Is given IP address assigned to some Wi-Fi Hotspot? - networking

I'm doing a project: the goal is to find features detecting a hotspot, but I have no training set or test set for development and estimation of methods yet.
As far as I understand, there are 2 ways to build the sets:
to get a list of some of U.S. hotspots;
to find a function that checks if given IP address is connected with some hotspot (with some measure of certainty).
So what I wonder:
is there any U.S. Hotspots IP dataset?
are there any other ways or technologies to find out whether a given IP address is assigned to a Hotspot?
Any helpful ideas appreciated (criticism is appreciated too).

A few tips.
You actually want to use MAC address, not IP. IPs can change quite a bit easier than MAC addresses.
There are at least 2 sets of mac/location data sets, Skyhook and Google. Skyhook has a web site where you can learn more about their SDK, I don't think Google allows direct access of their. The cost to use Skyhook varies, but in general it is around $0.50 a device, depending on a large number of factors.

Related

Wide Area Network for embedded systems without cellular or internet

I'm looking into how one would create a network of embedded systems. What I'd like to achieve is for a device (basically a chip with network capabilities) to directly send data to a server but not use the internet(tcp/ip) or cellular data(like GSM etc).
I don't have much expertise in this field. Most of the networking protocols I've seen like ZigBee are designed for a Local Area Networks. Wide Area Network can be achieved perhaps over mesh or hoping etc. But is there a known protocol for long range networking, say for sensors, assuming there aren't low power constraints?
I am guessing you want to avoid the internet and GSM, not because you have anything against the protocols but because you want your solution to work without having to rely these networks.
If so then you don't have to rule out TCP/IP as this can be used in private networks also.
From your description it sounds like the closest thing that would meet your needs would be a satellite based communications system. So long as you are not worried about price, power and to a certain extend size, then your sensors can communicate from anywhere using satellite links.
There are also HAP - High Altitude Platforms. These are essentially like low flying Satellites, or high flying planes/blimps, so don't have the same coverage but need less power for a given communication bandwidth. If you search for 'High Altitude Platform Networking' you should find plenty of examples such as the following which is an up to date summary of the technology at the time of writing:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2175-91462016000300249
As mentioned above, many if not all of these systems will support IP based communication protocols on top of their lower layers. Unless you really have some issue with the protocols themselves, it seems sensible to use them as there is such a wealth of experience, tools etc associated with IP communications, and using them does not make you dependent on the wider 'Internet'.
Its also worth mentioning that a common pattern is to have local groups of sensors communicate with each other and or with a gateway and the gateway then communicate over the long link back to your server. This allows the individual device be smaller, cheaper, lower power etc. This may not match your requirements if you are not likey to have clusters of sensors, however.
If you search for satellite sensor networks you may find you get a lot of hits for the gateway case mentioned above. This article 'A Survey of Architectures and Scenarios in Satellite-Based Wireless Sensor Networks: System Design Aspects' looks to be a good overview which includes HAPs also and it is available to download form this site at the time of writing:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250003254_A_Survey_of_Architectures_and_Scenarios_in_Satellite-Based_Wireless_Sensor_Networks_System_Design_Aspects
I would look into LoRa which is designed with these requirements in mind.
You still need infrastructure for that (gateways, network servers), you could roll out your own or (in urbanized areas) use pre-existing one like TTN.
The choice of networking technologies depends on many factors, such as range, power constraints, bandwidth requirements and so on.
User Raber already pointed out that you could look into LoRa / LoRaWAN. Since nobody else mentioned it yet, my suggestion is to also have a look at SigFox technology, which is slightly different from LoRa in what it offers and their business model.

Determining all BSSIDs that exist on a network

I'm building an application that needs to know whether the currently connected BSSID is a part of a larger network that is restricted to a building.
For example, if I pull an access point's BSSID on one floor, how can I determine (without doing a tedious full-building WiFi walk-through survey) that this BSSID is part of the same network that the rest of the building is using?
I have considered using just the SSID, but this provides problems if two buildings are using the same SSID.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Identify network adapter only with MAC Address

Is it possible that to identify a network adapter by only its MAC Adress?
I know that it is possible to find out the vendor, but i need the exact Name/Description, e.g. "Intel Ethernet I217-LM".
Update (more info):
Let's say I have 10 MAC addresses. I want to paste them into a (online) tool that gives me then name of the adapter.
Is this even possible? The 6 first digits are vendor specific, I know that but, is there any other scheme?
No, the MAC Address is simply a unique Identifier for each network adapter. You can think of it as a unique random number coded directly into the networking hardware, so that it can never change. You can figure out the vendor, because "blocks" of MAC addresses are assigned to each vendor, in order to ensure that no one gets a card with a duplicate address. To which models the addresses are assigned is up to the vendor, and it is highly unlikely that a vendor will publish such a list.
In order to obtain the information you need, you will have to use a OS/Programming language specific function. If you can tell us what environment you are working on, maybe someone can help you figure out how to get the information.

How to Identify Unique Users on a Website?

I have a website and I can collect all kinds of information (log) of the viewer including - but not limited to: IP, Country, City, OS, Date and Time. (If It's a mobile device, it's MobileOS, Device Model etc.)
However, logs having the same IP adresses does not seem to be useful to identify the viewer since the website is mostly used by the students of my university and they have the same IP address as that of the university's WiFi.
I had the idea to somehow get the MAC Address of the viewer's device, but it does not seem applicable in ASP.NET. (There is a JavaScript solution,but it works only for IE.)
Is there any way to obtain the MAC address of my users? Or is there any other way to uniquely identify users on my website that I could perhaps use?
Thanks in advance.
You can't get the MAC address because there are lots of machines (and interfaces) between you and the viewer of the website. The IP address, as you're finding, isn't unique because the visitor might be behind a NAT, or might change IP addresses because of lease renewal or temporary assignment.
There are other ways to do fingerprinting, if you're just trying to identify machines (and the users, and the sessions): https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/browser-uniqueness.pdf
You stop short of explaining why you want to get the MAC address. What is it that you want to accomplish?

How does one determine datalink capacity when ping is not given?

Here's a link to my network diagram http://i48.tinypic.com/dcev0y.png
I am trying to learn on my own how to setup networks, and on the hybrid network parts I am confused, how does one calculate the amount of minimum datalink needed for a situation like the picture linked above.
English is not my primary language so it is hard for me to search for the proper keywords. Any help is kindly appreciated.
If possible to do so it would be useful to ask the network provider how much bandwidth was available on each route and how much was currently being used.
If there is a network administrator in your organisation you should speak with them first.
This would be the easiest way to aquire an understanding the network topology in the diagram. But you would need to sensitive to the fact network administrators are typically very busy and under pressure so bear that in mind if you are asking for their time.
If you need to figure this out yourself you need to research and learn about basic network monitoring tools
Here are a list of concepts and tools that you should research and understand.
ports ping, traceroute, nslookup and telnet
You will likely need to research TCP/IP, network addresses and subnetting
In addition you will need to learn how about network interfaces controllers, multi-homing IP addresses, public and private facing IP addresses.

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