Inspiring Adventures in SF Wireless Networking

JimDog writes "Here's a description I wrote of how I set up a point-to-point 802.11b link over 3.5 miles for Internet access at my house. The link runs at 3.5 Mbps, which I barely make a dent in, and I'd like to offer the rest of the bandwidth to anyone who's got line-of-sight to my location in San Francisco." The great thing about this story is both his terrific exposure to different parts of city and his willingness to share. It also makes it clear just how easy it is to set up a long distance link.

Comments

Re:802.11b everywhere

[saveth]

We should blanket the country with 802.11b

In Tasmania, a few friends of mine have begun this same sort of thing. The idea is to cover Tasmania with a public access wireless network. More information can be gleaned from their web site, here.

802.11 risks

[Wise Dragon]

This is from an article on 802.11b.weblogger.com. The gist of is that licensed users of the 2.4Ghz spectrum are allowed to radiate at up to 1.5kw, effectively shutting down 802.11!

[Dewayne] Hendricks [of the FCC] pointed out a simple case in which hams could shut down an extensive area. "Ham television is becoming more and more popular, the equipment's becoming cheaper; lots of hams like to broadcast," Hendricks said. "It's a pretty sexy application."

Hendricks said that the San Francisco Bay Area already has a number of ham TV repeaters. "A bunch of hams could deploy TV broadcasts" up to 1.5 kilowatts (kW). "We could effectively shut down 802.11 in the entire Bay Area, and it would be perfectly legal and there wouldn't be anything you could do about it." Part 15 devices like Wi-Fi radios are limited to less than 1 watt (W), and many devices use 30 to 100 milliwatts (mW). (When you start talking about radiated power output, these numbers are only starting points for calculations.)