Leeching neighbor's WIFI for disconnect protection

[BiPolar_Nut]

I have one of these. Nearly twice the gain as the link LuckyTXGuy posted for about the same price (depending on what adapters you'd need to buy to get either to work w/ your hardware).

Anyway, yeah...get a higher gain antenna. 802.11 links can cover miles even if one end of the link is running a stock router antenna inside someone's living room...all the more reason not to use wireless [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img].

Be aware you may be logging in to a honeypot.

Also, op, I'm not sure I quite follow the logic of:

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a ten minute disconnection last night cost me over $200.

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but that is like $80/mo, plus $100+ for the card, with a 2yr contract required, when I only need it for maybe one hour a month

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Seems to me that that one night would have put you $20 ahead of where you are now *shrug*.

If you're doing any p2p crap, they generate a ridiculous amount of local network traffic (besides the actual file xfer traffic...a gf of mine once installed lime* on an expendable computer I let her use...and for the first time in years (ever, actually) my perimeter firewall lit up like a christmas tree from *internal* network hits). it's possible you're flooding yourself off line if you do that kind of stuff.

[Shanemex]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try and clarify the current situation if anyone is interested. Currently my only internet connection is a cable modem, but my internet is going out quite often, so I need a backup. I've tried all DSL providers in my area, but apparently none will service my house, but somehow my neighbor has DSL and an unsecured wifi router. This means that when my internet goes out, their internet should still be up, so when my cable goes out I hope to just be able to connect to their router to finish my session.

Hopefully I'll be able to get DSL in my house so I don't need to worry about this. I went to Verizon's webpage to use their availability tool thing, and it says DSL is available for the house that is 100 feet further down the road from me (and further away from the DSL office), but is not available for me. I called Verizon and they said they would have an engineer look into it and get back to me in a few days to find out why it's not available. Somehow I doubt I will be getting a phone call back, because I forgot to get the guy's name or any type of reference number when I was on the phone, but he's supposed to call me so maybe that doesn't matter. In the meantime I'll try looking into those links people gave me.

Edit: I was looking at the RadioLabs link, and I just wanted to clarify something. They say "the backfire is a highly directional 2.4 GHz antenna to put the signal exactly where you want it." Does that mean this is something you would attach to the router to beam the signal only in a certain direction, or does it work the other way too (picking up the router's signal from my end)? Because I don't even know who my neighbor is, so I doubt they would go for installing this in their house.

[BiPolar_Nut]

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Does that mean this is something you would attach to the router to beam the signal only in a certain direction, or does it work the other way too (picking up the router's signal from my end)?

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When you increase the gain of an antenna, it increases both transmit and receive signal strength. "Directional" means instead of your signal being spewed out in all directions wastefully, it takes all the evergy radiating out of the radio and concentrates it in one direction. The higher the gain of an antenna, the narrower the "beam" that radiates from it, and the farther it will reach out to and receive from. Very high gain antennas are also more sensitive about aiming the signal. Radiolabs also has an antenna that is nearly double the gain of the one I linked to. Bear in mind that decibels are a logarithmic measurement, meaning basically for every doubling of the decibels, the signal range is increased 10-fold. Using their 24dB gain antenna would be so sensitive about aiming that if you aimed it 5 degrees to the left or right of where your neighbor's wireless antenna is located, you could lose the signal entirely. If you have a 24 dB gain antenna at each end, you could cover distances that approach insanity...like 34+ miles w/ 200mW of output power. The antenna I linked to is really total overkill for picking up a next door neighbor...but it's about 8x the range of the one posted before it for roughly the same price.

[buckslayer80]

If I were yo the first thing I would do is call your cable provider. I had cable for years and it was pretty reliable. There's no reason you connection should be going down as much as you say.

And as for the Verzon call you made. They will call you back about 60% of the time. In my case what they did was send an engineer out, he reported back that they could do it, and they updated the website to say that service was available at my house. BUT they never called. You have to harass them, I'd bet a good sum that you will get DSL if you want it.

[Beavis68]

why do you need to cable modems? This whole thing sounds fishy to me.

[LuckyTxGuy]

I do have to admit the whole issue of having two cable modems (ie: paying for cable internet access twice) simply blows my mind. I can't imagine any good reason for a home user to have two separate modems? Any enlightenment on that part of the story would be interesting.

[patrickf3]

You could always go with the verizon wireless broadband cards. - Or maybe your current cell provider has one available too.

http://b2b.vzw.com/broadband/bbapccard.html

Good luck.

[JacKnight21]

use dial up back up cheap quick and easy if ur using ur cable 4 phone get a phone line added done deal Im no tech guy but dialup works great as my back up $26/month(phone line n service)$10 for service added

[goldtoes]

cantenna ftw

[Beavis68]

problem solved

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY8Wi7XRXCA

cheers