How High is Your AP?

DeAshcroft writes "The New York Times has a piece [give up your data] on the wiring of Everest. Tsering Gyaltsen, the grandson of one of Sir Edmund Hillary's orignal summit-conquering Sherpas is bringing the net to the mountain (presumably bringing the mountain to the net was even more difficult). He's attracted a great set of 'technologists' to make this happen, and, best of all, it means the locals get access (including a school of about 250 students), not just the rich geeks who come to town to climb the thing."

Comments

Brainfart

[nukey56]

Was I the only one who read this as "on the wiring of Everquest"?

Surely this is a joke?

[ites]

When you can reach any point on earth through satellite connections, and most of the inhabited world through terrestrial wireless communications.
Are we going to see Nepal Telco guys in orange hats dig a ditch all the way up to the summit?
Oops, better go and read the article...

Peak latency

[JonathanF]

Does having Internet access on Everest bring new meaning to the term "lag spike?" :)

Real Geeks WarChalk the Satellites directly

[cyber_rigger]

Real Geeks don't need no stinkin ground based access point.

Mt Everest is almost in space anyway.
Just bring along some Pringles and save the can.
Aim it at the low orbit satellites.
(You may need some binoculars to make out the warchalk symbols)

Err, is this what people climb Everest for?

[melonman]

You have survived the cold, the wind, the yetis, you are exhausted but exhilarated as you pull yourself over the final ledge and collapse onto the summit, and then you notice an urgent beeping in your pocket. In your rush to extract your PDA with frost-bitten fingers, you overbalance and fall backwards. As you plummet towards certain death, you just have time to read that you can get herbal viagra at an unbeatable price...

stress-testing

[smarthippy]

Dave Hughes, a leading wireless-technology thinker who has studied the performance of wireless equipment in extreme weather... That's probably a legitimate job, but it sounds supiciously like a dilbert cartoon to me.

Wally: "My proposed work plan for the year is to stress-test our product under severe network conditions. I will accomplish this by downloading large image files from the busiest servers on the net ... I was this close to making it my job to download naughty pictures."

Oh, well what else is there to do in Alaska for the NSF? research?

This is my last post

[sielwolf]

Trapped on summit... night is coming... Tell my wife I... First Post!

Peachy....

[wowbagger]

Great - so now we can get morons suffering from the 3psi actual pressure (extreme oxygen deprivation) scribbling "FP from Everest!"

I prefer this sort of mountain climbing.