15-Mile Wi-Fi Shot At 4 Mbps Up and Down

DarnComputers writes "5G Wireless (FGWC) announced that it has documented a long distance Wi-Fi shot of 15 miles at a throughput of 4Mbps upload and download speed. The shot was completed this last weekend, in a competitive Wi-Fi shootout at the Defcon convention in Las Vegas, Nev. There were many participants with both commercial-grade and homemade entries in a variety of categories at Defcon's first annual Wi-Fi shootout.http://home.earthlink.net/~wifi-shootout/"

Comments

Last weekend?

[LinuxGeek]

This story was posted last summer. Check the dates on the linked page...

That's cool

[ObviousGuy]

In my house, I'm able to shoot 54Mbps across 15ft of WiFi.

It's not too shabby, and I don't get delayed on the 11Mbps Internet connection like I did before by my 10Mbps LAN card.

What chipsets did they use?

[The One KEA]

It doesn't say anywhere what chipset they used for this shootout...

Although 35 miles with 802.11 is pretty damn good, IMO - scroll to the bottom and have a look at the monster antenna they used.

Last weekend ? or more like a few dozen Weekends ?

[kbsingh]

Defcon is usually end of summer kinda things... the 2004 Defcon is posted for July 30th - 4th Aug 2004.

I remember looking at this story a while back - and the same page was linked. might be worth looking back on ./

Only 15 miles?

[Brymouse]

That's a good shot, but I have done 10.1, 22.65 and 19.3 mile links, with 99.9% uptime. I used Breezecom DS.11 radios and 24 DBi andrew/conifer antennas to accomplish it. The worst signal strength was -68 to -72 dbm on the 19 mile shot.

It's not something that all that uncommon.

Cardboard and tinfoil antennas

[yppiz]

I built a copy of the cardboard antenna that the winning team used at the core of their mongo-horn. It turns out that the design is quite robust (that is, even I can make it) and with just the amount of cardboard you'd get from two standard 16"x16" boxes, it's possible to make a 16db gain directional antenna.

What 16db means in terms of wireless use is than instead of picking up 4 access points from a rooftop using Netstumbler, I saw 40 different access points, including the BAWRN public node over eight miles away (with clear line of sight but an enormous amount of clutter in the fresnel zone).

I used this design from Seattlewireless.net

I strongly recommended trying this as a project. It's easy and pretty cool.

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

"Last week at Defcon"

[ehintz]

The link is so blazing fast that it actually slows down time, like Superman in the movie. That's why we all feel like Defcon was months ago. It was really last week.

In related news, the shuttle was traveling at 18x the speed of light when it broke up... Really, cnn said so here, and everyone knows cnn is the epitome of clueful.

Legality?

[d-ude]

No matter what, at least it has to be more legal than the 'key-down showdown' stuff that used to be popular on the CB radios. I saw a guy with a suburban that had like 6 alternators on some custom bracketry, the entire rear cargo area full of batteries, and two large coil antennas on the roof. He claimed that he had a different length of coax on one antenna so that by the time the signal from the rear antenna 'slammed into' (his words) the front antenna would start transmitting and it helped his performance. They usually sit people many miles away and whomever can be heard the loudest wins. Everyone transmits at once I guess. Craziness.

Anyway i'm just wondering what the limits are for dB gain on a certain power level to keep within the legal limits. I have an Andrew 24dB gain dish for 2.4GHz and I wonder if I hooked it to my Lucent card if it would be a legal power level.

Wireless Homebrew Website

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a website for homebrew/amateur radio related wireless experimenting. It covers the construction of homebrew amplifiers, antennas, receiving converters, etc. They also have path analysis and line-of-sight analysis CGI utilities.

Green Bay Professional Packet Radio

Friends and foes in a radius of 14.8951 miles

[armando_wall]

I'm looking forward to when this kind of technology becomes more mainstream (and cheap).

You will be able to "phone" your nearby friends (usually most of them) by using regular p2p netphone software and a Wi-Fi connection... why limiting to audio? Videomeeting software! Free-of-charge digital communications possible?

Goodbye to those ZIP and CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, now you can upload your work from your home pc directly to your office desktop (maybe companies will have to implement stronger security measures).

On the downside, I can see a new generation of viruses, trojans and worms "in the air".

Re:Cheap

[shaldannon]

Dunno if this will help you, but Linksys has a signal booster for your Linksys wireless device. Pop the antennas off the existing one, pop them on the booster, connect the booster to the access point, and (according to Linksys), you're good to go.