How many wireless connections can you pick up from your home?

I'm running a pole to find out how many wireless connections people pick up from there home. I can pick up 3 wireless connections in my house, although 1 connection isn't always on and has a very weak 1/5 signal strength. The other connection is unsecured and is 5/5 signal strength, and mine has 5/5 and is a Belkin Pre N wireless router with Mimo technology.

 

I can pick up 4+ I have seen up to 7. I live in the 'burbs' (population here is about 50k) and not a Apartment building / Condo / Dorm. Most of them have a very weak signal and some are secured.

Wireless is just that popular , I am surpirsed it is that mainstream but I think most everyone knows of it and most everyone can either install it , or know someone who can (I have set it up for a few people).

 

I can pick up 2 mine and 1 more.

 

I pick up only one, if i see more than 1 i leave it a lone, because its not mine, and if i do connect then im stealing. Enough said...

 

My lappie picks 4 connections(Excluding mine with excellent all two floors) and 3 of those are reasonbly good signal strength. But I think only one or two of those is open I think.

 

I can pick up 2 in my neighborhood at the moment, but I've seen more.

 

I'm apparently the first person in my neighboorhood to invest in a wireless router. Only my connection has been available for the last year and a half.

My parents house gets 4 and my work gets 3...

 

This is suprising, i can't believe how many people don't disable the SSID broadcast, or for that matter, they know they can even do that

 

I live out in the boonies. You can't even take a cordless phone to the neighbor's house so there's no way I can see their wireless signals (if they had them, which I'm sure they probably don't). It's fun living in the middle of no where. Although my neighbors would never know I have a wireless network since I secure it up.

 

I used to do that, but I got tired off WZC picking up someone else network(Though it is configured with SSID, may be it was XP SP1 at that time) randomly(some times).

But, I still use MAC filtering and as well as WEP( I know I should use something like WPA2), but I guess, My PC are protected with firewall, so I would not worry too much about it, and also I keep watch my router logs now and then.

 

When I first got my wireless connection about 2 years ago I could only pick up 1 connection but now I have about 12. I live in NYC

 

4-6 APs of the network I am on (residential FREE Wifi available all around the building)

3-4 neighboring ones

In other words its a mess of signals !

 

Depends which home but..

In Texas I think it's more that it's a high-tech area than a big city, but all of my neighbours seem to have wireless networks so I can see all those every time I log on (curiously the only network I can't see is mine, because I hide it).

From San Francisco I get about 15 connections, but it's a big city, also the building I live in has lots of wire mesh in the walls which means the company that installed the wireless network had to put tons of hubs in, I think they have 11 wireless hubs for the 6 floors of the building!

 

I live in the suburban areas, I got 2-3 with my 2915, now I get 5-8 with my Atheros

 

I can pick up between 5 and 7 signals from home. Only one is currently un-secured. At least half of them are still using the default SSID. I believe there is one, besides my own, that has the SSID broadcast turned off.

The first time I picked up a neighbor's unsecured signal, I logged in (default SSID, User Name and Password) and changed their SSID. The next day the router was properly configured with a new SSID, User name, Password and Secured.

 

I live in an apartment block in downtown DC and at any one time, I can pick up between 8 ad 10 wifi networks... And half of them are not even secure!
I leave my SSID visible but use MAC filtering and WEP keys...I can't seem to get it working as well when I hide the SSID.

 

I pick up only one, which is mine. Have MAC Filtering and my SSID invisible...don't want to share my internet connection with anyone else.

 

My WAP has Broadcast ESSID disabled, so I can't pick up a single one, unless I know the password and connect automatically.

 

WPA2 on my two APs.

i can pickup 3 more APs, one of them has WEP.

 

I have MAC address filitering too. I hate when people us my bandwidth

 

I live in an apartment with many surrounding apartments and I only picked up maybe 12 or so wireless connections in my room with the Intel 2200b/g.

Now that I have the Atheros I detect a whole crap load, 34 at the moment. YES, 34, but before I could only tap into 2 connections that were usable if my internet was down, now I pick up 4-6 connections that I can use if my internet is down, which it rarely is.

Crazyness. makes my head spin

 

Pick up the total of 3 here at house. One of them is mine.
Other 2 are open none encrypted and can be access at 11Mbps.
I can access there entire networks. The sad part is, I've told him about it over and over again and it's still open.
Mine is encrypted with 156bit, wep-13 charactor, mac address only, and not broadcasting SSID.
Ol, and it's behind another wired linksys router before I went wireless.
I know it's over kill, but hey, it's better then the guys next door.

 

I pick up one. My own router. I live in a house far appart from neighbors.

 

Metamorphical, dayam, that's the ideal setup, lucky you.

T_T

 

Same with me. I pick up only 1 since im in a wooded area. Im very happy too

Nick

 

I only pick up mine. I live in an apartment near a bunch of others.

 

Two: one is 1/5 and sometimes doesnt work, and the other is secure, so I hop on it.

Dangit.

 

I'm looking at five right now, one of which is mine. That's really a testament to the wireless reception of my T43; I live on the edge of nowhere, and all the houses here are really nicely spaced apart.

What's rather alarming is that, of those five, only two (including mine) are encrypted.

 

I saw two more connection for the first time last night. One was unsecured.

 

Now I am new to the wifi-realm, but one question that has always boggled me is why people don't share internet connections? Now I know its illegal but heck just looking outside of my window I see a bunch of houses with hacked satellite tv antennas. Why can't 5 or 6 houses close to each other get together, buy the speediest connection their service provider offers and have it installed in only one house, buy a small business router that is capable of broadcasting pretty far, and share the wealth and costs. I know everyone here would cry foul because they won't have enough bandwidth for their advanced internet use behaviours, but for 5 average households who only check their banking, mail, and read the news and some cooking forums, I don't see why it won't work...

I am still in the research stage of buying my own wifi router, and for the time being, am wired, I see my neighbor's linksys and have connected a couple times to see if it actually works, and it did. Why can't I just goto him and say; hey, I'll drop you 20 bucks a month because I'm using your wifi. Its safe to assume that if I can simply access his wifi by turning on my laptop, then he isn't the type of user who knows how to configure his own router, and therefore, most likely would never be an advanced net user, requiring all his bandwidth.

Hope no one gets offended by this, I'm speaking hypothetically.

 

Well the reason it is frowned upon is because if you were a company selling private internet. You get more money off individual accounts than business accounts. The difference is basically retail vs wholesale. I know people that have done this though, people share say a dedicated T1 connection and split the cost.

The other thing is that if someone doesn't pay...and you are stuck with the bill. There aren't too many people I would trust to pay me because of the cost of a T1...a residential ISP is different, alot less costly.

Just my $.02

 

It might be all the communist profs I have, but I think it could work... just imagine...

 

I only pick up one and it's mine. I live way out in redneck country where most people wouldn't even know what a wireless system is.

 

I have 11+ at most times. I live in an apartment complex and i have at least 20 units within 300-400 foot radius of my place, plus I live in a college town so there are a lot of notebooks.

My connection s 5/5, most others are 2/5 or 1/5, but i do get a couple 3/5

 

I can't pick up any connections apart from my own. I think it really depends on where you live jason. If you live in a block of flats, you could pick up several wireless connections, if you live in a detached house like me in a "semi-rural" residential area, outside town, you can't really pick up any that are not ures.

 

Or for that matter you live in a Condo or in a huge apartment complex. Then you get over at least 5 networks im sure of. or more even...

 

Live in a pretty typical neighborhood, but in the "middle of nowhere" Frisco. So no, there is no big city nearby and I still can pick up 9+ connections sometimes. In my new house only ~4-5 on a good day, since behind my house is naked corn fields for miles. But while this house was being built, I lived in temporary housing not far away, and easily 9+.

Although right now my connection options are limited to just 1, everything else is not-viewable so my mom doesn't accidentally connect to someone's elses non-secured network

 

I pick up one connection, and that's mine. My neighbor two doors over has wireless, but their router is pretty weak, so I don't pick that up.

 

Polish JR that's a great idea. I know some people that do that. Couple of friends who live across from each other do that, my friend shares a connection with his cousin who lives right beside him and so on.

I don't see why not.

Cheers,
Mike

 

I get 3, two are my home ones, and one is the school across the road (but it is secured)

 

I get my connection plus one other. Its unsecured too. Poor people, I mean come on now, I'm new to this and I even have mine secured.

 

I'm not exactly in a big city but there is lots of wifi here. Starbucks and Barnes and noble offer it for a fee. A local coffee shop within 5 minute walk of my house has it also and it is common to see people outside using it (I have now and then)

As for ones I can use at home two neighbors have wifi and I've used both wherever my network can't reach theres usually can (like outside) my house is huge so its hard to get one outside. I have the best setup though just the same

I've also managed to connect once while riding the bus and in a few other areas. Very cool.

 

I get 4 (sometimes 5) connections on my laptop, including mine. I'm surprised, because I live in an older suburb and didn't think there would be that many people around me with wifi. They're all secured, so I don't/can't use them. I used to leave mine open, but then decided to close it just to avoid any potential hassles. I don't know who owns the others, but I named my SSID with my street address so at least others would know where my connection is located.

Russ

 

rfortson,

Personally, I would not put an information like that on the SSID...unless you don't broadcast it. That is a kind of a no-no It is better that you name it like a common name with no personal info.

I have helped alot of people with this around me, some had phone numbers as the SSID, some with addresses.

This is just my $.02.

Don't let anyone know any info about what you have in your house.

 

My wi-fi card picks up about 7-8 connections. I live in an apartment building, so that number doesn't surprise me. About half of them are secured though, that surprises me. I just set one up for a friend and neglected to secure it as she lives in a house. But the first thing I'm going to do is set up a WPA key for her. In addition, the half of the connections that are not secured, only one has a strength that would allow me to piggy back of their bandwith.

 

Yeah, I thought about that, but then I'm not in a high traffic area. The only people likely to see it are my neighbors, and I suppose they could come ask to "borrow the wireless" if theirs went down for the day or something like that. I know I wonder who else has networks around me. Given the short range, it's obviously down to about 6 houses. I'm just not sure what the risk is. Once I figure out a credible risk, I'll probably change it.

 

From my house I can only get my wireless conection. No free internet for me.
In the cities I can get a few that are unprotected.
Tim

 

3-4 here, though they're not always on and 3 out of 4
are secured using wep. i use wpa2 (there's a windows
xp patch out for it). i can use that fourth wifi connec-
tion, but it's not too stable.

 

usually 3-4 , not including mine.

 

I pick up 4. I live in an older subdivision where the houses are spaced farther apart.