Tag: hack

Increase WiMax USB Modem Signals Even Further – Cantenna Version 2

ReallyVirtual4 Comments

An improvement over the Wimax Cantenna I shared in my last post, this configuration has taken the signal strength to new heights – ie. from the 40-60% of v1 to a consistent 80%!

The principal is the same as version 1: take a 330ml can, cut it into half (but laterally this time). Chop off both ends so that we are left with a concave sheet, make a slit in the center to insert the USB modem in, and try it out. I used scissors to cut the can, but be careful not to cut yourself. Plug the modem in, and find the angle and orientation that gives the best signal.

I get an 80% signal when the modem is almost parallel to the table surface, which is very counter-intuitive (as we expect antennae to be upright), but it may have to do with the relative position of the tower from my home in this small valley – and as long as it works, who cares!

Cantenna Version 2 Cantenna Version 2

Please do share your experience in the comments if you are a(n unfortunate) Wateen customer and if you try this hack out.

Cantenna and Plantenna for Wimax

ReallyVirtual10 Comments

A fixed line PTCL DSL is not a viable option for me in Abbottabad, so as luck would have it, I ended up owning not one, but two Wateen Wimax connections after moving to Abbottabad from Lahore – I believe this irony has something to do with god deciding to punish me for my sins in this world rather than the hereafter.

My first Wateen router, the indoor CPE, did not work out of the box, as I live on the ground floor and Wimax was probably invented exclusively for people higher up. After trying a hundred locations all around the house, multiplied by a hundred different angles and orientations, the best signal strength that I could find was a measly 2/5 bars, which translated to a 20Kbps out of the 1Mbps speed that I was paying for. Out of sheer desperation, I tried placing the device sideways and facing upwards, which is the exact opposite of how it is supposed to stand, and placed it closer to the floor, under a plant – and in a eureka moment (anything that increases bandwidth is pure bliss, right?), the signal strength shot from 2/5 to 4/5 and even 5/5 bars! Apparently, the plant catches the signals and throws them downwards using some kind of druid magic.

Since then, my experiments show that most plants and small trees act as great Wimax antennae – for the USB modems, for example, if you are working from a park, sitting below a tree will give you at least a 20% increase in signal. Now I understand what Buddha was up to when chose to spend his life beneath a tree. So here it is, my plantenna

plantenna plantenna

Perhaps Yateem can resuscitate their business by giving out a plant with each modem. If you try this configuration, do let me know about your results.

A few months ago, Wateen released the USB version of its Wimax modem, which would be perfect for the “location independent professionals” if not for the same signal strength situation as the larger modem. Their towers are a kilometer from my house, but the USB modem failed function inside my house. As I did not intend to die by frost or mosquito bites, I was planning to return the device the next day when I decided to experiment with cantennas. The cantenna I made took the Wifi signal inside my home from a non-functional 0%-20% to a fully functional consistent 40%-60%!

cantenna wimax cantenna

The instructions are simple. Take a cola can, chop off the top half, create a slit wide at the base that is enough to place the can between the modem and its USB adapter and you are done. No wire loops to make, no can diameters to calculate and no need to wrap aluminum foil around concave surfaces.

I think this hack should also work with the EVDO USB devices, as I hear a lot of complaining regarding the signal strength from the PTCL EVDO users. If you try it out, I’d be very interested to hear about it in the comments.

P.S. Being away from one’s blog for months isn’t a great idea, but I have been busy coping with a lot of change – the deliberate kind (like moving from Lahore to Abbottabad for a while – more on that later) and the uncontrollable kind (my family getting into a car accident – more on that later).  I will resume the brain-dump here in the days to come.


Your Privacy is an Illusion

Sohaib Athar8 Comments

WhitehatWhat would you do if your laundry-shop published your laundry bills online, along with your name, address and phone number, for the whole world to see?

 

A couple of months ago, while trying to understand Pakistan’s perpetual energy crisis situation, I entered the LESCO website hosted at http://www.lesco.info/. As soon as I clicked the Customer Service link, I was teleported to a consumer privacy and security hell. I closed my browser after going through a few pages, hoping that the website would disappear like a bad dream, and tried to forget about it. Two months later, the website is still online, so I think LESCO doesn’t have any plans to take it offline. Meanwhile, I have gone through the five stages of grief, laced with a few non-standard stages like ‘hilarity’ and ‘helplessness’ that Kubler-Ross probably hadn’t thought of, so now I can write about this joke without affecting my blood-pressure and general sanity.

When you enter the webite, you are rewarded with a pre-filled login form. You heard me right – the form is pre-filled with the username “Guest” and password “*******” (hehe) for your convenience. The links at the top are pointing to a certain firm called Clicksoft and are broken, but you can still visit the Clicksoft website to hear their amusing pitch:

ClickSoft is a groundbreaking software development organization providing high-end technical solutions. Our customers benefit from our vast experience of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solutions for demanding mission critical environments in, retail and wholesale, manufacturing, financial services.

I will not pass any judgement on their claims, but I do wish that their prospective clients do a little research on them before handing them any business.

 

After you “log on” to the LESCO /mc/ website homepage as a “Guest”, you are handed a search form, but not just any form – this one has the special power of letting you search the complete LESCO database!. You can search by any field, including customer name, their address and even their neighbor’s bill. By the way, from the search forms, it looks like many people are born with “through”, “Col” and “Officer” in their names.

I am a big proponent of transparency, but LESCO has taken it a bit too far! You can search in Applications and you can search for Consumers and even browse various LESCO locations. The real gem, though, is the Feedback Form. It allows you to “Change Password”! Yes, the same password that was embedded in the login page (*******)… A classic case of WTF!

If you think it ends here, you are wrong, LESCO has one more surprise for you. Visit the Reports section and you will come across URL masterpieceslike:http://www.lesco.info/mc/default.php?action=35&where=%20where%20c.app_date%3C=’2008-05-06′
%20%20and%20substring(c.loc_code,2,1)=’2’&circle=&desc=Demand%20Note%20Paid
All ten year old script kiddies and their pet parrots know the kind of malicious things that are possible with a little bit of SQL Injection, so I will not spell them out here, but apparently, the “Regional Training Centre LESCO”, who own the website, are still trying to figure out how to create websites. With employees like these, who needs corporate saboteurs?

So, coming back to the original question (“What would you do if your laundry-shop published your laundry bill, along with your name, address and phone number online, for the whole world to see?”), if your answer is “Nothing.”, I will understand. The rising oil and food prices have probably pushed things like data privacy towards the bottom of the list of things to worry about. Consider yourself lucky though, if a telemarketer discovers this treasure trove and a vaccum cleaner salesman comes aknocking at your door two days after you apply for an electricity connection. It would certainly be better than having your identity stolen. and a lot more entertaining if you are like me.

I did some research on consumer privacy and identify protection in Pakistan to see where the consumers (that’s you and me) stand, and discovered that Pakistan is yet to have a consumer rights protection law. Besides Babar Bhatti of telecompk, who writes about the topic frequently, and Dr. Awab, who urged me to write this post, I did not find any Pakistani bloggers who have shown serious concern about consumer data privacy in Pakistan on their blogs (though my google search session was brief). I did stumble upon websites for entities like Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan and The Network, but have yet to read what they are all about.

On the bright side, incidents like this make one think that perhaps the lack of ecommerce in Pakistan is actually a blessing in disguise. What do you think?

PS. For those too busy to visit the actual website, I’ll try to upload some screenshots soon.

PPS. No bytes were harmed or abused in the writing of this post.