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DefCon World Record Wi-Fi as Comic Strip
carbolic writes "Remember last summer's WiFi Shootout, which took place during the DefCon hacker convention? We told you about the world record 55.1 mile shot pulled off by a few guys with two honkingly huge satellite antennas, a long stretch of road, and a couple off-the-shelf Wi-Fi networking cards. This month's Wired magazine condenses the toil of weeks of planning and testing, and trudging up and down mountains in 100+ degree weather into a captivating 8-panel comic suitable for any Sunday Edition (or cubicle wall)."
Mirrors (including the images) are here: MirrorDot.
~Jay
...since the horizon on flat ground is 25 miles away, how did they manage 55 miles? Must have been some hills involved? If so, then the distance as the crow flies would perhaps be less than 55.1 miles...
Follow the link to the original article of the shootout. 55 miles is the distance between two GPS locations, not the distance to drive to get there. And even if you bothered to read the comic strip, it even mentions finding a road up a canyon. There are not many canyons in flat areas like Florida, but Nevada does have hills and canyons.
Other than not reading the article or comic, good point that the curvature of the earth limits access to 2 points on the ground from beamed communications. Finding 2 points for a long range link in Florida would be difficult unless you could get rooftop access to some downtown buildings in Tampa or Miami.
The truth shall set you free!
JFGI (just freaking Google it):
Google Search
Some nice pictures:
Which is all well and good, but there's this passage (in the `1 watt' link given above) --
which basically means that if you use a directional (high-gain) antenna to transmit, you have to reduce your power by the same amount. (For receiving you can do anything you want, but these people used the same antennas for both.) Which makes this all illegal.Now, there is a way out. The ham rules don't have the same restrictions on antennas, and there is some overlap between the ham bands and the WiFi 2.4 gHz band, so you could go that way, but if you go under the ham rules, you have to follow all the ham rules, like those about IDing yourself, no encryption, no bad language, no monetary interest, etc.
It wouldn't surprise me if there's a lot of hams in the group of people trying to get long range WiFi links going for things like this -- but I know that a lot of the people trying aren't hams, and I'll bet that even the ones that are hams aren't all following the ham rules (though they should know better.)
This link talks about wirelss ISPs co-existing with hams in the 2.4 gHz band. It's somewhat relevant, and may be interesting reading.
if they were all cartoons, perhaps, but not if they are this retarded.
that was the dumbest cartoon i've ever seen.
read it or not, it was a waste of time. i know i'll be modded naughty, but really, that cartoon was fucking stupid.
anyone brave enough to agree with me? come on, someone sack up and agree.
I think it's more like the old Radio Shack comic strips. They weren't supposed to be funny, but tell some type of story. Comic magazines aren't really funny either.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.