Slashdot Mirror
Lanlink Linking The Coasts
Dan Bricker writes "A guy in Parma Heights, Ohio has a website to promote an idea of linking the east coast to the west coast using standard off-the-shelf 802.11 equipment. He is aiming for a July 4th, 2006 first coast-to-coast ping. This project appears to be totally volunteer based, With no other stated reason than fun with pringle cans and bad weather, and do it just to do it. Can this be done? What real world applications does this have?"
I have never heard about Hands Across America (probably because I was 7).
Anyway, here's a link for those that were drinking out of juice boxes in 1986.
http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id248.htm
It's hard to believe that such a thing was possible.
A speech...
It depends on what the gain and such is of the antenna. With an omni, maybe, but with a wave-guide cantenna you are probably safe.
See here for details
Besides, I think this is definately more doable that hands across america. With the possible exception of the rockies/cascades etc, just set up some cantenna's, and aim it off into the horizon. With GPS and such, it should be easy to coordinate. A handful of people at each horizon, should do it... How far away is the horizon anyways? I know I can see the buildings in downtown from here, and its like 20 miles from here.
Standard 802.11b ethernet won't get this accomplished. There's no way. Can a packet ping from the east to west and back again in 255ms? with Wifi?
I don't think so. I think we should observe the way
Amature Radio Operators have ran packet radio stations. We'd need to write drivers that would
emulate a packet radio connection. There's will be
too many hops to implement a 802.11 WiFi solution.
We would have to go with packet switching.
We'd be able to use WiFi hardware, but all the drivers would need to be written to emulate packet switching.