Wireless Networks

I played around with my laptop's wireless card today too. I had to go to help my friend with a publishers doc she was trying to make work, and I figured I'd take my laptop with me. I hooked it up in the car and turned on the wireless just to see what I could see. Mind you, I didn't attempt to connect to any of these networks, but they did show up on my screen.

I couldn't believe that there were so many networks! In the 5 miles I drove, I saw all these pop up (in random order so you can't work backwards and find out where I live):
2wire484
netgear
sam-3
2wire562
skyriver
riverinn
beerdepot
2wire271
ac4m-something-something
mrpko
airrowdy
2wire348
zipcodepvt

All those networks...very interesting! I wouldn't have thought there'd be so many.

Something I also learned about today is how to change the MAC address on your network card. The MAC address is the worldwide unique identifier for each an every network card produced. That number identifies you with 100% certainty if you use a card to log onto a network. Sometimes, network owners get a list of all the MAC addresses of their PCs and use address filtration instead of passwords (WEP/WPA). You could use this tool to play a prank on your wife by changing her MAC address so that she couldn't log on to the network. You shouldn't do that though, or you probably won't get any...well, nevermind. Suffice it to say, that this should be used for educational purposes only.

I learned a lot today!