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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)."
Finally an article that'll get read.
If only they were all cartoons.....
For very large values of 8?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Mirrors (including the images) are here: MirrorDot.
~Jay
Oi, I cant wait till I start getting WiFi interference from not only the neighborhood, but the neighboring towns!
A fitting tribute to hackerdom , geekhood or whatever else you want to call the spirit of playful innovation and problem solving.
..And the people bowed and prayed, To the neon gods they made.
Did anyone else not find that comic totally un-entertaining? I was disappointed.
The cartoon sucks and the story is pointless. Are people really paying to see this early?
One of these days I'm going to unveil my super secret long distance antennae. It's several miles in length. I've given it the code name "phone line".
...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!
...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...
2 3 give you a clue.
And this caption from the comic strip: "I've got it! There's a secondary road up a canyon that should get you 55 miles away"
Some pics here http://www.wifi-toys.com/wi-fi.php?a=articles&id=
Seriously though, we're never going to be talking about inclinations of greater than 10 degrees are we?
Not to be a karma whore, but in case of the /. effect, here is the complete article text.
-----------------
JFGI (just freaking Google it):
Google Search
Some nice pictures:
Worst comic... ever.
And this time it's true....
i don't get it...
must be one of those strips like peanuts...
not really supposed to be funny...
deep down i know that somewhere in an it broom closet some sysadmin is wetting himself because of this strip...
All the torrents you could want.
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 Agree With This Post
I find the story line predictable and the
characters derivative.
howbout some creative wi-fi onomatopoeias!
zziiiing-ding-ding-ding(net stumbler)drrrrrr!
Still as wi-fi goes.
I dig their kung-fu.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
I mounted my two antennas back to back about 4 feet apart, thus transmitting some 25,000 miles around the world and still got a faint signal. Next I'm going to mount them back to back but spaced side to side more so the signal can go around the world twice before it gets to the receiving antenna. If I get a signal this time, I'll know I'm onto something.