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First Free Wireless Link Between Europe And Africa
Paul Bawon writes "A company called PSAND have just installed a wireless link between Tarifa in Spain and Tangiers in Morocco, thus linking the African and European continents together with a free wireless link. The link went across the Straits of Gibraltar with a total distance of 32 km over the sea. Images can be found here and notes from the work can be found here."
This one is not a distance record, but it did span continents and is an interesting article. Here's an article from last year about longer distances, albeit with higher power gear.
The ham radio record for 2.4 GHz is a lot longer, but it's a great start. Here are some results from Region 1, Europe, including Earth-Moon-Earth.
Here's the site for the San Bernadino Microwave Society (Hams). They've been doing this sort of thing for ages.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I great example of how regular 802.11 wireless is showing its strengths, however you all realize there are limits. Eventually we will depend on laser transmission of data due to the massive distances it can easily cover. Furthermore, I remember seeing another test when a group of people in the middle of the Moab desert made a record of something around 30 miles with a standard cisco card and a very odd homemade antenna which was made from fine metal mesh screen and wood in a pyramid shape. Does anyone else remember seeing that? I can't seem to find a link.
Packet Radio has been providing free digital links across the globe for decades. Nothing new about this..
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I'd just been thinking about the altitude required to 'see-over' the horizon to the other point. Does just 20m above sea level mean the Tangiers antenna must be very high up?
Now my maths is useless, but it says the Tarifa antenna at Castillo de Guzmán el Bueno is 20m above mean sea level and the Tangiers antenna position is unknown but 32,000m away.
From that can anyone work out the required height of the Tangiers antenna to have line of sight over the curvature of the Earth?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
free access to information
TANSTAAFL. Mark my words, this connection will not go unpaid for -- otherwise why do it in the first place?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Has anyone ever been to Tangiers? I wonder what they're going to do with this wireless link there. The place is a nest of drug dealers, thieves, prostitutes, and starving children. Hive of villainy and all that.
The major industry is in trucking goods between North Africa and Europe via ferry.
I spent a single night there a few years back, and vowed never to do so again.
Excerpts:
"You want to buy hashish? No? You CHICKEN? YOU YELLOW CHICKEN! I CUT YOU, CHICKEN!"
*Gang of Dirty ~6 Year Old Children Run Up (at ~23:00)*
"Un Dirham? Un Dirham?"
It's "TANGIER" not "TANGIERS".
It's an old city, not a mobbed-up casino.
And yes, I know I'm being extremely anal about this, but if we don't actively correct our mistakes we'll end up watching Survivor reruns and joining Oprah's book club.
For shame!
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Apparently it is mostly dark, because no one can pay to use it
Most fiber in a bundle is SUPPOSED to be dark at this point. To lay less than a bunch more than you initially need is incredibly pound-foolish in the long run - and even the short run.
Nearly all the cost of a fiber run is laying the cable - whether digging a trench around a continent or paying it out on the ocean floor. The incremental cost of adding fibers to the bundle, as a percentage of the cost of laying the bundle, is miniscule.
The amount of data that can be carried by a single pair of fibers is enormous. So one pair can probably handle all you can sell in the first few years. And even in that one pair, half of it is proably spare - reserved for routing around breaks by slinging the data the other way around the loop. So if you look at the contacted bandwidth versus the fiber's bandwidth, even your one "lit" fiber looks "half-dark".
But you don't just lay a pair of fibers. You need spares even initially. (Else what do you do if a fiber breaks? Dig/dredge up the run to replace it? Or use the spare fiber.) So now even with one set of spares you've doubled your capacity and not used any of the "extra". 75% "dark" and looking worse.
But what happens a couple years down the road when your capacity is all contracted out and you need more? If you laid down extra fibers you just light 'em up. If you didn't, you need to DIG ANOTHER TRENCH AROUND THE CONTNENT to lay more.
So of COURSE you spent a few percent extra, and laid maybe 20 or 50 or 100 times as many fibers as you initially need. You don't EVER want to dig that trench again.
But do you light 'em up now? Of COURSE not! The incremental cost of LAYING extra fibers is tiny. But the incremental cost of LIGHTING more is nearly the same as lighting the first ones. And every year the equipment gets cheaper and can push more data through the fibers (though not enough more to eliminate the need to light more fibers eventually). The longer you wait to light them, the more bandwidth bang for your buck - so you delay deploying the BOXES as long as possible.
Thus, if your planners had any savvy, nearly ALL your fibers are dark, and will be for decades.
But some clueless "analysts" assume that the cost of laying fiber is in direct proportion to the amount of fiber laid. So they look at how much got laid, and how much is currently lit. And they trumpet the "dark fiber" "problem" to the world, convincing investers that the far-seeing planners who laid it have wasted their investors' money. Oh HORRORS!
In fact, the people (if any) who wasted their investors' money (at least in the fiber laying process) are the ones who spent nearly as much to only lay enough fibers to handle the immediate needs.
The collapse of the long-haul market was due mainly to the fact that EVERYBODY laid fibers, assuming they could each get a big chunk of the market. Too many suppliers led to a price war that took most of 'em down.
But the "dark fiber problem" scare stories provided a bit extra push, sucking needed next-stage investment out of some companies that might have made it otherwise and leading to their demise.
As a result of this scaremongering we'll get more consolidation, and higher prices, than we otherwise would gotten without their panic.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way