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Inspiring Adventures in SF Wireless Networking

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-you-too-can-be-wirelessly-groovy dept.

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.

15 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot effect makes 4m SF citizens impotent. by wackybrit · · Score: 5, Funny

    The link runs at 3.5 Mbps, which I barely make a dent in

    Now the whole of SF can experience the Slashdot effect, as 100,000 geeks point their 2.4Ghz transmitters at your aerial, creating enough radioactivity and EMG to render most of the male popular impotent.

    --
    mogorific carpentry experiments
    1. Re:Slashdot effect makes 4m SF citizens impotent. by ObviousGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is SF. The effect of sterility is negligble.

      --
      I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    2. Re:Slashdot effect makes 4m SF citizens impotent. by Any+Web+Loco · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is /. The effect of sterility is also negligible

  2. Directory of WiFi by NETHED · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I really wish someone would make a definitive database for WiFi locations based on either postings by users or the WiFi equipment owners themselves. I know that there are a few sites, but they, well suck. There needs to be a consentrated effort to do this. I'll gladly share my bandwidth if i know I can borrow someone elses later.

    --
    --sig fault--
  3. try this by sydlexic · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.wifinder.com/ and this http://www.80211hotspots.com/

  4. Re:802.11b everywhere by saveth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. Be thankful by inflex · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think this is great... out here in 'outback' Australia we're still trying to convince the budgies to comply with the Avarian packet methods.

  6. this must be the *real* golden age of wireless by green+pizza · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The early days of radio sound pretty cool... imagine hearing about your neighbor "pulling music out of the air"! Or how about the first radio singers that "were paid to sing into a can [microphone]"?

    I grew up with radio and television... but my friends and I would still string up tincan-and-string communication systems and eventually started moding walkietalkies.

    These days the current generation of youngsters can transmit data at nearly half a megabyte per second with inexpensive electronics, a bit of coax, and a modified pringles can!

    Kinda funny how it all goes back to a can...

  7. For your safety... by isaac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For your own safety, and your employer's, you really need to install proper lightning arrestors on your outdoor antennas, or you could be in a world of hurt (and liability) if a fire starts in your house or your employer's building as a result of a strike.

    (I also question the wisdom of allowing outsiders on your employer's network, since you never know what kind of illegal activities the random users might be up to. Your employer says everything's cool, though so he's probably assumed this risk.)

    Just be careful.

    -Isaac

    --
    I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
  8. Scalability questions using 802.11b as a wan by Indy1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know 802.11 was designed as a wireless drop in replacement /supplimant for traditional ethernet lan's. My question is, what happens if every house and business in America(world) throws up a WAP and a big dish on their roof forming one huge wan across the country. Can 802.11b scale this far (or big enough to handle a good size man - thats metropolitan area network for you non networking types) ? Is there enough bandwidth / frequency allocation in the 802.11 specs? What about packet collisions? Does the spread spectrum nature of 802.11 take care of this if the network was really huge?

    --
    Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
    1. Re:Scalability questions using 802.11b as a wan by phenon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The short answer is yes, but it would be incredibly hard to have every household. I'm sure there would be some places so dense that it couldn't be done too. You would have to have many cells of operation, using narrow beam antenna's both horizontal and verticle polarity and many many AP units. (For just one site) The big hangup on 802.11b is that there are 11 channels but only 3 of those channels do NOT overlap. So you have to be carefull how set it up.

  9. 802.11 risks by Wise+Dragon · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.)

  10. Re:Grrr by happyclam · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought it was Single Female. Funny how "Science Fiction" never even crossed my mind when I saw SF. I thought "adventures in single female wireless networking" sounded pretty interesting...

    --
    He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
  11. Crackdown by ISPs by bluegreenone · · Score: 4, Insightful
    One thing I'm surprised that doesn't get mentioned more is the expected response of ISPs to people re-distributing their bandwidth to strangers via wireless. As this becomes more common I think you can count on telecos at the very least preventing customers from sharing bandwidth with the general public with their service agreements. The more people that share a connection the fewer customers telecos will have. Imagine the response from a cable company if someone started sharing their cable TV via wireless!

    Expect a response soon from the big ISPs. Wireless is currently in the phase that MP3 sharing was in its infancy, too small a blip to register much. But it will attract attention as more people do this. I wouldn't be surprised to see them even getting laws or FCC regulations that prevent wireless sharing.

  12. Is this legal? by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 4, Informative

    Under part 15 you're only allowed 6db of gain - this guy is running two 24db grid style parabolic dishes.