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DEFCON WiFi Shootout Winners Set A Land Record
bscience writes "While attending the DEFCON 12 convention this past weekend I had the chance to see the standing ovation a group of 19 year olds received for establishing a 55.1 mile unamplified WiFi connection!" A snippet from the Wired story linked there: "Mobile warriors having trouble making a wireless connection across the hall might want to give some Ohio teens a call. This weekend they were able to make a 55-mile Wi-Fi connection. ... They might have achieved an even greater distance, Justin Rigling said, "but there was no road left."" (Here's the post from a few weeks back about the competition.)
I don't get this. I've got a smallish house, but need two APs to cover it. I guess I'm considerably less directional, but still?!
Maybe these competitions could open up a second record of the largest diameter of coverage achieved. Maybe measured at four opposite points.
"Then, when they established that record, they turned off their amplifiers and broke the record for an unamplified connection at the same distance."
does that mean that the connection wasn't actually established unamplified... merely maintained?
Because they didn't even max out the non-amplified distance. If you read the Slashdot blurb again it says They might have achieved an even greater distance, Justin Rigling said, "but there was no road left."
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
> Or, if it was established at that distance, why
> wasn't the amplified distance longer than the non?
As the article and summary pointed out, they ran out of road.
And yes, the unamplified distance was merely to maintain the connection and not establish it.
Either way, impressive.. especially as they would have likely gone farther if they had a good place to go to.
I touch computers in naughty places
Well, if someone parked outside my building, pointed a six foot dish at my office, and told me my wireless data needed encrypting, I'd probably freak out too.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Am I the only one who find it amusing that these guys roll in on a whim, break the record, win some stuff and immediately go hawk their equipment?
Some good old hacking spirit right there...
I touch computers in naughty places
I would be interested to know what kind of transfer speed they got at that distance.
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Althought the article does not mention it, it does not seem like the hardware used to accomplish this was all that advanced.
If that is the case, their technology could be implemented in limited population density areas, tying back to the somewhat larger urban areas.
Take for example Iowa. There are many areas over 30 miles from any town larger than 15-30k.
Surprisingly enough, these 'large' towns have cable/phone (DSL) access.
So now the remote areas can be wifi attached to the bigger towns/cities and get the faster access (although 11b is not screaming it is better than modem).
I was there in the front row at the awards ceremony at DC12. These kids remind me of myself just a few years ago when I just picked up and moved to Vegas. Wasn't even sure if I had enough money for gas (good thing I was driving a Festiva @~45mpg). I guess this is a good case for those who say that all kids today are slackers.
For those who do not know, this contest was held in (and around) Vegas, when it was 110+ outside. These guys were dragging equipment up the side of a mountain to get this link. For those who would give these kids sh**, try dragging a 10ft dish(3.048 meters for you metric weenies) several hundred feet up a mountain, and then getting them aligned 55 miles apart, all in 110+f(43c) weather. There was no big 4x4's, they drove dads busted-a** minivan from Ohio for this. Sure, NASA could probably do better, but come'on, this was an amateur thing, and just something cool to do. No big prizes (they won like a couple-hundred bucks in Best Buy gift certs, and some gear).
If I had a had on, it would be off to these kids for some ingenuity and determination.
They didn't try to do so. My guess is that it's extremely difficult to align the dish with an extremely weak signal. The point of having the boosted signal was probably to help them initially align the dish. While it might be a real pain in the ass to set up such a connection without such assistance, once the dishes are aligned, apparently it's possible to run without amplification.
May we never see th
Miles on the speedometer, miles on the road signs, and 55 mph is a common speed limit, so that 55 mile record means I could drive about an hour away and still get the signal, which in Ohio would be the complete middle of nowhere! Of course, in Ohio it doesn't even matter where you start from, if you drive for exactly one hour in the same direction at 55 mph you will be in the middle of nowhere.
stuff |
I grew up in a metric society. I used to think metric units were superior until I lived in the US for a while, and found myself doing plenty of carpentry and DIY stuff where the most common units are inches and feet. I think the subdivision of a foot into 12 inches is fantastic; it allows one to easily divide dimensions into thirds, something that's a PITA in the metric world. In addition, the canonical subdivision of the inch into powers of 2 (1/2, 1/4, 1/8...) is convenient as well.
Regarding your point about doing without metric, note that virtually all building materials come in imperial sizes. There is no need to know metric units in that environment.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
When we start talking about setting and breaking distance records using any type of RF, atmospheric conditions will undoubtedly play a factor. A phenomenon known as Tropospheric Ducting can redirect a short wavelength signal back down to earth, allowing further than line of sight communication.
While this would be great for setting communication record, it would not allow for long-term reliable communication.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
From the article:
Wired magazine helped sponsor the contest.
What's the word? Irony? Misnomer?
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Being a former Cinci resident, I was a bit curious about these guys, and google-stalked them . . .
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Looks like they all went to St. Xavier, a pretty well respected (in both athletics and academics) prep school.
Here's a picture of Ben when he was a junior, winning a theater award for sound production.
Meng's got a website here that's a bit outdated, but considering the projects were from his junior year in high school, rather impressive. Seems he was a HAM radio guy.
Running out of time, the first link I found for Justin Rigling was this link. One more connection to the guy, since I use to work for AK Steel. The little blurb about the scholarship does make him sound like a stereotypical geek (JETS, Science Olympiad, Robotics, Math, and Photography clubs, etc etc). A bit of a contrast to his sister. Not exactly what you'd expect from the son of a steelmaker . .
Okay, enough being a stalker . . .
As one of the judges, I can provide the GPS coordinates and you can use your favorite topo maps to determine if it is indeed possible. We will be putting up images and data on the contest page as well as www.adversarialsciencelab.net website sometime today.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
From QST magazine (http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/12/10/3/):
"Amateurs complete 82-mile two-way DSSS link on 2.4 GHz: ARRL High Speed Multimedia (HSMM) Working Group member Ken Cuddeback, NT7K, reports that his students at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, recently completed two-way direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) communication on 2.4 GHz over a distance of 82 miles. The WSU students--which include one ham, Brandon Checketts, KG4NZV, and several prospective licensees--broke the current world record of establishing a wireless link on 2.4 GHz with DSSS (using IEEE 802.11b "Wi-Fi" protocol). "Please join me in congratulating Ken and his students on this fantastic accomplishment!" said ARRL HSMM Working Group Chairman John Champa, K8OCL. Cuddeback says his students used PrimeStar dishes with unamplified Cisco Aironet 350 cards in each laptop. "We set up a NetMeeting session and transferred a 2.5 MB mp3 file successfully," he said. The Cisco Wi-Fi cards run about 100 mW."
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Actually, they were 30mw Lucent Orinoco cards. Impressed yet?
The connection was (re)established unamplified. The team had to shutdown the connection, tilt the antenna down, and climb a latter to remove the amp. Then of course, re-aim the antenna and try again.
Ya I know, a 5/8 groundplane is not a very practical idea in the ghz range, though it's certainly possible. Critical tolerances at that point are well down to the 1mm and below range though, that would not be a fun project to undertake.
I want to play with http://www.rangeextender.com/224pagransy.html if I get the time someday. 24 DBI gain. I've recommended it to some of our customers, several of whom have bought one, and so far, everybody is quite pleased with them. One of these on one end (and a regular omni on the other end) will blast through building after building to get to the other base station. It's also fully weather-proof and built sturdy, unlike those pringles can jokes.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.