During one of our trips to the gambling mecca on this side of Nevada, we usually leave the house at around 7:00 in the morning.
When we arrive, that normally gives us enough time to ensure that someone has already heated any of our favorite nickel or penny slot machines. But on this particular trip—which was on a Sunday—we left the house two hours earlier than usual.
We’ll drive much slower and try to cover more secondary roads in selected cities and towns. Armed with my relic-of-the dot-com-bust but still-trusty, WiFi-equipped notebook, a booster antenna, and the notoriously popular “wireless sniffer,” NetStumbler, we’ll be war driving from Fremont to Reno, Nevada.
The rapid popularity of wireless Internet access spawned the fine art of war driving, a computer-cracking technique that involves driving through a neighborhood with a wireless-enabled notebook computer and mapping houses and businesses that have wireless access points.
Some states deem this practice illegal, but not in tech-savvy states like California and Nevada, home to Silicon Valley and the Comdex Expos.
But why war drive? It is because of my distaste for cell phones. While cell phones are convenient for emergencies, non-yakkers like me want Internet access – the world at your fingertips – as we drive. The tiny screens in cell phones and other WiFi-enabled gadgets like the Palm Tungsten C don’t compare to the full glory of a big, crisp 12″ or 14″ TFT computer screen.
We utilized the I-580 East to 205 to I-5 North to 120 to CA-99 to Highway 80 East route to reach Reno, Nevada, and in the course of the almost 4 and a half hours of leisurely cruising/war driving,
I concluded that bringing your notebook computer is not only indispensable if you embark on a long-haul drive, but it is also a convenient way to get in touch with the world—all for free—while giving your tired eyes a lot of relief!
The world is indeed a small place with the Internet and WiFi access. Access points abound—except for the major portion of the uphill stretch from Placerville (California) to Sparks, Nevada—in most areas we drove by!
However, in time, war driving may suffer the same fate as using your cell phones while driving- which is now widely implemented in densely populated cities- unless a highly secure and selective encryption standard comes along the way. One that will be good enough to separate the free-for-public-use wireless networks from the private ones.
—links:
www.macstumbler.com
www.netstumbler.com
www.palmone.com
EPILOGUE:
This article was written twenty years ago, and ‘war driving‘ became a fad. Wi-Fi had become ubiquitous, Bluetooth had become more efficient, and cellular connectivity had become faster and more affordable.
Today, older vehicles with no built-in cellular service (paid or complimentary) and fancy multimedia consoles use their mobile phone’s cellular service and share Internet connectivity with their other devices with bigger screens.