[ale] USB wifi recommendation

Richard Bronosky richard at bronosky.com
Thu Jul 25 15:55:02 EDT 2013


Well, Alex, now that we are on a tangent. I'll add my story. Sometime
mid-2006 (while my wife was pregnant with our first) I went on week
long a business trip to London. The hotel had free wifi in the lobby
but you had to pay for the ethernet in the room. I knew this in
advance so I packed my dd-wrt hacked Linksys router with a can-tenna
and my Vonage VOIP device. I used AP mode to connect to the distant
signal in the lobby and got just enough bandwidth to talk to my wife
for hours for free.
.!# RichardBronosky #!.


On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Alex Carver <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:
> On 7/25/2013 07:28, Pete Hardie wrote:
>>
>> The cable might work - I have not tried to access apps while plugged into
>> my linux system.  But the wifi hotspot thing is just my pet project - I
>> like the subversive
>> feel of it
>
>
> I used to do this frequently using a Meraki Mini flashed with OpenWRT. You
> can configure the wireless interface to have two virtual interfaces, one in
> AP mode and one in station mode.  Station mode connects to the hotel wifi,
> the AP side then supplies a private connection to as many devices as you
> want.  NAT bridges the two virtual interfaces.  It was very slow, though.
>
> Now I've been using it as a high power range extender instead.  Plug laptop
> into ethernet jack on the Meraki, attach a 20 dBi gain panel antenna to the
> antenna jack (instead of the mini whip) and aim at the nearest available
> free wifi (McD's, Starbucks, Pilot truck stops). Works great from a range of
> 500-1000 feet. :)  But I have several Merakis so I can plug a second one
> into the first and have the local AP for inside the hotel (or car when the
> antenna gets roof mounted).  Less configuration hassle.
>
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