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."

Comments

Re:Tragedy of the commons

[Anixamander]

I can't see folks going to this extent on a widespread basis. If thousands of people in one area do start doing this, it will no doubt become the new Silicon Valley, because it would mean there is a critical mass of sophisticated geeks there.

Make that sophisticated, motivated geeks. I'm sophisticated, but that is way too mch work for me.

Cringely earns the title "hacker"...

[dstone]

...in my book for that stunt. Yeah, he's full of wind and lofty opinions and predictions. But it takes a proper hacker to roll up the sleeves, climb a mountain and a big tree, simply to install a wireless hack.

He da man.

Need for product durability and stability

[Bonker]

When construction begins in a populated area, utility companies, including telco and cable operators, are responsible for coming out and flagging their under-ground wires, pipes, conduits, repeaters, and switch boxes.

A lot of amature 802.11b hackers are building a utility infrastructure, wether they think they are or not and even if it's for their own private use.

In the VERY near future, wireless devices like this are going to have to become *very* durable to stand up to long-term outdoor use... and I don't mean having a water-tight battery compartment. A lot of the stuff out there... Pringle Can antennas, anyone?... is homerolled hacks.

Things like wireless routers and repeaters, however, need to be designed with things like natural disaster, wild animals, and vandalism in mind.

Ever wonder why public utility stuff is so bulky and hard to get into?

This is what the term Hacker was invented for

[the_rev_matt]

Here's a fine example of someone going out and doing something positive and high profile that takes back the term Hacker and makes it praise instead of critique.

Mo' power, Cringe.

Re:Cringely Icon, Please

[Enry]

I'd certainly rather have him pontificating on /. than Katz. At least Cringley knows that Afghans can't view Divx movies on their C-64s.

Re:How flat is flat?

[mcramer]

Bandwidth is a limited commodity. There are only so many bits that can travel at any given moment.

But, like airplane seats and hotel rooms, unsold bandwidth is a 100% loss. Bandwidth that went unsold yesterday can not be sold tomorrow. The trick is always selling all of the inventory at as good a price as you can get for it.

Supply is exceeded by demand, so the price goes up until people dont want to pay anymore.

But not all the time. There are plenty of hours every week in which huge amounts of bandwidth lays idle. That's money down the drain. Sure, giving away bandwidth for next to nothing is stupid on a Thursday afternoon. That's prime-net-time. But really, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to plop down in Starbucks on Saturday night at 7:30 and surf to my heart's content. It's not like anyone ELSE is using it. I'm not saying I should be able to steal it, but I shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for it either.

Re:Violation of TOS

[interiot]

Cringely could probably be identified if someone wanted to try badly enough. For instance, he probably connects to *.pbs.org fairly often, trailed closely by slashdot.org and internet searches for ultra-wide-band related things.

Granted, that'd take a lot of work, but given the extent to which Cringely is encouraging others to emulate him and cause ISP's everywhere (and his ISP in particular, perhaps maybe even) grief, there might be people who would invest the time.

Re:Tragedy of the commons

[Mike Hicks]

How much bandwidth will any one person have left?

Heh, a lot more than they have now.

Re:When the ISPs all start blocking P2P....

[_Knots]

Alright, wireless anarchy is very very cool to talk about, but raises some serious problems.

1) Routing tables could potentially grow HUGE to handle loops within the system.

2) I think (am I wrong?) that a system would require point-to-multipoint or at least WAP-to-WAP, which IIRC 802.11b was bad at.

2.1) Either that or we need two or more 802.11b repeaters on anybody's internal network. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's more complicated, since one (or more) would have to be able to touch somebody else's WAP. Is there some combination of AdHoc and AP modes that the 802.11 system can operate in?

3) How do you assign an IP address? No DHCP servers, can't be static... messy, no?

4) Suddenly route-advertising and route-discovery would have to become standard features on all WAPs.

That said... it sounds really cool and I'm thinking of solar-powered UPS-backed PC/104 with PCMCIA 802.11 cards being put up around a community ("For $small we can all share internet access and be online anywhere in {area}"). Maybe just a dream.

-Knots

You get together and create a coherent network....

[Colin Smith]

Rather than competing, all you have to do is co-operate.

http://www.freenetworks.org/

The more the merrier. :)