Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

125-Mile WiFi Connection

Posted by timothy on from the beats-out-chinese-cookware dept.

Jason Striegel writes "Team iFibre Redwire smashed the WiFi distance record, successfully linking a distance of over 125 miles at this year's DefCon WiFi Shootout. They maintained a full 11Mbit unamplified connection for 3 hours using Z-com 300mw PCMCIA cards, surplus satellite dishes, Linux, and a great deal of hacker ingenuity. The best part: yesterday afternoon they said that they expect this rig would work at distances of over 300 miles. Here's additional team info, a couple pictures of one of their rigs, and some more technical details." I still wish I could find truly out-of-the-box Linux-friendly USB adapters, so I could get some tiny fraction of this distance, cheap.

5 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. 500 miles also done by bvdbos · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At whatthehack there was someone telling about how he managed a 500 km connection (which is 311 miles says google)...

  2. Re:300 Miles? Not gonna happen by megla · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Multi-megawatt FM stations are omni-directional. A uni-directional signal requires only a fraction of the strength to be heard over the same distance.

  3. Good for Cuba? by J.+T.+MacLeod · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Perhaps this could mean real internet connections for some Cuban citizens again. It's close enough to Florida, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic to make it feasable.

    Not many would be able to make use of it, of course, but every bit helps when you're living under a government such as that.

  4. Developing nations by erbmjw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This would be useful for many developing nations. No expansive infastructure required for internet connections in remote locations. Wondering when "wired" will have the article on the competition out. Also wondering what the power requirements for the entire setup are ie -- can the whole setup be run off of micro dams, solar power, etc.

  5. Re:The death of land lines? by morie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the city of Leiden is doing the same by providing high points with directional antennas to form a grid and omni-antennas to connect to the users who use directional antennas to reach the omni. the whole thing was supposed to be plugged into a landline internet connection at some point, but for now it is just a networked system.

    http://www.wirelessleiden.nl/english/

    --
    Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)