Wireless Application Development

[thermos192]

I am wondering if anybody has been developling their own wireless appications. I am interested in developing a program to detect and locate users in my wireless network. I am just getting started and wondered if anybody has had any experience with programming to take advantage of 802.11 devices. What libraries are needed? What tools did you find usefull? What did you do to test your applications?

I have been unable to find information about this on the internet and I think this forum would be a great place to start for people interested in developing apps for 802.11 devices.

[biggawd]

i was thinking of that also,ive heard of appz running on linux boxes but not much on windows

[JimGeier]

This depends on the platform you want to run the applications on. For Compaq iPaqs, I use Embedded C++ from Microsoft.

[Mentera]

You should look at this product it's a positionning system that enables you to pinpoint within a meter of accuracy a client on your wireless network in conjunction with a detailed map.
orinoco is even planning to integrate it into their wireless system by next year.

[JimGeier]

Are there any privacy issues with users that come into play when tracking user locations?

[thermos192]

I don't know if I see any problems but I only just thought about it now. In terms of whether people on the network want to wander around and not have sombody know that they are spending all their time in the men's/women's restroom reading cnn.com, I think that people should know better. Legitimate access to a network should always be controlable by the system admin. If people don't want to be found while using the network it suggests to me that they are up to somthing. I think locating people on the network should be the sole providence of the sytem administrator to prevent abuses by those who would use the location system to follow people or somthing similar.

[Jim Lin]

What's your meanning of "Locaton"?
Trace the IP address on line or actual location like GPS?
I think it is hard to trace actual location.
Besides, I don't think it is not useful for WLAN users.

I think how to prevent other's access in adhoc mode, or how to list the network group menber in "Network Neighborhood" under adhoc mode can be more useful for users.

[JimGeier]

I've been referring to "location" as the phyiscal coordinates identifying a person's position, similar to what GPS provides.

I don't think that many cases have gone to trial, but I was told by an attorney that Privacy Act violations can occur if you track the location of people without their consent.

[Jim Lin]

Hi Jim Geier,

You are absolutely right.
So the appliction can't violent somebody else.
We should think of how to protect ourselves and how to make a great use of WLAN.

1. How to protect ourselves when we are in adhoc mode? Can we filter others except whom we are allowed?

2. How to make a great use of WLAN in home market? I believe user will appreciate that he can share entertainment and media anywhere in his house by a user friendly tool without extra wires.

[bugilt]

I think these folks are a couple steps ahead of you :)


http://www.netstumbler.com/

[scseth]

Netstumbler is used to detect Access Point beacons, or WLAN packet traffic, but I believe the originall thread asked how to find users.

Slashdot recently had a forum on a white paper discussing how to find people using Netstumbler, can be found at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/11/1915230

I wonder if discovering location on a WLAN needs to be as precise as GPS? Do I need to know the exact location within meters, or is this overkill? I always imagined it would be sufficient to say a user is associated to a known access point, and is therefore in the vicinity of that access point (which is zone X)? This would obviously be much easier than a triangulation method, and in a multi-AP environment could determine general location.

Also, for WLAN application development, I wonder if anyone here is using/familiar with Wavelink's Studio
http://www.wavelink.com/wavelink/wirelessapplications/studio/


Seth Goldhammer
CTO@Roving Planet
http://www.rovingplanet.com