How do you read the maps?

[Ardy]

I'm new to Wigle. Is there a read me or any other info on the maps.
Some of my questions:
What do the different color AP points mean?
What does QOS #mean?
What are the different types- BBS,INFRA,etc?
What does the bar in the bottom right hand corner do?

Thanks for any help in adavace,
Roger

[bobzilla]

> What do the different color AP points mean?

They shift from yellow to green as the QOS goes up.

> What does QOS #mean?

Stands for Quality of Service. If an AP is seen on more than one day, or by more than one user, the QOS goes up, because it's more likely to be stable.

> What are the different types- BBS,INFRA,etc?

Roughly: Basic Service Set (BSS) (sometimes called BBS) and infrastructure are the same thing, a mode where many clients connect to one node acting as a server. The alternative is called Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS) (sometimes called IBBS) or peer to peer, which is many nodes all connected to each other.

> What does the bar in the bottom right hand corner do?

That is a filter on QOS. Push the bar up and you only see points with higher and higher QOS.

[Ardy]

Thanks for the info Bobzilla.
Another question: I was out war driving discovered a few APs that appear to have WEP turned off. I can connect to them, but I can not access the internet through them. Do you know why?

Thanks again,
Roger

[bobzilla]

First of all: connecting to somebody's network to whom you don't have permission to is almost certainly a criminal act, and these days it's probably a felony. Wardriving is not a crime, but connecting to an unauthorized network probably is. WiGLE is for supporting the hobby of wardriving, analysis of wireless deployment, and helping to alert people to the inherent insecurities of wireless networks. WiGLE does not condone, and really isn't helpful for, breaking into people's networks and stealing bandwidth.

To answer your question, perhaps those AP's were not attached to the owner's network, maybe they were laptops not connected to anything, maybe they were honeypots listening for any interesting traffic and logging it, maybe they implemented security properly behind the access point only letting certain MACs or ports or ipsec or whatever through their firewall, could be a lot of things.

[Guest]

Bobzilla,
Thanks again for the info.
War driving and wireless networking is new and interesting to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wanting to break into networks or steal bandwidth. I'm just wanting to learn more about the technology.

Thanks again,
Roger