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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."
Images of a wireless connection? I gotta see this.
The Internet is one thing that could benefit education in poor African countries a great deal, allowing free access to information. This is just one more step in fully linking up Africa.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Wonderful! With this new cross-continental wireless connection, those poor, hapless widows of deposed and assassinated heads of the Nigerian government and industry can all the more easily appeal for help in moving their vast sums of wealth into foreign bank accounts!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
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
Forget all the predictable comments about satellite links being cheaper, the bandwidth being a bit low for a trans-continental link, etc, this proves one thing:
No matter how repressive a government becomes in its monitoring or control of internet technology, geeks the world over can use this project as a reference work: Don't like your internet strained by official censors? Just beam a link over the border to an open proxy.
People like us can use this technology to open repressed populations up to communication.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If you look at the picture closely you can see dozens of nerds with laptops boating around.
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
Does anyone else remember seeing that? I can't seem to find a link.
Sure, here it is. Scroll down for pictures.
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.
... the sales figures for Pringles in Spain and Morocco have sky-rocketed.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
Hey There,
My friend is in the Peace Corps in West Africa.
I think they need more basic services first.
Like power.
I recently sent her a solar powered lantern...
because she has no good way to read when the sun goes down.
Previously having used candles.
Cheers,
-- The Dude
It must be pointed out that the link between Europe and Africa was done as a collaborative project involving many people from Europe and Africa, not just Psand, who merely helped. The project is called Transacciones / Fadaiat 2004, an arts / technolgy / social convention dealing with issues surrounding the Straits of Gibraltar, especially immigration. The link was intended to be a short term link to allow participators from both continents to take part, share ideas and create new allegiances. Please also note that the document which goes with it is rough notes written before attempting the link, and was never meant to be fully accurate.
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.
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