Alright, so at work, what started out as a conversation about getting internet access on dial-up with a windows ’98 machine (sorry Karla, for having to endure the pain of messing with Win ’98, much less Win ’98 on dialup), ended up with the subject of a “cantenna“.
A cantenna is a directional waveguide antenna for long-range Wi-Fi used to increase the range of (or snoop on) a wireless network.
What would be fun is to have a competition to build one of these things and see how far away you could be away from a wireless access point and still load a page like Google. Build one you say? Yes – check out the “How to build a tin can waveguide WiFi antenna” for a blueprint of sorts.
The problem I run into is justifying breaking into my WiFi card, and voiding the warranty. Esp. when my home mac already has a wireless card built into it. Anyone have a cheap laptop and WiFi card I could ruin for this experiment (my boy and I (when old enough) will have a lot of fun building things like this (well at least I imagine we will))?
Tim Schoffelman of SilentGap
