I’m not condoning stealing your neighbors wifi. This is for entertainment only. It isn’t smart either, as it is unreliable, and it might get you in big big trouble, with the first ambitious prosecutor who wants to make his name with a useless issue.
BUT I was planning how to extend wifi from my landlord, who offers free wifi, along with rent, to my DIY Van Camper, to see if it could be done. Besides the possible additional equipment that you might need, I tried to do this cheap.
Here is a quick primer on wifi antennas (I took a 3mo course, with no practical enterprise experience)
1. Each AP(wifi router) and Base Station (client) has limits on transmission power, but the application often constrains device power more. I think this is regulated to supposed to be about 30dBm, depending on the country’s laws, and how much regulation occurs in the unlicensed radio space allotted for “medical and science equipment”.
2. The further an antenna is from each other, the signal decreases by a formula called RF free path loss. This is measured in dB(This is different from dBm which is a transmission power, like watts), and is a unit of relative loss or gain. The reason for this, is to allow easy subtraction and addition. An antenna can add dB, then you can subtract the relative loss, ie. parabolic antenna has a gain of 30dB(over your tiny dongle), then 100m between antenna typically means loss of 130dB. But with one antenna (of 2) being parabolic antenna, the loss is only 100dB (130dB-30dB) between 100m.
https://www.everythingrf.com/rf-calculators/free-space-path-loss-calculator
If you know the transmission power, like 30dBm, then you know the relative loss is 100dB, then you know what the power at receiver antenna will be. Unfortunately, adding and subtracting Db to dDm, is not as straightforward (It is more a multiplication/exponent formula, recv_dBm=sent_dBm*10^(gainloss_Db/10)).
And each transceiver has a minimum power it can hear a signal. I forgot what this was called. And so did the Internet, apparently, bc I can’t find the term. But it is probably in milli-watts or dBm, bc the two are interchangeable.
3. Everything blocks wifi, including leaves, believe it or not. It’s the water. Concrete is mostly what? Water. Metal absorbs/reflects a lot of wifi signal. So clear line of sight is important. They call weakening of a signal, attenuation.
Look at the diagram on page7.
So every line of sight between wifi antenna, is basically like above’s graph. Assume someone throws a concrete wall(assume the bar graph, top end, concrete is 15dB) in between, and it drops 15dB at that distance between the antenna.
I find it humorous that IF you were planning to steal your neighbor’s wifi, you would do it the same way I am planning to extend wifi to my Camper Van
I get wi-fi from my landlord, which I rent housing from. It is purely an experimental project for me. BUT these are the same steps:
1. Make friends with your neighbor and inquire what their wifi password is, with a humdrum reason like your phone’s data plan is running low, and you need to make a facetime call in 10min.
2. Get a Wifi surveyor software, like NetSpot is what I used on my laptop, b/c the scan list feature is free. There is probably also other software which has GPS built in, or some way to mark location. But if you are like me, and you are too afraid to ask your landlord (or neighbor) where they put their wifi antenna, and a blueprint of their house, for fear of raising suspicions, well that isn’t really a possibility.
Then take your laptop and walk around outside, do a active survey and see which direction is the wifi strongest for your neighbor’s SSID. Hint: usually near a window, for the application of “borrowing” wi-fi.
You can see I’ve done my hw, and I’ve marked off where the window is, where neighbor’s wi-fi signal is leaking from.
If you see another SSID at YOUR window (where you will be trying to borrow wi-fi from) with stronger signal, maybe you made friends with the wrong neighbor. Maybe you need to go Wifi gold-digging.
3. Put your wifi antenna in the line of sight of that window! You can walk the entire line of sight from that window with your laptop running NetSpot (or Wifi surveyer of your choice), to your window (or where you plan to hang the Wifi antenna).
4. Now comes the part which you can choose your equipment.
You think this appearing attached to someone’s house won’t be noticed?
B. You can buy a wifi bridge, which probably has a more powerful antenna than sticking your laptop’s puny puny antenna in your window, closest to that neighbor’s window with strong wifi.
It will take the wifi signal, and try to transmit it over your wired network.
C. You can buy a wifi dongle with external removable antenna and replace it with a parabolic antenna.
The problem with this, is that an antenna like that points, like an erection. It is extremely embarrassing to be noticed like that. Nope, don’t want questions like that.
D. You can hide a parabolic antenna meant for drones, in a stuffed ball, and put it over your receiver antenna, so it look like you wifi AP just happens to be in the window sill and you’re eclectic like those truckers that stick tennis balls on antenna. I’ve tried this. This works incredibly well. From choppy video, to nearly perfect streaming 640×480 1mbps video, over 50ft.
E. Buy an antenna that looks like anything but an antenna and stick toward the window. This is what I did. It looks like a ventilation port. Below is a similar shape antenna.
5. And since you know the wifi password since you made friends, you can connect without learning how to hack wifi passwords, which I understand unless you are dealing with out of date hardware/software, is a lot of work (so much, they don’t bother w teaching demonstration).
Try to connect. If you can’t connect b/c you don’t get enough signal power, you can try more conspicuous antenna gain methods, such as the aforementioned receiving parabolic antenna, or drone signal extender dish hidden in toy, or just run an networking wire from his house without him noticing.
This is for entertainment only. I do not condone you stealing your neighbor’s wifi. One day, like stealing your neighbours mail, this might be a federal offence and I do not want to be accessory to this.
But if you have a garden shed, that you want to cheaply send wifi to, these are some hints on how to plan to get the best quality signal, from cheap, nearly nothing. But if you owned both pieces of property, I suppose something like this, would make more sense, if you understood how to network it, b/c no one would care how conspicuous it was.
https://www.amazon.ca/TP-Link-Long-Range-Wireless-Networking-Solution/dp/B08D71HC9L/
I don’t. I don’t own one of those. I don’t think set up the same wifi password as your laptop, on these. But I would… one day… if I moved out to unabomber country.