For a good while now I’ve been hearing about wardriving (or warflying/warwalking/warbiking/warboating/etc). I’ve done a little bit of wardriving myself previously — but I never had a GPS unit so it was always a small area, for statisitcal purposes. Well I got a Garmin GPS 18 yesterday — so whats the first thing I did after work was over? Wardriving! Granted I dont have an external antenna so I was relieing on the internal card of my laptop — but it does the job well enough for now.
I drove around with a friend of mine running netstumbler on my laptop (not that you need two people to wardrive — but it makes it more fun). I blazed through the two business districts in town and through several of the heavy residential zones — and along the “Billionare” row. All in all we picked up 163 AP’s — which for not having a super omni antenna — and only driving less than an hour — isnt bad at all.
The left is the AP’s mapped with GPSVisulizer.Com against a Topo map (because the Tiger street maps are offset in our area). Red circles = WEP, Green = Open, Bigger Circles = Stronger Signals (but really doesnt matter).
All in all it was alot of fun, listen to some music and map AP’s — not bad at all. I’m really keen to get an Orinco Gold & Omni directional antenna now so I can do some better wardriving (bit more accurate too). In fact when I have the equipment I intend to wardrive the town completly (obviously its not a big town & it wont take that long).