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Can Wifi signals be accurately pinpointed to a specific location?


bongo_bongo

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What is the best way to accurately pinpoint the location of wireless networks in a crowded urban area? For example, in a road full of small houses which are in close proximity to one another. Some houses may be semi-detached (two houses share a wall) or terraced (multiple houses share both walls). In such a scenario, which tool(s) would best identify the specific wireless networks that derive from specific houses?

I've used GISKismet and a GPS device to map networks but I never was able to accurately pinpoint each network to each house in an urban area.

Do you have any suggestions? Is it even possible?

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A directional antenna, with as narrow a horizontal-beam-width as possible.

I suggest this and this, although you may be able to get a narrower beam (that one is 66 degrees, 30 would be better if you can find one).

Get in to as central a position as possible between the buildings and turn the antenna to point directly at each in turn. The closer, the more accurate.

You could use airodump-ng to view the information.

Edited by haze1434
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I recently got an introduction to the concept of a zone director. It's a device to manage a (large) group of APs within a venue. Think conference centre, multi-story disco or camp site where you want people to be able to roam without any interruption. The goal is that when someone starts to play a youtube movie and decides to walk around the device automagically switches between APs and the movie never skips a beat. Your zone director can manage this. One feature of at least one of these zone directors, no doubt restricted to the expensive models, is that you can load it with a 3D model of the site and enter into it the location of the various APs. Once you do that you can see the devices travel through this 3D space based on where which AP sees it. Flashy stuff.

To do it yourself, do what haze1434 says. There's a topic in Hacks & Mods where someone tried to do something similar but for reasons I can't remember also wanted to drop the signal frequency from 2.4 to something a lot lower... Probably to be able to do the tracking using an SDR which has a limited signal frequency range that it can pick up. This might not be something you need but the discussion there was generic enough to at least give you a decent head start.

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On 10/08/2016 at 11:56 AM, haze1434 said:

A directional antenna, with as narrow a horizontal-beam-width as possible.

I suggest this and this, although you may be able to get a narrower beam (that one is 66 degrees, 30 would be better if you can find one).

Get in to as central a position as possible between the buildings and turn the antenna to point directly at each in turn. The closer, the more accurate.

You could use airodump-ng to view the information.

Thanks for your advice. I have an ASUS (from the first link). I have used airodumo-ng many times. When you say "closer" do you mean that airodump-ng shows there is more "PWR"? Or do you mean something else?

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1 hour ago, bongo_bongo said:

Thanks for your advice. I have an ASUS (from the first link). I have used airodumo-ng many times. When you say "closer" do you mean that airodump-ng shows there is more "PWR"? Or do you mean something else?

No worries. I mean physically moving yourself closer to each property, so that the angle of the horizontal-beam-width is picking up less signals. Yes, this will affect PWR. The closer to 0 the PWR is, the better.

You'd be very lucky to be able to stay in one spot and pick out the exact position of each signal. You'd have to be in the middle of a nice circle with each building spaced out neatly. I doubt this is the case.

Best bet - move around. Scan the WiFi from different angles. Get closer.

 

Then, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation

Edited by haze1434
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