nornenstrasse, in front of the company label (left outside the picture) from http://www.green-sun.de/, where you can get the free WiFi. greensun and Avocado oil with the quality NATIV and NATIV BIO for kitchen and cosmetics. You can also use this free WiFi in a cafe or restaurant nearby.
July 2010.

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with the USB WiFi adapter Zydas 1211B (Minitar) at the right side and a 5 dB omni antenna for a better WiFi connection, with a 16 GB USB Key. The antenna is right at the top of the briefcase.
Location: Nuremberg center, Lorenzer Platz at the Lorenzkirche, at a bank in front of the Sparkasse Nuremberg and Restaurant Cafe Lorenz. The free WiFi here also has the simple name WLAN.
July 2010.

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3,
with a UMTS Modem as a Fake at the right side

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with a GPRS/UMTS modem as a Fake at the right side. The small USB key with the Knoppix is half behind this white modem and hard to see because of the black background.
You can't see a WiFi adapter and it seems the GPRS/UMTS modem, ALDI Surfstick is used, but in fact the WiFi adapter integrated in the notebook is used.
I also tested booting Knoppix from the MicroSD card which was inside the modem, but the notbook could not boot via the modem although it worked via the CS562 (58-IN-1 + SIM Card Reader, Conrad Order Nr. 412614) with the same card.

Location: Middle of the first floor in the main railway station Nuremberg, Germany, about 10 m north from the point where the first picture of this gallery was made.
Here, at http://www.coffee-fellows.de/, you can get coffee, sncks and lots of free seats as you can see.

August 2010.
Update August 2011: The WiFi is still there but encrypted. It seems the customers can get the access data, like at Starbucks where they use encrypted WiFi for at leat a year.

As you can see, you can see nothing which shows that WiFi is used because the notebook is closed in the briefcase, online and with a download which was started by a script which was started by a boot script (knoppix.sh).
It's a "Sit-by-Download".
The equipment is the same as in the pictures before.
I made this script to completely download the around 50 MB big file http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/damnsmalllinux/current/current.iso and you can easily modify it e. g. to download or send emails.
For Power saving the script makes a poweroff when the download is finished.
Location: Spielplatz Ritterplatz Nuremberg. Because of the heavy rain (and no umbrella), i could not find out the name of the free WiFi which was used.
Because the used download manager wget also works with disconnects, you can walk or drive during the download, e. g. on the way to school or work. That's a special "Drive-by-Download".
July 2010.

Notebook online under Knoppix 6.3, with the USB WiFi adapter Zydas 1211B (Minitar) at the right side and a 5 dB omni antenna for a better WiFi connection, with a 16 GB USB Key. The antenna is right at the top of the briefcase.
Ort: Nuremberg city, Pfannenschmiedgasse, on a bank in front of a cafe from http://www.coffee-fellows.de/, in the City-Point Nuremberg (Germany) (right outside the picture). The free WiFi here has the name G11 and may be from Coffeefellows, but it's not easy to find the exact location and when you want to be online, such details are irrelevant.
July 2010.

Notebook online under
OpenSuSE 11.4, with a parabolic antenna (27 dBi, 90 x 70
cm, 3,3 kg) from wimo.de, 0,5 m Low-Loss adapter cable,
adapter WL0162 and an active 20 m USB 2.0 extension
cable (DeLock 82690)

Notebook online in Aalen (Germany) under OpenSuSE 11.4, with a parabolic antenna (27 dBi, 90 x 70 cm, 3.3 kg, K-GRID-003-05 from http://www.poynting.co.za/) from wimo.de, 0.5 m Low-Loss adapter cable, WiFi-USB adapter WL0162 and an active 20 m USB 2.0 extension cable (DeLock 82690, a very similar is the ALFA Network AUSBC-20M USB 2.0 Active Extension Cable).
Begin of August 2011.

Notebook online under
OpenSuSE 12.1, with a WL0162 and 5 dB Omni Antenna

Notebook online at Elbrus 2012-07-25, Barrels Huts at 3800 m altitude, under OpenSuSE 12.1, with a WL0162 and 5 dB Omni Antenna (up left in the picture). The WiFi router is about 700 m downstream, in the Mir Station. Later and with a bolometer and HF detector i found out that this 500 mW adapter was using a transmission power of only about 10 dBm = 10 mW. This worked because the adapter had a clear line of sight and there where no other access points.
100 m more west it would be possible to use an UMTS modem to go online, but because of the roaming that would have cost me 4.90 Euro/MB, which is about 500 Euro per hour!
On the trips i could find free WiFis on nearly every Airport, e. g. at the international Airports Moskau, Istanbul and Teheran. Even smaller ones at Shiraz and Mineralnyje Wody have them but at the Airport Nuremberg there was none.
At several airports, e. g. frankfurt, i could see a short disconnection after half an hour. As i found out later, the reason was that the internet access is free for the first half hour, then the script automatically changes the MAC and is online another half hour and so on, while with the same MAC you would have to pay 4,90 Euro per hour!

Route to the Sedelfelsen in a distance of 11 km

An improvisied radio link vom Aalen Jahnstrasse (Germany) to the Sedelfelsen in a distance of 11 km (black arrow) 2013-11-27.
At the other end an equal antenna was mounted on a tree with a tripod for cameras.
With the script the connection started with 1 Mbit/s and the rate was increased manually.
With 50 cm long, light and thin yagi antennas (18 dBi), which fit into a backpack or briefcase, and channel filters (Reactel 1C9__2473_7C11_2p4_2p5_27_S11) the rate could be increased to 54 Mbit/s without problems.
More speed could not be tested because that is the limit of the old router (Netgear WG602 v3). The router also has less transmission power and sensitivity as the WL0162, but is good enough for my tests.
In addition to the channel filters, horizontal polarisation and channel 13 was used to reduce interference from and to other WiFis. However there could be seen a dozen other WiFis even from the Sedelfelsen.
Ping showed a packet loss rate of 1 %.
The router was sending with 100 mW, the WL0162 with a tuned driver, but due to the level (-71) and SNR (22) at the router the under Ubuntu 13.04 untuned driver (a little less than 100 mW) would be enough.
The headlight at the right side, mounted on the railing, was a noname 5W CREE LED Headlamp, blinking and this blinking could be seen clearly from the Sedelfelsen at dawn and night, so that the adjustment of the antenna at the Sedelfelsen was easy.

On the Sedelfelsen at the Mountain Rosenstein (Swabian Jura), an improvisied radio link, now in the 5 GHz range and with horizontal polarisation, to Aalen City in a distance of 11 km, to a router of type WispStation5, 2015-12-25 and at full moon.
The professional outdoor antenna with a radom is the Airlink 580, with an antenna gain of 30,4 dBi, single polarity, mounted on a tree with a double-vice (yellow). The dual-band WiFi adapter is an AWUS051NH, connected to a HP Spectre XT Touchsmart 15-4000eg. For using the keyboard at low temperatures and strong wind on mountains like this one i used fingered gloves with caps.
At WiFi connections over a longer distance in an urban environment, here 11 km, at pinging with common ICMP pings you can see a) some errors in the digit percentage range, like duplicate packets and Frag reassembly time exceeded error, b) a great variation of the RTT (round trip time) and other parameters like the autmatic Rx and Tx rate (in Mbit/s, at both sides) and c) a packtet loss in the double-digit percentage range at bigger data packets, increasing with the packet size.
A typical value of the fraction of the pings of size s (gross) in bytes which go back and forth without an error is: exp(-0,001123*s), e. g. 58 % for s = 480 byte and 91 % for s = 84 byte, the default ping size.

Some of the used Omni Antennas with RP-SMA socket for the 2.4 GHz band, with cm scale in the background.
Antenna gain in dBi horizontal: Starting witn 0 left to 9 right. The right antenna is decapitated from the highest 4 cm of the housing because they where filled only with air.

A big Omni Antenna with N socket for the 2.4 GHz band. Left is the housing, right the interior.
Length: 105 cm, Diameter: 4 cm, Antenna gain: 15 dBi horizontal, Vendor: Nynex.

A mounting on glass, on a window.

Some filters for the 2.4 GHz band: At the top the bandpass filter BPF2400 for the whole WiFi band, below and in blue channel filter for chnnel 1, 5, 11 and 13.
Such filters are availible also for the 5 GHz band, but such filters are less common and do cost about the double.
These filter, espacially the channel filters, do make WiFi connections more reliable and stable.

Two WiFi boosters for the 2.4 GHz band: The one at the top has 4 W output power, right next to it the AC adapter, below a 0.5 W booster and right next to it the USB cable for power supply. At the right margin: Some adapters and at the bottom a 40 dB attenuator.

Some of the used WiFi adapters.

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