[.ca] Wireless Hacks (ISBN 0596005598)

Good book of wireless tips:
I'll have to disagree a bit with reviewer Pablo D. The book is broad and shallow, but I think it appeals to more than just the raw beginner. I found a number of tricks (hard to call them "hacks") in the book that have been useful. While many of the topics covered are simply product reviews, that information is helpful to wireless users, too. Here's the table of contents of the book, which spells out all 100 "hacks": Chapter 1. The Standards 1. 802.11: The Mother of All IEEE Wireless Ethernet 2. 802.11a: The Betamax of the 802.11 Family 3. 802.11b: The De Facto Standard 4. 802.11g: Like 802.11b, only Faster 5. 802.16: Long Distance Wireless Infrastructure 6. Bluetooth: Cable Replacement for Devices 7. 900 MHz: Low Speed, Better Coverage 8. CDPD, 1xRTT, and GPRS: Cellular Data Networks 9. FRS and GMRS: Super Walkie-Talkies 10. 802.1x: Port Security for Network Communications 11. HPNA and Powerline Ethernet 12. BSS Versus IBSS Chapter 2. Bluetooth and Mobile Data 13. Remote Control OS X with a Sony Ericsson Phone 14. SMS with a Real Keyboard 15. Photo Blog Automatically with the Nokia 3650 16. Using Bluetooth with Linux 17. Bluetooth to GPRS in Linux 18. Bluetooth File Transfers in Linux 19. Controlling XMMS with Bluetooth Chapter 3. Network Monitoring 20. Find All Available Wireless Networks 21. Network Discovery Using NetStumbler 22. Network Detection on Mac OS X 23. Detecting Networks Using Handheld PCs 24. Passive Scanning with KisMAC 25. Establishing Connectivity 26. Quickly Poll Wireless Clients with ping 27. Finding Radio Manufacturers by MAC Address 28. Rendezvous Service Advertisements in Linux 29. Advertising Arbitrary Rendezvous Services in OS X 30. "Brought to you by" Rendezvous Ad Redirector 31. Detecting Networks with Kismet 32. Running Kismet on Mac OS X 33. Link Monitoring in Linux with Wavemon 34. Historical Link State Monitoring 35. EtherPEG and DriftNet 36. Estimating Network Performance 37. Watching Traffic with tcpdump 38. Visual Traffic Analysis with Ethereal 39. Tracking 802.11 Frames in Ethereal 40. Interrogating the Network with nmap 41. Network Monitoring with ngrep 42. Running ntop for Real-Time Network Stats Chapter 4. Hardware Hacks 43. Add-on Laptop Antennas 44. Increasing the Range of a Titanium PowerBook 45. WET11 Upgrades 46. AirPort Linux 47. Java Configurator for AirPort APs 48. Apple Software Base Station 49. Adding an Antenna to the AirPort 50. The NoCat Night Light 51. Do-It-Yourself Access Point Hardware 52. Compact Flash Hard Drive 53. Pebble 54. Tunneling: IPIP Encapsulation 55. Tunneling: GRE Encapsulation 56. Running Your Own Top-Level Domain 57. Getting Started with Host AP 58. Make Host AP a Layer 2 Bridge 59. Bridging with a Firewall 60. MAC Filtering with Host AP 61. Hermes AP 62. Microwave Cabling Guide 63. Microwave Connector Reference 64. Antenna Guide 65. Client Capability Reference Chart 66. Pigtails 67. 802.11 Hardware Suppliers 68. Home-Brew Power over Ethernet 69. Cheap but Effective Roof Mounts Chapter 5. Do-It-Yourself Antennas 70. Deep Dish Cylindrical Parabolic Reflector 71. "Spider" Omni 72. Pringles Can Waveguide 73. Pirouette Can Waveguide 74. Primestar Dish with Waveguide Feed 75. BiQuad Feed for Primestar Dish 76. Cut Cable Omni Antenna 77. Slotted Waveguides 78. The Passive Repeater 79. Determining Antenna Gain Chapter 6. Long Distance Links 80. Establishing Line of Sight 81. Calculating the Link Budget 82. Aligning Antennas at Long Distances 83. Slow Down to Speed Up 84. Taking Advantage of Antenna Polarization 85. Map the Wireless Landscape with NoCat Maps Chapter 7. Wireless Security 86. Making the Best of WEP 87. Dispel the Myth of Wireless Security 88. Cracking WEP with AirSnort: The Easy Way 89. NoCatAuth Captive Portal 90. NoCatSplash and Cheshire 91. Squid Proxy over SSH 92. SSH SOCKS 4 Proxy 93. Forwarding Ports over SSH 94. Quick Logins with SSH Client Keys 95. "Turbo-Mode" SSH Logins 96. OpenSSH on Windows Using Cygwin 97. Location Support for Tunnels in OS X 98. Using vtun over SSH 99. Automatic vtund.conf Generator 100. Tracking Wireless Users with arpwatch Appendix: Deep Dish Parabolic Reflector Template

For the serious wireless freak:
This is an amazing book about wireless. It's coverage of everything from the operating system level stuff, to drivers, to cards, to hacking cards, to building your own antenna, to doing shotgun wireless is just incredible. If you are a serious wireless junkie you will love this book. For the casual coffee shop surfer, this is probably not the right book, but you probably don't have any issues with wireless anyway.

Very broad, very poor. Only for the very beginner:
This is the kind of book that will tell you that a packet-capture program is a "hack"... Spends a lot of pages describing common features or well-known programs (Kismet, NetStumbler). The book tries to cover Windows, Linux and MacOS and achieves that in a very low degree. Save your money, everything on this book can be found on the internet, with even a better structure than the "index style" this book has ("Hack#1", "Hack#2" and so on). Very disappointed. Makes me wonder if other posts came from O'Reilly itself.

For the tinkerer in you:
An interesting amalgam of software and hardware tips. The author clearly loves to tinker, as seen by his description of how he and friends put together a waveguide antenna built around a Pringles can. Perusing the book seems to give some of the flavour of the Homebrew Computer Club in San Francisco during the 1970s, when the PC revolution was gestating. To some (many?) of you, the do-it-yourself ethos of this book may be its greatest allure. Flickenger reinforces this with many examples of analysis programs contributed by enthusiasts, often with source code available for your modification. If indeed you seem attracted, do not tarry. Flickenger may not explicitly state this anywhere in the book, but it really describes a field and hobby that will rapidly make much of the book obsolete. Chances are, in a few years hardware will be standardised by a few major manufacturers, and most operating systems will have all the necessary wireless software. So if you want some fun, perhaps now is the time.

All things wireless....:
Rob Flickenger has done it once again and this time he actually used the word "hacks" in his latest book on wireless networking, fittingly entitled, Wireless Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools. The explosion and growth of wireless technology has a familiar feeling that takes one back to version 1.0 of web browsers and dialup connections that opened our eyes to a whole new world. From, imagine... I can see inline graphics, to, wow... I am streaming live content while sitting on my deck enjoying a cool one! Wireless Hacks isn't a traditional book, but as the title implies, it is composed of one hundred tips, tricks, suggestions, DIYs (do it yourself), tools or simply *hacks* regarding all things wireless. Open it up to the index and browse for something that catches your eye. This book really is not meant to be read front to back although you can if you want. I found myself using my trusty old magazine technique of folding over pages of things I wanted to try out or that were quick solutions to current problems. There are enough nuggets in this book to make it worthwhile even for wired users (check out #36 Estimating Network Performance or all of Chapter 3: Network Monitoring). Glen Flieshman mentions in the foreword that "... Rob Flickenger is an early adopter's early adopter" which sums up the value Rob brings to the table. He is a wireless pioneer paving the way to unplugging but yet staying connected and the really cool thing is that he is willing to share. To find the Table of Contents, errata, sample chapters and purchasing information for, Wireless Hacks, see \othe website\c