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Cringely's Bank Shot
Michael A. Lowry writes: "You may remember how Robert Cringely used a couple of directional antennas to get an 802.11b link up across a 10.5 km wide valley. The original Slashdot discussion is here. Well Cringely has done it again. This time, he has set up a passive repeater in an oak tree on a nearby mountaintop to bounce a 2 Mb/s signal around a hill that lies between his house and the acces point in Santa Rosa. Read about it here. Details about the homemade hardware he used can be found here. There's going to be a lot more of this in the near future."
You've just admitted in print that your using a WAP11 Linksys transmitter illegally modified to 100 milliwatts, which also causes it to walk all over the spectrum around it. Don't be suprised if you see a white van parked next to your house -- that's the FCC monitoring your transmissions, and in a short while they'll slap you with a $10,000 fine. Yah, you're REAL SMART Cringely!
He's not a God, but he's damn close to a blithering idiot! Granted, he looks good by comparison Pournelle, Dvorak, or Katz, but he still a shameless self-promoter tring to make a quick buck by pretending to understand technology he's actually clueless about. AND I'll beleive this "bank shot" actually works when I see it in operation myself. 2.4GHz is the resonant frequency of water (that's why it's the frequency used by microwave ovens) in other words, ANY moisture in the area effectively absorbs any power radiated. 2.4GHz simply DOES NOT WORK RELIABLY for outdoor communication; that's why the band is still available.