Try a

few sam
You don’t have hacks!
ple

to be a geek to
have fun hacking—all you
need is a sense
of adventure
and these books.
 Here’s what readers say
about our first Hacks books
Google Hacks
“Excellent. This book is a marvelous compendium
of tips and tricks for Google®, ranging from simple
ways of getting the search results you want,
through using Google’s newer services such as
phone books and image search, all the way to
advanced ways of using scrapers and the Google
API.... essential reading for Google users.”
—TONY WILLIAMS,
SLASHDOT.ORG, MARCH 2003

Mac OS X Hacks
“This should quickly become an essential guide
to anyone who wants more power out of their
computer.... There’s plenty of fun stuff here, but
serious business and creative production answers
take charge.”
—NORTH BAY
MULTIMEDIA ASSOC.

Linux Server Hacks

“ When this book arrived at my door, I was really
excited. By page ten I was beginning to think,
‘Damn, this is a really good book.’”
—KENNETH WILCOX,
BOISE SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS
GROUP, FEB 2003
samplerhax.fm Page 1 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

HACKS SAMPLER
Sample hacks from our hot, new hacks titles

Tivo Hacks
Hack #4. The 30-Second Skip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

eBay Hacks
Hack #25. Take Advantage of Bid Increments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Amazon Hacks
Hack #9. Power-Search for Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Windows XP Hacks
Hack #8. Customize the GUI with TweakUI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Wireless Hacks
Hack #82. Aligning Antennas at Long Distances . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

The thermometer icons, found next to each hack, indicate the rela-
tive complexity of the hack.

beginner moderate expert

1
 Hotwire
your Tivo.
TiVo Hacks
By Raffi Krikorian
ISBN 0-596-00553-9
$24.95 US, $38.95 CAN

TiVo® Hacks helps you get the most out of your

TiVo personal video recorder. Armed with just
a screwdriver and basic understanding of PC
hardware (or willingness to learn), preeminent
hackability awaits. First, TiVo Hacks covers
tips for changing the order of recorded pro-
grams, activating the 30-second skip to
blaze through commercials, and more, by
using magical remote-control codes.
Upgrade TiVo’s hard drive for more hours
of recording. Use TiVo’s Home Media Option
to remotely schedule a recording via the Web.
Series 1 owners will find even more fun and functionality under the
hood. Log in to the serial port for command-line access to programming
data, log files, closed-captioning data, display graphics on the TiVo
screen, and even play MP3s. While TiVo gives viewers personalized con-
trol of their TVs, TiVo Hacks gives users personalized control of TiVo.
Note: Not all TiVos are the same. The original TiVo, the Series 1, is the
most hackable TiVo out there; it’s a box thrown together with commodity
parts and the TiVo code is running on open hardware. The Series 2 TiVo,
the most commonly sold TiVo today, is not open. You won’t see hacks in
this book that involve getting to the software insides of that new and
shiny Series 2 box.
samplerhax.fm Page 3 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Tivo
HACK The 30-Second Skip Hack #0

#4 Forget about fast forwarding through commercials; blaze through

in just three to five clicks of your remote.

One of the religious differences between TiVo and ReplayTV owners

is how they fast forward through commercials. While TiVo’s but-
ton will get you through those intrusive breaks soon enough, it
requires some trained skill to manipulate those and buttons
while keeping a keen eye and trusting your instincts to anticipate the
end of the commercials. ReplayTV, on the other hand, has a 30-sec-
ond skip button, timed specifically for skipping through commer-
cials. Since television commercials are traditionally a multiple of 30-
seconds long, ReplayTV owners just hit the 30-second skip button
three to five times to render commercials only a minor annoyance.
This feature is so effective that it has stirred up quite a bit of contro-
versy with the networks, who are getting their hackles up, labeling
commercial skipping as theft and even taking ReplayTV to court.
Don’t you wish TiVo had a 30-second skip? It does, thanks to a little
Easter egg magic.
The button on the TiVo remote will bring you to the end of a pro-
gram, or if you are at the end, it will bring you to the beginning. If
you are fast forwarding, the button will skip you to the next tick
mark. This hack is all about repurposing that button to act as the 30-
second skip.
Bring up any recorded program or Live TV. Then, enter the follow-
ing sequence on your remote:
Select ➝ ➝ Select ➝ 3 ➝ 0 ➝ Select
You’ll know the combination worked when TiVo rings out three
Thumbs Up sounds—that chiming “bling!” sound TiVo makes when
you press the button on your remote control. Your button will
now skip forward by 30 seconds.
Tivo | 3
samplerhax.fm Page 4 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Note that this hack is not permanent. If at any time your TiVo needs
to be rebooted—after becoming unplugged or as a result of a power
failure—the hack will go away and you will have to reapply it.

Related Hacks Hack #0

Find these related hacks online at hacks.oreilly.com.

Hack #20. Opening the Box
Hack #26. Adding a Second Drive the Quick-n-Dirty Way
Hack #43. Caller ID on Your TV
Hack #55. Setting Up an FTP server
Hack #62. Listen to Your Email
Hack #69. Undeleting Recordings
Hack #70. Renaming Recordings
Hack #84. Streaming Video Directly from TiVo
Hack #99. Disabling the Live TV button

4 | Tivo
Wheel and deal.

eBay Hacks
By David A. Karp
ISBN 0-596-00564-4
$24.95 US, $38.95 CAN

Whether you’re a new-

comer or longtime user,
eBay® Hacks will teach
you to become efficient
as both a buyer and
seller. You’ll find a
wide range of topics,
from monitoring the bidding
process, getting refunds, and fixing photosso that
sale items look their best, to in-depth tips for running a business on
eBay and writing scripts that auto-mate some of the most tedious
tasks. The book also gives you an inside look into the unique eBay
community, where millions of people gather online to buy and sell.
Author David Karp—an eBay user from the very beginning—teaches
you how to work within this community to maximize your success.
samplerhax.fm Page 6 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

eBay
HACK Take Advantage of Bid Increments Hack #0

#25 A slight adjustment to your bidding strategy will help you save
money and win more auctions.

Every auction has a minimum bid, a dollar amount shown just above
the Place Bid button on the auction page, as shown in Figure 1. If the
auction hasn’t received any bids, the minimum bid is the same as the
starting bid. Otherwise, the minimum bid is equal to the current
price plus a bid increment.

Figure 1. The Bidding Section shows the current bid increment and minimum bid

Bid increments, at least in theory, prevent bidders from outbidding

one another by a single cent, and are calculated as follows:

6 | eBay
samplerhax.fm Page 7 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Current price Bid increment

$0.01 – $0.99 $0.05
$1.00 – $4.99 $0.25
$5.00 – $24.99 $0.50
$25.00 – $99.99 $1.00
$100.00 – $249.99 $2.50
$250.00 – $499.99 $5.00
$500.00 – $999.99 $10.00
$1000.00 – $2499.99 $25.00
$2500.00 – $4999.99 $50.00
$5000.00 and up $100.00

For example, an auction currently at $68.45 will have a minimum bid

of $69.45 ($1.00 more), so you wouldn’t be able to bid $69.00 even
though it’s higher than the current price.
Bid increments also come into play when calculating the current price.
If there’s more than one bidder, the current price is equal to the sec-
ond-highest bidder’s bid plus the bid increment. So if someone bids
$114 and someone else bids $157, the current price will be $116.50
($114 + $2.50), and the minimum bid for future bidders will be $119
($116.50 + $2.50).
As more bids are placed, the current price continues to rise, always
equal to the second-highest bid plus the bid increment. But it gets
more interesting when someone places a bid very close to the high
bidder’s maximum bid. The bid increment rule is compromised by
another rule: eBay will never raise the current price above the highest
bidder’s maximum bid. Here’s how this works:
• If someone bids $156.80 on this auction, it will raise the current
bid to $157, even though it’s only 20 cents above the second-
highest bidder’s maximum.

eBay | 7
samplerhax.fm Page 8 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

• If a subsequent bidder enters a bid of $157, the current price will

be exactly $157. The original bidder will still be the high bidder,
because earlier bids take precedence over later bids of the same
amount.
• If the later bidder bids $157.01, the current price will be raised to
$157.01 (one cent above the previous high bid), and the new-
comer will become the high bidder.
This loophole effectively allows you to outbid another bidder by as
little as a single cent. But why is this important, and how is this use-
ful?

Outbidding the High Bidder

Bid amounts are always kept hidden until an auction closes. As
described above, however, you can easily determine the second-high-
est bidder’s maximum bid by subtracting the bid increment from the
current price. Only the high bidder’s maximum remains elusive.
Most bidders type whole, round numbers when bidding, primarily
out of habit and sometimes out of laziness. You can take advantage
of this by guessing a high bidder’s maximum and adding a penny.
For example, if an auction with a starting bid of $7.99 has only one
bidder, the current price is $7.99. If that bidder is relatively new to
eBay (having a feedback rating of, say, less than 30), that bidder most
likely typed either $8 or $10 as a maximum bid. Although you
couldn’t bid $8.01, as the minimum bid would be $8.49, you could
bid $10.01 and have a pretty good chance of outbidding the other
bidder by a single cent. Contrast this to a bid of $15.00, which would
result in a final price of $10.50 ($10 plus the 50-cent increment).
You’ve just saved 49 cents.

8 | eBay
samplerhax.fm Page 9 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

More experienced bidders won’t type whole numbers,

but they will likely be just as predictable. If you want to
outbid someone by a single cent, try searching for past
auctions they’ve bid on (see Chapter 2); look at the bid-
ding history of closed auctions they didn’t win, and
you’ll see their exact bids. Look at two or three old auc-
tions, and you’ll likely find a pattern.

Understanding bid increments is also extremely useful if you bid and

don’t end up as the high bidder. If, after you bid, the current price
ends up lower than your bid plus the bid increment (you bid $40 and
the price rises to $40.17), then the high bidder’s maximum bid is
equal to the current price (in this case, $40.17). This means that all
you need to do is place one more bid of at least $41.17 to put your-
self in the lead. Combine this with sniping [Hack #22], and you’ve won
the auction!

Take It One Step Further

You can take steps to prevent other bidders from outbidding you by
one cent (and they will) while allowing you to more readily outbid
others. Instead of bidding whole, round numbers, make a habit of
bidding odd numbers, such as $10.07 or $11.39. That way, if some-
one bids $10.01 or $11.01, respectively, you’ll still be the high bid-
der. Likewise, you’ll also be more likely to outbid others who type
bid amounts like $10.01.

Related Hacks Hack #0

Find these related hacks online at hacks.oreilly.com.

Hack #5. Withholding Feedback
Hack #10. Controlling Fuzzy Searches
Hack #40. Formatting the Description with HTML
Hack #57. Doctoring Photos
Hack #69. Selling and Shipping Internationally
Hack #76. Obtaining Sales Records

eBay | 9
 Get into
new territory.

Amazon Hacks
By Paul Bausch
ISBN 0-596-00542-3
$24.95 US, $38.95 CAN

Amazon® Hacks is a collection

of real-world tips, tricks, and full-
scale solutions to practical uses
of Amazon.com and the Amazon
Web Services API. The book
offers a variety of interesting
ways for power users to get the most
out of Amazon and its community, for Associates to hone
their recommendations for better linking and more referral fees, for
researchers to mine the enormous amount of information in Amazon’s
data store, and for developers to integrate Amazon Web Services into
their applications and services.
samplerhax.fm Page 11 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Amazon
HACK Power-Search for Books Hack #0

#9 Fine-tune your book searches with the Advanced Search form and
Power Search queries.

The search form on the lefthand side of the Amazon home page is the
most widely used way to find items. A couple of keywords can get
you surprisingly close to what you’re looking for. But if you’d like to
do more sophisticated searches, you’ll have to use the Advanced
Search form or learn Amazon’s Power Search syntax.

Advanced Search
Amazon offers an Advanced Book Search form on their web site at
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ats-query-page. This form allows you
to search for a specific title, author, subject, ISBN, or publisher. And
you can narrow your search by format, reader age, language, or pub-
lication date.
The query in Figure 2 will return all books by O’Reilly with the word
“Mac” in the title.

Power Search
Beyond Advanced Search, there’s a way to perform even more finely
tuned searches of the product database: Power Search. A Power
Search uses a special query syntax to define what you’re looking for.
The syntax consists of field/value pairs that are put together with
connecting words like “or” or “and.” To perform the same query,
we’d include the publisher and title fields with the appropriate val-
ues:
publisher:O'Reilly and title:Mac

To run the search, paste this into the Power Search form at the bot-
tom of the Advanced Search page at http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/
ats-query-page#powersearch.

Amazon | 11
samplerhax.fm Page 12 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Figure 2. Amazon Advanced Search page

There are several fields available to help narrow your search:

asin
author
author-exact
author-begins
isbn
keywords
keywords-begin
language
pubdate - [before, during, after] date
publisher
subject
subject-words-begin
subject-begins
title
title-words-begin
title-begins

12 | Amazon
samplerhax.fm Page 13 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

With all of these options, you can see how queries could quickly
become very specific. Let’s say we wanted to find not only O’Reilly’s
books with the subject “Mac,” but also all O’Reilly books where the
title starts with “Mac”:
publisher:O'Reilly and (subject:Mac or title-begins:Mac)

Grouping sections of the queries with parentheses and specifying

“and” or “or” allows you to do much more than is possible through
the standard Advanced Search form. Just having access to the
keywords field is a big advantage. Let’s say you’re interested in more
than just the books about Macs that O’Reilly publishes—you’re
interested in any book remotely related to Macs. That’s a perfect use
for keywords:
publisher:O'Reilly and keywords:Mac

Or, just to show how specific you can get, here’s another query:
publisher:O'Reilly and keywords:Mac and pubdate:before 2003 and not ↵
title-begins:Mac and not subject:Mac

If you’re getting the hang of Power Searches, you’ll see that this query
searches for all O’Reilly books with the keyword “Mac” published
before 2003, where the title doesn’t actually start with “Mac” and the
book isn’t directly about the subject “Mac”.

Power Search URLs

Once again, you can bypass the form altogether. Make sure your
Power Search query is URL encoded [Hack #92] and then you can add it
into a standard search URL by adding the prefix power%01:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ix=books↵
&fqp=power%01publisher%3AO%27Reilly%20and%20keywords%3AMac&sz=100

You may notice some other variables in this URL. Spe-

cifically, sz can be useful to play with: it lets you specify
the size of the result set. The default is 10, but if you
want more to be returned in a single page, increase it to
something larger (in this case, 100).

Amazon | 13
samplerhax.fm Page 14 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Related Hacks Hack #0

Find these related hacks online at hacks.oreilly.com.

Hack #3. Jump to a Product Using Its ASIN
Hack #4. Create Shorter URLs
Hack #12. Add an Amazon Sidebar Search to Mozilla
Hack #14. Fine-Tune Your Recommendations
Hack #52. Sell What People Want
Hack #63. Rotate Through Several Keyword Banners on Your Site
Hack #80. Program AWS with Perl
Hack #95. Create an Amazon AIM Bot
Hack #96. Compare International Sales

14 | Amazon
Dig these
cool tools.

Windows XP Hacks
By Preston Gralla
ISBN 0-596-00511-3
$24.95 US, $38.95 CAN

More and more computer owners

are seeking to become “power
users,” anxious to get the absolute
most out of their Windows® XP
systems. But it’s never been
easy to get under the hood
of a Windows system, and XP
is still new enough to make
even seasoned Windows users
anxious for some help. Windows XP Hacks uses the popular
O’Reilly “Hacks” style to pursue such XP topics as controlling the control
panel, changing unchangeable icons, removing uninstallable XP components,
stopping pop-up ads, taking a bite out of cookies, speeding up file down-
loads, protecting yourself with firewalls and proxy servers, and much more.
samplerhax.fm Page 16 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Windows XP
HACK Customize the GUI with TweakUI Hack #0

#8 Want to bend XP’s interface to your will without getting your hands
into the Registry or having to excavate through menus three levels
deep? Then get this supremely useful freebie from Microsoft and
create your own customized version of XP.

There are countless ways to customize XP’s interface, including Reg-

istry hacks and menus and options hidden four layers deep. But if
you’re the kind of person who lives in the express lane, juices up on
double espressos, and wants to hack away at the interface fast, then
you need TweakUI (Download it for free from Microsoft at http://
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp. It’s
part of a suite of free, unsupported utilities from Microsoft called XP
PowerToys, but it’s far and away the best one.) It lets you tweak not
only the interface, as the title suggests, but also many other system
settings, such as how Internet Explorer’s search works, whether to
automate your logon upon system startup, and whether to enable CD
autoplay so that the CD immediately starts up whenever you pop it
into your drive. In this hack, you’ll learn how to use it and apply that
knowledge to create a speedy, stripped-down version of XP. Figure 3
shows TweakUI in action, customizing the display of thumbnail pic-
tures in Windows Explorer.
I don’t have room to show you all the ways you can hack the user
interface with TweakUI, but here are some of the highlights:
• The General section lets you control XP’s animated effects,
fades, and shadowing. Also worthwhile in that section is “Show
Windows version on desktop.” Check the option and it dis-
plays, in the lower-right portion of your screen, your exact ver-
sion of XP—for example, “Windows XP Home Edition Build
2600.xpsp2.021108-1929(Service Pack 1),” as shown in

16 | Windows XP
samplerhax.fm Page 17 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Figure 3. Customizing the size and quality of thumbnails in Windows Explorer

Figure 4. I find it useful for knowing whether I need to add XP

Service Packs, or for providing the information to tech support if
I have an operating system problem that needs to be solved.
You’ll have to log off or restart your PC before it will display
your version.

Figure 4. Displaying your exact version and build of XP on your desktop

Windows XP | 17
samplerhax.fm Page 18 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

You can also force the operating system to display your

exact version and build of XP on your desktop by using
a Registry hack. Run the Registry Editor [Hack #68]. Go
to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, and find
the DWORD value PaintDesktopVersion. Change the value
to 1. Exit the Registry and reboot. To remove the ver-
sion and build number, change the value back to 0. In
beta versions of XP, the value was turned on by default,
but when the product shipped, it was turned off.

• Hide Desktop icons that apparently can’t be deleted from the

Desktop, such as the Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, My
Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, and the Recy-
cle Bin. To do this, go to the Desktop section and uncheck the
boxes next to the icon you want to vanish. You won’t have to log
off for the changes to take effect. (You can force the Registry to
do the same thing: see “Remove “Unremovable” Desktop Icons”
[Hack #13].)
• In the Explorer section, customize the Taskbar and Desktop by
enabling or disabling balloon tips and determining which pro-
grams will be allowed to show up on the Frequently Used Pro-
grams list, among other customizations.
• Customize how Windows Explorer looks and functions by con-
trolling the quality of image thumbnails; changing the way that
shortcuts look; determining whether to include Help, Recent
Documents, and Logoff on the Start menu; and many similar
options.
There’s a lot more as well—to find it all, download it and try it all out.

Create a Speedy, Stripped-Down Interface with Tweak UI

While it may be fun to use TweakUI to fiddle with the UI, its real
power becomes apparent when you use it to create your own custom-

18 | Windows XP
samplerhax.fm Page 19 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

ized XP interfaces. For example, you may be the type who is con-
cerned about only one thing when you use your PC: pure
functionality. You want to get your work done fast, and you don’t
want to be bothered by the extra frou-frous that XP throws in your
way and that slow down your system. Here’s how to create a speedy,
stripped-down interface using TweakUI:
Turn off animations, fades, and similar features
Animations and fades are pretty, but they require system
resources and slow down your system. You can turn off a wide
variety of these animations and fades from the General section of
TweakUI. Uncheck the boxes next to all of them, such as Enable
menu animation, Enable menu selection fading, Enable tooltip
animation, and the many others listed there.
Speed up right-click menu displays, hovers, and other mouse actions
If you want menus to appear with absolutely no delay when you
right-click on an object or icon, go to the Mouse section and
move the Menu speed slider all the way to the left. Test how fast
the menus will display by right-clicking on the test icon. From
this section, you can also increase your mouse sensitivity so that
it responds more quickly to your clicks and drags. In the Mouse
sensitivity section, decrease the numbers next to Double-Click
and Drag, and see the results by double-clicking the test icon.
The Mouse section also lets you change the mouse’s sensitivity
to “hovering”—for example, displaying a tool tip when you
hover your mouse over an icon. To speed up the hover display,
highlight Hover underneath the Mouse section, then decrease
the numbers next to Hover sensitivity and Hover time. Test out
your settings using the test icon.
Decrease the image quality of thumbnails in Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer uses up RAM when it displays thumbnails,
which can slow down your system, because the RAM could
instead be used for your applications or the operating system

Windows XP | 19
samplerhax.fm Page 20 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

itself. Use TweakUI to give thumbnails the minimum amount of

RAM only. Go to the Explorer\Thumbnails section and in the
Image Quality area, move the slider all the way to the left, to the
lowest setting for image quality. Decrease the thumbnail size, in
pixels.

You can also completely turn off thumbnails so that

they aren’t displayed in Windows Explorer. From Win-
dows Explorer, choose View ➝ Details, or choose View
➝ List.

Delete unnecessary desktop icons

Desktop icons take up RAM, and clutter your interface, so you
want as few of them as possible on your desktop if you want a
stripped-down version of XP. You can delete most desktop
icons, but some of them such as Outlook and Internet Explorer
apparently can’t be deleted. However, TweakUI lets you delete
them. Go to the Desktop section and uncheck the boxes next to
the icons that you want off the Desktop. (You can force the Reg-
istry to do the same thing—see “Remove “Unremovable” Desk-
top Icons” [Hack #13].)
Hide Control Panel applets
The Control Panel is filled with applets that you will rarely, if
ever, use, and they clutter up the interface, making it more diffi-
cult to find the applets you do want to use. To hide applets, go
to the Control Panel section and uncheck the boxes next to the
applets that you want to hide. (You can force the Registry to do
the same thing—see “Control the Control Panel” [Hack #9]. That
hack also shows you how you can run the applets, even after
you’ve removed their icons.)
Clean up the right-click “New” menu
When you right-click on the desktop and choose New, you can
automatically create a new document by choosing from a sub-

20 | Windows XP
samplerhax.fm Page 21 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

menu. That submenu may offer many choices of which docu-

ment types to create, depending on the applications you have
installed on your PC, and how those applications handle their
installation process. In many instances, those choices may be lit-
tle more than clutter, because you may rarely need to create new
documents of certain types. Strip down that submenu to the
essentials, so that it has only those document types that you fre-
quently create. Choose Templates, and uncheck the boxes next
to the document types you rarely create. For example, most peo-
ple rarely use the Briefcase [Hack #30], but that is one of your
choices, so remove that unless you regularly move files using it.
(For a hack on how to add power to the right-click context menu
in Explorer, see “A Power User’s Hidden Weapon: Improve the
Context Menu” [Hack #29].
Enable autologon
If you’re the primary person who uses your PC, you can enable
autologon so that you’re logged in automatically when the sys-
tem starts and don’t have to log on manually each time. Choose
Autologon from the Logon section, check the box next to “Log
on automatically at system startup,” and make sure that your
username, domain, and password are correct.

Related Hacks Hack #0

Find these related hacks online at hacks.oreilly.com.

Hack #1. Customize Multiboot Startup Options
Hack #21. Generating Folder and File Listings for Printing or Editing
Hack #33. Stop Pop Ups, Spyware, and Web Bugs
Hack #42. War Driving for WiFi Access
Hack #63. Slam That Spam
Hack #68. Don’t Fear the Registry
Hack #73. Store Multiple Clips and Boilerplate Text with a Better Clipboard
Hack #80. Remove Unruly Applications and Uninstall Entries
Hack #86. Image Conversion in a Pinch

Windows XP | 21
No boundaries.

Wireless Hacks
By Rob Flickenger
ISBN 0-596-00559-8
$24.95 US, $38.95 CAN

It’s an increasingly wired world,

but many people are finding
that the best way to get con-
nected is to do away with
wires entirely. From cable
replacement to universal
Internet connectivity, wireless
technology is changing the way we connect to our
machines and to each other. As with any new technology, buying your
gear is only the first step. Understanding how to make the best use of it
is another story. Wireless Hacks offers 100 industrial-strength tips about
wireless networking, contributed by experts who apply what they know
in the real world every day. Each Hack can be read in just a few minutes,
but can save you hours of research.
samplerhax.fm Page 23 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

Wireless
HACK Aligning Antennas at Long Distances Hack #0

#82 By working methodically and communicating well, you can easily

bring up wireless links several miles apart.

The farther apart your points are, the harder it is to aim your anten-
nas. At distances up to five miles or so, this is rarely a problem. Just
so long as you have enough total gain to overcome the path loss,
which you should have calculated by now [Hack #81]. At greater dis-
tances, getting the antennas pointed directly at each other can be
quite tricky. Here is a list of techniques that might help you get your
dishes pointed where they need to be:
• Use mobile phones or FRS/GMRS radios [Hack #9] to maintain
communications between the two points while you’re aiming the
antennas. It helps to have at least two people at each end (one to
manipulate the antenna, and another to coordinate with the
other end). Radios often work much better in areas where mobile
phone coverage is spotty.
• Set up all of your network settings ahead of time, so there aren’t
any variables once you get to the remote site. Check all gear,
ping each box, and even transfer a file or two to be sure that your
equipment works at close range. You don’t want to question it
later if you have problems getting the link going.
• Use a tool like the Wavemon [Hack #33] or Kismet [Hack #31], or a
good built-in client [Hack #20] to show the signal strength and
noise readings in real time. This kind of tool is your best friend,
short of an actual spectrum analyzer.
• Work on one end of the link at a time, slowly changing one vari-
able at a time, until you see the maximum signal strength and
lowest noise at each end of the link.
• If you have one handy (and your link budget permits it), first try
an omni or sector antenna on one end of the link. Once you find
the other end of the link, replace it with your dish or yagi and
Wireless | 23
samplerhax.fm Page 24 Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:24 AM

tune it in. Typically, the higher gain the antenna, the shorter the
beam width, and therefore, the harder it is to aim.
• Sweep slowly, and don’t be afraid to go beyond the best per-
ceived signal. Most antennas have smaller side lobes that appear
as false positives. Keep moving until you find the main lobe. It
should stand out significantly from the others, once you find it.
• Often, particularly with offset dish antennas and yagi antennas,
the antenna appears to be aimed too low or far to the left or right
of the other end of the link. This is normal. Don’t worry about
how it looks, worry about finding the greatest possible signal.
• Do NOT touch the actual antenna while taking a reading. Rest-
ing your hand on the antenna interferes with the radiation pat-
tern, and drains your signal very quickly. Take your readings
with all hands clear of the equipment.
• Don’t forget to compare horizontal and vertical polarization. Try
the antennas in both positions, and use the one that shows the
lowest noise.
• Once your link is in place, consider using WEP to discourage
others from attempting to connect to it. If you want to provide
wireless access at either endpoint, set up another gateway, pref-
erably with caching services (such as caching DNS and a trans-
parent web proxy, like Squid). This helps reduce the amount of
traffic that goes over the long link, cuts down on network colli-
sions, and generally makes more efficient use of the link.
It can take all day to properly align antennas at a great distance, but it
can also be fun, with the right people. Just take your time, think about
what you’re doing, and leave time at the end of the day to celebrate!

Related Hacks Hack #0

Find these related hacks online at hacks.oreilly.com.

Hacks #24. Passive Scanning with KisMAC
Hacks #27. Finding Radio Manufacturers by MAC Address
Hacks #30. “Brought to you by” Rendezvous Ad Redirector
Hacks #61. Hermes AP

24 | Wireless
 Search
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Google® Hacks is a collection of

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 hack (hăk) n., A non-obvious
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