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16 Cell Phones In Parallel Net Access

Blackbox writes "This site answers the age old question: "What do you get when you run 16 mobile phones in parallel?" The answer is of course a 150 kbit/s connection to the internet for your car! Check it out at:
The megacar or Tom's Hardware"

26 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Check the URL by Valdrax · · Score: 2

    I mean, even the URL points out that the story is from March 15, 1999.

    --
    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
  2. Good grief... another stupid idea by Sodakar · · Score: 4

    Am I the only one who finds these "advances" to be completely silly? By the time one can implement this cost-effectively, a newer technology with 40 times the bandwidth will be in place.

    Diamond's Shotgun technology comes to mind... "Get ISDN speed with 2 modems!" (or just get DSL for the same cost.)

    Never mind that Japan already has enough bandwidth on their mobiles to send video, and they're thinking of providing DSL-speed access to PSX 2 users via mobiles...

    Not that I ridicule them for trying... But it's really just a "cool, we did it" type of project, and unless there is a revolutionary, cost-effective way to minimize hardware, it's just going to remain as it is - a "cool project"... Oh well.

    In other news, I've found a way to stick 16 M&M's together and eat them more efficiently -- the only problem is that the labor involved to stick them together is insanely expensive....

    Sorry, I guess I'm just overly jealous of my cousin's new video-phone in Japan... drool

    1. Re:Good grief... another stupid idea by zorgon · · Score: 3
      ...really creative and unique, but WHY?

      Well, I hate to say it, but if you have to ask that question, you're not a hacker.
      What was itMaster Y0d4 said in TESB?

      Do. Or do not. There is no why.

      (or was that try)

      --

      I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling

    2. Re:Good grief... another stupid idea by gad_zuki! · · Score: 2

      [i]really creative and unique, but WHY? [/i]

      Are you serious, what if Robert Moog or Steve Wozniak thought like that? The only problem I see is that slashdot has too few articles for its huge readership leaving tens of thousands of cynics concentrated on a couple projects when they should be out there poo-pooing the entire world.

  3. Re: A Beowulf cluster of TVs? by BigBlockMopar · · Score: 3

    What'll be next, a Beowulf cluster of TVs?

    Too late. I've already done it.

    I collect early TV sets, mostly from the 1950s. Every year, I host Academy Awards and Emmies parties at my house. A bunch of my friends come over, and we watch the show on a collection of about 12 1950s-1960s vintage TV sets.

    Oh yeah, and in the middle of all of that is my Sony Trinitron.

    Lemme tell you, twelve early TV sets, some with as many as 44 tubes, makes a hell of a lot of heat and uses a shitload of power. Extension cords, coaxial cable, RF distribution amplifiers and splitters, crank the air conditioner...

    Sadly, I don't yet have a Philco Predicta, so it's not all it's cracked up to be. If ya got one, working or not, as long as it wasn't stored underwater or something, I'll buy it off ya.

    --
    Fire and Meat. Yummy.
  4. I forsee a problem already.. by citizenc · · Score: 4

    I mean.. driving along, and downloading pr0n and mp3s at 150k/sec at the same time?

    I can see the news report now: "In other news, a local man was killed in a one-car accident, when he apparently lost control of his vechicle, and crashed it into a tree. Sources at the scene report that the man's body had only one hand on the steering wheel.."

    1. Re:I forsee a problem already.. by Phexro · · Score: 2
      sorry to nitpick, but the connection is 150kbit/sec, not 150kbyte/sec. with 150kbit/sec, you will pull about 15kbyte/sec - 18.75kbyte/sec, with some lost due to tcp/ip overhead.

      what's more interesting is how it would handle the loss of one or two cell channels due to poor coverage/signal quality.

      --

  5. Re:They should call it the "Losermobile" by lobos · · Score: 2

    That base car (a Brabus) will give you more orgasmic bliss than a Viper will ever come close to. Believe it or not, but Brabus takes those Mercedes and, as Road and Track put it, "[Brabus doesn't] merely tweak cars, they appear to rebuild them." I doubt you'll find that sedan with any less than ~450 bhp. They build V12s with up to 599 bhp and have had three of their automobiles appointed "The Fastest Four-Door Sedan in the World," "The Fastest Saloon in the World" (more commonly known as a station wagon) and "The Fastest Off Road Car in the World" by Guinness Book of Records. Not only do they have awesome power and go upwards of 205 mph (remember, that's a four door, street legal sedan), they have all the amenities you could want and a smooth ride. I guarantee it would give you a much better orgasm driving one of these than a Viper.

  6. UMTS is coming... by kinkie · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't want to disappoint you, but all over Europe UMTS licenses are being assigned, and deployment will begin soon.
    Those sweetums will have 1.5 Mbps bandwidth...

    --
    /kinkie
  7. Re:Stale by jslag · · Score: 3
    This is VERY stale info. . .the damn thing uses CDPD for christ's sake

    Right, where as the current standard for wireless data in the US is... oh, wait... still CDPD (or PPP over CDMA / TDMA, which is worse).

    ----------------

  8. Re:Er..dupe? by po_boy · · Score: 2

    yep: http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /03/16/1227258.shtml but who cares? that guys voice on the flash is worth hearing again.

  9. Re:Bingo by adolf · · Score: 2

    This is what Multilink PPP is for. Instead of having a mess of redundant links, with some hideously complex routing daemon to sort through the wreckage, you get a mess of redundant links all acting as one.

    This is fairly standard stuff, and is supported by any ISP who is able to provide 128k (dual-channel) ISDN access (which the includes the vast majority of all providers, whether they admit it, or not).

    Using MPPP, latency actually goes *down*. Instead of sending a 1500 byte packet, and having to wait for the entire thing to be sent in a serial fashion (one byte at a time), it gets split up into much smaller packets which are each sent in parallel. So, if you've got two active links running at the same speed, each one will transfer 750 bytes of that 1500 byte packet. With four links up, that drops to 375, and so on.

    This packet-splitting happens with anything that IP can encapsulate (or, I suppose, anything that PPP can), and so would work fine for online games.

    That said, latency would perhaps still be too high - transmission delays, telco delays, and such - but that's because of the physical medium (a cell phone and the requisite network), *not* the increasingly-efficient network stack.

  10. This is a repeat-- link below. by raygundan · · Score: 4

    Here is the link to the previous (nearly identical) article on Slashdot from a long time ago.

  11. Obvious story title: by finkployd · · Score: 3

    "Information Superhighway Collides with Real Highway"

    Finkployd

  12. NT server eh? by Tom7 · · Score: 3

    Nice car, but according to the diagram it runs NT server!
    I'd hate to see it... "crash".

  13. ISP's supporting this? by bgarcia · · Score: 4
    Even if you can afford this car, don't you also need an ISP who has the hardware/software to multiplex the 16 separate phone connections back into a single connection?

    I didn't see this part of the project discussed at Tom's Hardware. I would think that this would be the major stumbling block.

    --
    I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
  14. Wow by Dungeon+Dweller · · Score: 2

    I thought that most didn't support that. I thought that I mentioned an "unless," oh well, at any rate, it is time for me to change isp's.

    --
    Eh...
  15. This is the answer to... by Webmoth · · Score: 2

    This site answers the age-old question: "What do you get when you cross someone with too much time (i.e., a Silicon Valley engineer-cum-internet-startup) with someone with too much money (i.e., a Silicon Valley engineer-cum-internet-startup)?"

    The answer of course is the aforementioned acheivement.

    --
    Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
  16. They should call it the "Losermobile" by cprincipe · · Score: 2

    Honestly, if I had the money to drop on a car like this, I'd go out and buy a Viper and not even care about the internet connection because I'll be too busy driving along in orgasmic bliss.

    Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

    --

    bun-fhuinneog agam!

  17. Parallel Bandwidth | Mobile | COST by Dungeon+Dweller · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't it be cheaper just to subscribe to wireless access with your local ISP? There are existing wireless systems with pretty good bandwidth that don't require line of sight, and daggon if they don't have to cost less than 16 cell phones.

    On the other hand, it is cool...

    Still, this isn't a quake playing connection, this is a, I'm downloading pictures off webpages connection.

    --
    Eh...
    1. Re:Parallel Bandwidth | Mobile | COST by griffjon · · Score: 2

      Nope. None of the wireless providers I've talked to support mobile use of wireless networking--most require a stationary antenna for the implementation and then small antennas on each device which can be mobile within a very small area (for driving purposes).

      Further, wireless internet tends to require LOS line of sight to a tower.

      --
      Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
  18. The mobile Internet cars of the present by doomy · · Score: 2

    Kimble made his first /. with his excellent personal site with a nasty flash cartoon of Bill Gates and his destruction. Over time we've seen him and his company flashed all over /. on a number of occasions. Also (If i'm not mistaken), he used to be a /. user not too long ago. Excellent work I should say and wish him the best. Everthing seems to be going mobile nowdays, you can find almost anything that has been made mobile enabled. Take for instance ordering pizza on a mobile phone! Cool stuff. Wap is the way to go! Enjoy.
    --

    --
    ...free your source and the rest would follow...
  19. Wait for 3G... by suwalski · · Score: 2

    Just wait for 3rd generation. Of course, 150kbit/sec connections are cool, but look at the cost of running 16 cell phones simultaneously!

    Check out Nokia's 3rd Generation Site. Although I can't find the link off hand, I remember reading that its net access should be able to handle about 2.5 megabits/second, which is great for a cellphone or laptop/palmtop connected to it!

    According to this site, we can expect to start seeing this around 2001/2002.

  20. Lots support Multilink by swb · · Score: 2

    All you need is multilink PPP support from your ISP. Most ISPs that support ISDN will support this since its typically what's used to aggregate ISDN channels. Although you may have to whine a little to get it enabled for an analog dialup account or pay extra for the feature if its not enabled by default.

    I've done it before to the dialup server at work, although I've never had a machine with more than two modems going at once. I just wish I could get a hotel room when I'm on the road with three lines -- I'd lug along an external in my laptop case and enjoy ~60Kbps instead of the ~20 I end up getting.

  21. Bingo by Dungeon+Dweller · · Score: 2

    Yeah, it's a fat pipe, but not the kind that one would play games on due to the extremely high latency that such a system would entail. Each one of those lines has a nice separate address, nice separate lag. Supposing that you want to be treated as one IP, you need a server on the other side that supports that. Otherwise, you have a lot of small pipes. TCP/IP was built for systems that do this sort of stuff, but major bogging would kill this for any kind of gaming.

    --
    Eh...
  22. Forget a beowulf Cluster by Life+Blood · · Score: 5

    Can it turboboost?

    I'm downloading your porn for you now, Michael

    --

    So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)