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Wireless Networking Education The Internet Hardware

New Wi-Fi Distance Record Set In Utah 321

Posted by timothy from the put-access-points-on-chairlift-poles dept.
cold_sake writes "Wireless guru Rob Flickenger details the known records for Wi-Fi link distances on his latest blog. Included is a new distance record for an un-amplified Wi-Fi link, set by the students of Utah's Weber State University. 82 miles was accomplished with 802.11b."
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New Wi-Fi Distance Record Set In Utah More

New Wi-Fi Distance Record Set In Utah

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  • Hmm.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:19PM (#7676597)
    In other news, new cases of cancer have appeared all over the Weber State University campus.

  • Rural areas... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by DakotaK ( 727197 )
    Neat, FP. I commented on the rural internet access thing in this thread [slashdot.org], saying we need a way to get internet access to the rural areas, and the crazy bastards might have enabled just that. As they say, radness ensues.

  • Utah ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:20PM (#7676612)
    Figures the Mormons would perfect this technology ... Gotta get those RFID tags tags ready for all the Polygamists' wives
    • Yet if it was a an all black college and someone made a racial joke it would be flamebait, troll, and off topic.

  • With Distances this great... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Azadre ( 632442 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:20PM (#7676615)
    Will it be possible that wireless internet will become the default in the next five years over traditional phone/cable? With distances this far, would it be too hard to set it up in rural areas and provide low cost broadband?

    • Re:With Distances this great... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Beatbyte ( 163694 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:44PM (#7676798) Homepage
      Interesting? You didn't even read the article. Its directional microwave.

      Impossible to setup in rural areas. You would have to have a directional antenna for each user. Any more than 10 users and thats going to be a cluster-f$%@ of a guyed tower.
      • What's the problem with having an antenna for each user, as opposed to a mile or two of cabling or fiber?
        • how far away is your house from the street, god damn

        • Re:With Distances this great... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @01:12AM (#7677629) Homepage Journal
          You need a wireless interface for each user, but you can bring in multiple connections on one piece of fiber. You also need a bigass antenna for each user for whom you are trying to get significant range. Other than that, nothing.

          However you are better off with a series of stations, maybe mesh-networked, maybe not, with both directional and omnidirectional antennas. The directionals will point either at home base or other stations, and the omnis will handle serving individual users.

          Then, the users can have directionals pointed at the omnis. Perhaps you'll only be able to get a five mile range (on average) with a primestar dish on one end and an omni on the other, but you'll be able to get a lot of users connected to one station that way.

          • drinkypoo: You need a wireless interface for each user

            Why? Why not one interface with multiple antennas? (I'm new to wi-fi and need to learn; I did used to design antennas for pirate radio stations though)

      • Interesting? You didn't even read the article. Its directional microwave.

        Do try to be more charitable.

        Rural areas are generally clusters of people, with each cluster distant from others. There are lots and lots of small towns of 100 people or less. In Illinois they're centered around grain elevators, with typically a little grocery store, and maybe a bar, maybe a church. The people drive 10-20 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart to do their serious shopping. They aren't served by cable TV and the q

    • Re:With Distances this great... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CaptBubba ( 696284 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:49PM (#7676836)
      Not if my WISP [clearskynetworks.com] is any indication of the direction wireless is headed.

      Current problems I have encountered:
      Frequent dropped connections, hourly most of the time, will come back after a min or so
      Not able to scale well. As I said a few months ago, wired networks merely slowed down when the viruses hit in Sept, the wireless network simply turned off for about a month until it was fixed
      Packetloss, very bad at times
      Then there's also the whole security issue

      That's not including the company-specific problems I have had (aformentioned month-long blackout, nonexistant after-buisness-hours support, etc). Not to mention that I don't have a real IP address, just 10.0.x.x, useless for a lot of stuff. I suppose this makes sense when you have a wildly fluctuating mass of people on your service, but it is still a pain. All this may just be one bad experience, but it has led to a distrust of the idea of 802.11a/b/g wireless deployed on a large scale

      Some of the trouble likely stems from the open frequency band 802.11b uses. I can only guess the packetloss spikes are from somebody else in the complex using the microwave or something. Of course, you can do what my WISP did and get the apartment complex/housing area to ban all private APs ($300 per day of operation fine, ouch!), but that still does nothing about 2.4GHz wireless phones, cheap microwaves, and other devices that could interfere. Not to mention: what happens if it rains? I doubt a long distance microwave link would take too kindly to a lot of moisture in the atmosphere.

      On a side note, since I will obviously be dropping this ISP in favor of DSL or cable as soon as my contract comes up, am I pretty much SOL in terms of their wireless AP ban? I mean, running multiple drops of cat-5e to every room is doable, but I'd like to avoid it if possible. I get the feeling that this is a grey area where they can pretty much say whatever they want.

      • Re:With Distances this great... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DarkSarin ( 651985 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @11:27PM (#7677076) Homepage Journal
        I don't know as much as I should, but since my brother is in the business, I feel I need to comment. Most of your Microwave links are fairly hardened against weather. Yeah, it cuts down range, but you would build two towers at the extreme end of the range.

        The upshot of this is that you might consider towers every 40 mi, which is still respectable, but then it leaves you with the rather serious problem of how to connect this to the people on the ground. It sounds to me like a way to shoot data across a large distance, and then distribute. The sad part about this is that they are using 802.11b. The slow speeds make it less than ideal for large numbers of users.

        Instead, why not use one of the more powerful antennas available from Proxim (the Tsunami does like 430 Mbps (full duplex) at 5 miles), and if you need greater range, there are antennas that can handle that (although they are slower)), or a similar company. Many of their antennas are license exempt, but still operate outside th 2.4GHz band (5.8GHz, typically). The only one that is licensed operates at 23 GHz (wow!).

        At one point I was looking into starting a WISP, but decided that the rollout was a little too high initially. Instead I went back to school.

        • Presumably they stuck with 802.11b because they wanted their customers to use off-the-shelf receivers?

          There's nothing technologically novel about sending digital data over radio waves, the reason that its so popular right now is that it's standardized which has lead to it becoming very cheap. So anything that doesn't follow that standard is not benefitting from economies of scale.

    • I would not get too optimistic about the opportunties that this accomplishment appears to offer rural communities. I am not familiar with the area, but it looks like most of the link is over water and I am sure that it is line of sight. I suspect any sort of obstruction, rain, maybe fog, dust etc. would stuff it up. In addition any sort of interference from portable phones, microwaves etc. etc. would also affect it.

      Reliable rural connection would need more than 802.11b power for anything close to that r
      • RF paths over water are also susceptible to weird propagation effects, such as tropospheric ducting, and dynamic multipath from waves on the water's surface.

        Back when AT&T used microwave relays for long distance telephone calls, they had to design in a very large link margin to get the all-weather reliability that was needed for the telephone system.

  • Internet? In Utah? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:20PM (#7676618)
    Wireless guru Rob Flickenger details the known records for Wi-Fi link distances on his latest blog.
    In other news, it was determined that Rob Flickenger's blog is the only internet content generated in Utah (unless you count the "Tech Support Hell" stories from all the call centers in Ogden).

    --
    Rate Naked People [fuckmeter.com] at FuckMeter (Not work-safe [unless your boss likes porn])

  • Why does my wireless account at Weber suck? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MikeDawg ( 721537 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:21PM (#7676624) Homepage Journal

    Seems amazing especially because of the close by mountain range.

    Now can someone explain to me why I have such difficulty connecting to their wireless network while I'm on campus?

  • Inside sources... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TrevorB ( 57780 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:25PM (#7676649) Homepage
    A new distance record for an un-amplified Wi-Fi link, set by the students of Utah's Weber State University. 82 miles was accomplished with 802.11b.

    Sources within Utah's Weber State University state that this amazing feat was accomplished with the aid of an 82 mile long antenna, laid horizontally along the ground toward the Wi-Fi node.

    (Yes, dammit, I didn't read the article...)
  • and the university bandwidth to back it..

    No mention on how (if?) it's secured?
  • They set up one wireless access point with the SSID set to the default 'Linksys'.

    And many, many miles away they turned on their windows machine, and voila! There it was, the WAP with the SSID 'Linksys', wide open just as they had left it!

  • huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:29PM (#7676677) Homepage
    The link says 72 miles. The slashdot posting says 82. 10 miles is a pretty large error.

    • This proves the poster was wardriving in the area.

    • Re:huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by frazzydee ( 731240 )
      check the blog- it says that the site originally said 72 miles, but now it says 82. Hope this clears things up. Maybe there was a mistake on the original .edu website which they corrected later?

    • Re:huh? (Score:2, Informative)

      by dwillden ( 521345 )
      Well being a CS student at Weber, I had no knowledge of this except for the local newspaper.

      However the discrepancy in the distances is due to the time frame. The newspaper The Standard Examiner www.standard.net reported that they reached the 72 mile distance last week. And that they would attempt a longer distance over the weekend. They were going to try for 90 miles but I guess they settled for 82.

    • well when i calulate the distance between the Lat/Long's they give for their 80mile attempt

      41 37.798'/111 22.478'
      40 29.381'/111 52.523'

      its over 80 miles indeed.

  • Scary (Score:2, Funny)

    by BassAkwards ( 670247 )
    Jeez, with that kind of range wardrivers no longer need to back the Chevy Tahoe out of the garage.

  • What was the SSID? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Phrogz ( 43803 ) <!@phrogz.net> on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:31PM (#7676693) Homepage
    Just out of curiosity, they didn't happen to link to an SSID named 'linksys', and think it was the right network, did they? :)

  • I wonder what they tweaked (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PureFiction ( 10256 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:32PM (#7676703)
    The 802.11b MAC layer is fairly sensitive to timing latency. (I go into more detail on this article on timing in long 802.11 links [peertech.org])

    Did they use the old ad-hoc demo peer to peer mode, which has no ACK's and performs much better over longer links?

    Cisco cards are also well known for their quality; perhaps the cisco MAC can adapt to high latency long shots while also working well in infrastructure mode.

    Does anyone have more details on exactly how tenuous this link was, and how they pulled it (card settings, cables, antennas?)

    As a side note, myself and some others have been wondering how we might go about discerning the exact timing characteristics of different 802.11 MAC implementations using non-exotic hardware (like regular cards in monitor mode).

    When you need to measure microseconds (or fractions of them) it gets tricky...
    • Arg, the information link looked like the college site nav bar...

      Some observations:

      1) It's an illegally amplified system. No one cares about the FCC anyway, but it would be illegal for you to sell or operate this kind of link.

      2) The extremely long ping times seems to imply that they were using a regular IBSS connection with the ACK's likely timing out frequently.

      The delay's at the IP level are caused by retransmission at layer 2 for links like this, indicating that the link was probably spotty and in n
      • how do you determine it was illegally amplified?

        Respectfully.. did you (or they) do the math and show that it violated FCC regulations, or are you just assuming that because there is an amplifier, it's illegal (which would be wrong)
        • Arg, I hate doing the EIRP limit math! *grin*

          Here is the FCC law (which no one cares about, but I brought it up)

          1. The limint for directional links is 4W EIRP at 6dBi. That means 1W dBm output (from radio), plus antenna gain. The 6dBi bit is important. The higher gain your antenna, the more you have to reduce output power.

          2. For every 3dBi over 6dBi in antenna gain, you need to reduce output power by 1dBm. This means that your effective signal output is higher, while the transmit power from the radi

          • Re:I wonder what they tweaked (Score:4, Informative)

            by PureFiction ( 10256 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @11:38PM (#7677123)
            I need to quit posting sans-caffeine. The above are for multipoint. For directional the table is as follows:

            1.0 W radio + 6dBi antenna == 4W EIRP
            500 mW radio + 15dBi antenna == 16W EIRP
            250 mW radio + 24dBi antenna == 63W EIRP

  • Once you pop, you can't stop... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rohan_leader ( 731431 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:36PM (#7676726)
    That must be one hell of a pringle can..

  • Fine tradition of microwave hacking (Score:5, Informative)

    by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:36PM (#7676728)
    Weber State is famous for having launched its own satellite, Webersat, one of the OSCAR series. These kids are really at home with UHF and microwave radios!

    In practical terms, the range of a microwave link, such as 2.4 GHz, is based on having line of sight without attenuation. The radio line of sight path is based on the horizon, with a simple guideline of roughly horizon (miles) = 1.4 * sqrt(height-in-feet). So if you have totally flat ground and 100-foot towers, your range to the horizon is 14 miles. The range of a hop is the sum of both sides' horizons. Now if you have a 2500-foot-high mountain to stand on, then your horizon is stretched to 70 miles.

    The path loss is a function of distance, which antenna gain can make up for. The legality of doing this with unlicensed WiFi is a different question. Ham radio operators do this stuff routinely, but ham power limits are much higher, and there's no ERP limit. The 10 GHz band in particular is said to be popular in England. The crowded 144 and 430 MHz bands respond to similar rules. Attenuation by moisture in the air (serious form: rain fade) can get in the way, though. So if you're really looking for good distance, a nice place might be, oh, the Utah desert. Flat and no humidity.

    So while it's possible to hack a good range with enough effort, conventional WiFi equipment is still not reliable getting from one side of my house to the other. It's really not a threat to the phone companies, especially in non-rural areas.

    • Re:Fine tradition of microwave hacking (Score:5, Informative)

      by PureFiction ( 10256 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @11:10PM (#7676983)
      So while it's possible to hack a good range with enough effort, conventional WiFi equipment is still not reliable getting from one side of my house to the other.

      I hear this complaint often. The problem is that AP's use weak radio's, especially the cheap ones. Sometimes as low as 30mw.

      Client cards use low power, almost always 30mw.

      You want good signal? Use two 200mw senao/engenius/teletronics cards (boy, these companies change hands quickly...)

      They sell them for $100 at teletronics.com and you can still find the old senao/engenius models on ebay and elsewhere for less.

      200mw on both ends of a link lets you cut through the walls in your house, through the neighbors house, and out into the street :-)
    • Weber State is famous for having launched its own satellite, Webersat, one of the OSCAR series.

      Actually ... Webersat [osss.com] was their second satellite. Nusat [osss.com] was the first. Jawsat [osss.com] was the third. WSU is also where the Phase3D spaceframe was built.

  • Lessons Learned (Score:5, Informative)

    by numbski ( 515011 ) * <numbskiNO@SPAMhksilver.net> on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:36PM (#7676729) Homepage Journal
    Lessons Learned

    1. Unsure of FCC regulations. Experiment could not be put into commercial application

    The part15 rules would allow this so far as amplification goes. The part that would get you into trouble in a commercial application is the fact that your antenna, radio, and amp are not FCC certified as a system. You can't take a certfied amp, a certified radio, and a certified antenna, throw them together and call it a 'system'. You have to certify each combination individually, which costs roughly $10k. That being said, if you were were going to sell more than 10 of them, it would be worth the money.

    2. Better inventory of equipment.

    Spectrum analysis would probably be good too. Search for the least impeded part of the spectrum using peak hold, and use that area. Probably could have gotten better throughput that way. Just plug your antenna into the SA and viola!

    3. Better P.R. and release of information to the public.

    Local newspapers have been latching onto wireless broadband around here...especially ConvergeNow [convergenow.net], which claimed a launch a year ago...one of the biggest wireless broadband scams EVER. And I had the misfortune of being a tech in a legally binding contract with them to help deploy. Screwed individuals out of thousands on their credit cards.

    4. Smaller teams with designated responsibility and tasks. Groups were to large for interactions

    Makes sense. ;)

    5. Defined budget - working within a budget

    That being said...someone want to lend me about $50k to finish up deployment in St. Louis? We're not on 2.4Ghz, and it's good tech! :)

    • ConvergeNow [216.239.51.104]

      Bastards. Byron Farrington (CEO apparent) is one of the grandest scumbags ever. I've met him personally, thought he was pretty cool...until he screwed over so many people, including my own company.
  • The screen shots show a latency in the 2 second range. Why so long? Are they actually bouncing off some satellite with their dishes ;-).

    BTW: This data is actually bad news for wireless networks. It tells you that you will have more and more interference issues as more people use them. Forget about full WLAN coverage from east to west coast. ;-)

  • watson_come_here.mp3 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:38PM (#7676744)
    From the article (yes, the article):
    After verifying signal strength and quality the group in Bluffdale prepared an MP3 file for file transfer.

    So this was really just a way to evade file-sharing restrictions on the campus network?

  • Utah record not valid (Score:5, Funny)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:38PM (#7676746) Homepage Journal

    Actually I've been following these experiments.

    They bounced the signal off Darl McBride's head, and the resulting distortion caused a rip in the fabric of space-time. That's why some reports have 72 miles and others 83. There was some heavy magnetomoronic craniorectal inversion in the signal.

    This is similar to wind-aided records in track and field, and so the methods will have to be retested after Darl returns to his home planet.

  • BFD (Score:4, Interesting)

    by avgrunt357 ( 725698 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:38PM (#7676748)
    Big F'n Deal.

    If you look at the map, they punched the signal over water.

    No wonder these eTards were able to get the distance out of it.

    Try it over land and get back to me.

  • Looks like it was amplified (Score:5, Informative)

    by rednaxela ( 609701 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:39PM (#7676749)
    Equipment List:

    2- Primestar Satellite Dishes with modified feedhorns
    2- Laptop computers with 350 Cisco wireless cards
    2- Bidirectional Amplifiers (1.5 watt)
    Compass & GPS
    Tripods
    Cables and wires - MMCX RT ANG male to N Male on RG174, 72".
    http://classes.weber.edu/wireless/Project%20 Inform ation.htm

    They also stated they weren't sure of FCC regulations in the Lessons Learned page.
    http://classes.weber.edu/wireless/Lesson%20 Learned .htm

    FCC Regs state that the maximum power level for unlicensed devices in the 2.4 GHz range are:
    Field Strength of Fundamental (millivolts/meter) - 50
    Field strength of fundamental frequency harmonics (microvolts/meter) - 500

    See http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/2002/15/249/

    In other words, it's cool, but it's illegal.
    • Even the use of a high gain antenna is amplification in a way (ie. effective radiated power (ERP) is increased). Dunno about the states, but the ERP is often limited in many countries.

      Given the timing issues in 802.11b one wonders how effective the link was (ie. what throughput they got).

    • Ya.. you can see the amplifier sitting on top of the support just before it goes into the antenna.. this is false advertising.. I would have been impressed if it was un-amplified.. seeing how that's changed the record for amp'ed wireless is like 320KM, this isn't even 1/2 the distance.

      bogus.

  • soudsn about right (Score:3, Funny)

    by Brigadier ( 12956 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:40PM (#7676760)


    after driving through utah I woudl say it's abotu the onl place desolate enough and rid of any disturbance be it microwave or otherwise. My cell phone was dead for about 2/3 of the drive. I think it's teh I80 or I70 or I76 no exits no trees no cars nothing just rocks.

  • Un-amplified? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by erp6502 ( 725641 ) *
    Hmm... According to their project info page, they used two 1.5W bidirectional amplifiers. Probably not legitimate under part 15.

  • NOT A RECORD AT ALL!!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:45PM (#7676803)
    If you read the actual blog entry [oreillynet.com], Rob refers to the actual record of 310 km (192 miles) [newswireless.net] by a Swedish team.

    Man, I know this is slashdot and no one reads the articles, but you thing the editors would once in a while.

  • 1.5W is one heck of an "un-amplified" amplifier (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @10:52PM (#7676855)
    If you read the actual pages, they used 1.5W amplifiers. Their "lessons learned" page says "Unsure of FCC regulations"; more like FCC regulations ignored. FCC regulations for unlicensed use of the 2.4GHz spectrum for communications limit you to 1W ERP; with 1.5W amps and high gain antennas, they were well beyond the FCC regulations. Give me a big enough amp and a good antenna and I can transmit 2.4GHz a lot longer distance, at least until the feds track me down.
    • I seem to remember something from the last discussion about using Primestar dishes to focus Wifi - I was under the impression that the FCC limit on unlicensed broadcasts to 1W was only for non-directional (Omni-directional antennas) and they had some other (higher?) limit for tight beam communications.

      I may be totally wrong on this one, but it is worth determining one way or the other.

      Disclaimer : I'm pretty good at using my wifi gear stock out of the box, configuring it etc ... but I wouldn't know an FCC
    • I think it would pay for at least 2 of these chaps to earn a no-code Amatuer Radio license. You have pretty much free range from 900Mhz and upwards.

      You could use upto 1500 Watts [arrl.org] of power and it would all be legal.

      P.S. You would have to transmit callsigns, but thats really no biggie.

      --

  • Actually (Score:3, Interesting)

    by anethema ( 99553 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @11:06PM (#7676954) Homepage
    It seems it was amplified. I dont see unamplified on their site, and in the project materials it lists bidirectional signal amplifiers (1.5 watt).

    Not to say this isnt still amazing. I'm setting up some long distance point to point WiFi myself, albiet with a bigger dish on one side for testing. Not 82 miles, but im doing it for practical reasons.

    Primestar dishes seem to have a gain of around 20dB at 2.4ghz if you have a decent feedhorn. (20dB is a gain of around 100). I'll be using at least one old c-band dish. It should have a gain of 30dB or more. (thats a gain of around 1000)

    My eventual plan is to set up a site on a mountain with a fairly high gain omnidirectional antenna, and then anyone who wants to connect to the LAN just points at it with a primestar dish. If i can find sponsors I will even make it 802.11G and connect it to the internet.

    This way anyone can have wifi access, at least from home, and I wont need to blanket the town in access points, interfere with cordless phones/other networks, etc because without the high gain of the primestar dish you shouldnt even be able to see the network. Should be fun.
    • My eventual plan is to set up a site on a mountain with a fairly high gain omnidirectional antenna, and then anyone who wants to connect to the LAN just points at it with a primestar dish.

      The problem you are going to run into with more than a few clients associated over a long link like this is contention and timing. You will see network throughput plummet as multiple clients associate and begin talking; leading to massive interference/collision (see timing issues).

      Maybe by then someone will have a reve

      • Re:Actually (Score:3, Informative)

        by aXis100 ( 690904 )
        We had this problem on the WaFreenet [wafreenet.org], so we set about creating some software to fix it.

        The result was frottle. [sourceforge.net] It's a bit of a kludge, but essentially provides a virtual token bus over ethernet. It runs at the wrong layer (UDP), but is suprisingly effective. Before, with 14 clients to the HillsHub AP [nodedb.com] (many clients in the 10's of kilometers), we'd get crippled throughput rates below 10kB/sec. Now multiple users can sustain data rates above 80kB/sec (or better depending upon load).
      • I didnlt realize it was so bad, but yes something I have definatly considered is multiple access points around town. (On buildings or mountains, so you'd still use the dish) They would also have to link with their own antennas so this begins to become a complicated problem.

        Honestly networking and WiFi arent my strong suit. Me and a friend are working on this, I'm more the electrical engineer and hes the software/networking guru.

        But yes, I've seen large scale wifi and an acesss point every 20 feet (some ha
    • My eventual plan is to set up a site on a mountain with a fairly high gain omnidirectional antenna, and then anyone who wants to connect to the LAN just points at it with a primestar dish. If i can find sponsors I will even make it 802.11G and connect it to the internet.

      Hope you have bulletproof lawyers.

  • So they finally got a signal... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aadain2001 ( 684036 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @11:33PM (#7677100) Journal
    ..from earth to the planet that Darl McBride is living in. It'll be a loooooooong time before any one is able to get a distance greater than that ;)

  • Wireless is best for rewiring anyway... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @01:54AM (#7677861) Homepage
    Every new student housing I know (and a lot of old ones retrofitted) *and* the two latest building projects I looked at directed at young people had added cables to the housing. Why? Because the cost isn't really that high when added at build time. Pulling cables everywhere afterwards would be expensive.

    Same with new housing areas. They drop the cables in the ground now, whether they use them or not. Compared to digging up the entire area again, it's cheap. Ok this long-distance wireless is cool, but for anything like relatively densely populated areas, I think wired is the future.

    The great thing about wireless is when the wires are actually in the way... like e.g. to your laptop or something else you'd actually move around. If not, I'd rather have a 100Mbit switch (as I do now) and a 1Gbit switch in the future :) Though the next one will probably be a combo with wireless for my laptop...

    The only other good use I've seen for wireless, which would be a "everywhere" access like my cellphone, is currently insanely priced. Right now I wouldn't consider it for anything, and even in the future I don't see it as my primary internet connection. Again, maybe workplaces, universities and other places where you have a laptop you carry around. But in general? No. Not until the prices come waaaay down.

    Kjella
  • I've got a 200m tall tower on a hill 400m away from my roof. Can I somehow point my WiFi AP at some kind of reflector on top of the tower, to cover the neighborhood with WiFi? How do other nodes return a signal via the reflector? Is there a way for this to work with mobile devices to the reflector to a stationary AP?

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