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Idaho Companies Tout New Wireless Record

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the can-i-get-a-witness dept.

pavelvp writes "A small wireless Internet service provider in Idaho and a wireless equipment start-up claim to have set a new record for transmitting data across a wireless link this week. Microserv Computer Technologies, based in Idaho Falls, and Trango Broadband Wireless, a fixed-wireless broadband equipment maker, announced that they transmitted data over unlicensed wireless spectrum 137.2 miles." This unverified record would beat the previous record holders from the DefCon WiFi Shootout covered earlier on Slashdot.

6 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't it have to be 802.11x? by utopianfiat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was under the impression that the record reflected everything on the 802.11x band, not any wireless transmission.
    In this case, technically NASA would win by sending wireless info from sattelites. :/
    Maybe I'm just not RingTFA correctly.

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  2. I for one welcome our new wireless overlords... by LuciferBlack · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Okay it's unverified, but that's a good distance if it is indeed true. :) But it begs the question - "How are we going to secure a wireless area that large if there's issues with smaller coverages?" What is the benefit of an area that large if they select who has access to the network? Any ideas on how they'd regulate people just hopping on the signal?

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    I'm working on a good joke about your mom being /.'d, but it's not finished yet.
  3. Competition for cable by thc69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe this sort of thing can compete with cable for rural broadband...DSL doesn't go to my house.

    Too bad somebody beat me to the potato battery joke.

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    Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
  4. Laser WiFi? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All these long-distance radio records are being set with antennas attenuating all the signal into a (directional) narrow cylinder, rather than an (omnidirectional) sphere. What kind of performance could we get if we used a "radio laser", of coherent light in the 2.4GHz band, collimated into a long needle? Could we get transcontinental beams? Is it especially hard to make lasers in that band, and to modulate them for the WiFi signal? Is there a lot of latency, as the light bounces around in its resonant cavity before emerging coherent and pumped up to useable power? Couldn't we just modulate the "raw" laser as it was leaving the cavity?

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    make install -not war

    1. Re:Laser WiFi? by forand · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Who is moding this interesting? Come on people, as someone in replied already THE EARTH IS NOT FLAT. You can go about 12 miles before the curvature of the earth stops you from having line of sight. "Lasers", as you say, using radio frequencies are traditionally called Masers but operate at higher frequencies than radio(Microwave), it is very difficult if not impossible to create a radio frequency coherent source since the size of the emitting region needs to be rather large and completly uniform on a very small scale.

  5. It's all a function of altitude. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Far greater distances are possible, it is only a matter of getting the antennas high enough. This latest shot is done form a 9,000+ mountain to a 8,000+ mountain.

    If you could place a Wifi satelite in orbit, you'ld be able to run an even longer link. It's not a matter of power, it is a matter of Line of Sight(LoS) and the freznel zone. If the shot was straight up, the distance would be incredible.