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New WiFi Link Distance Record
Espectr0 writes "A Venezuelan professor along with his team have set a new record for the longest WiFi link. Using commodity hardware, they established a connection between a PC in El Águila, Venezuela, and one in Platillón Mountain, a distance of about 237 miles. The previous record was 193 miles. Slides [PDF] are also available."
I almost get a usable signal in my bedroom which is 237 decimeters away from my access point in my basement. Oh... the article claims 237 miles. My "of the shelf" equipment must have come from the clearance shelf.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
The Line of Sight caveat is a rather significant point ommitted from the summary. This is still quite an achievement.
Good for them. But since WiFi is line of sight, the only way they can do this is by using mountainous regions. I guess us flatlanders will have to resort to bouncing our signals off of blimps or flying pigs (coated in foil, of course).
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
One of my ex-housemates was a Sonar tech in the Navy. The Sonar and Radar guys apparently hang out together on those ships and one of their favorite games was to paint the guys coming up the desk with an armload of flourescent tubes with the radar, illuminating the lamps. Hilarity ensues. They never killed anyone doing it. But at close range and high power, I'm told you can throw hot dogs up into the path of the radar and they come down cooked.
Moral of the story is that it's directional and as long as you don't stand in front of it there's not likely to be any significant effect. At the other end, the signal has been scattered substantially and it's only coming in at a whisper of the original signal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Just wait until the FCC hears about this! These guys are in big, big trouble.
A friend of mine who's a military history buff told me a story about Soviet fighter aircraft in the 70s and 80s. Seems they had very powerful look-down, shoot-down radars and pilots were instructed to turn them off during take off and landing. Apparently sometimes they forgot, and runway maintenance crews had to regularly pick up the carcasses of rabbits, birds and other unlucky critters that were in the area when those MiGs went on missions.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
In other news...
Cuban government officials have begun a new, lucrative service where they have established a WiFi base and are charging $10/day to residents of southern Florida for unfettered Internet access. "We have very good download rates for Sicko and, of course, for all your favorite music artists," Castro's spokesperson is quoted as saying. In the background this reporter could hear maniacal laughter and intermittent shouts of "See what the RIAA thinks of that!" and other such obscenities.
Joke's on you.
;)
Hot dogs are already cooked when you buy them
1) Keep my bluetooth headset connected to its base station an amazingly 3 feet away
2) Keep my cellphone connected with a tower a mere 1 mile away. 3) Put Humpty Dumpty together again.
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The technology is straightforward. They had line of sight, used 1 meter dishes at each end, and aligned them with telescopes. Point to point microwave links have been doing that since the 1950s. After all, you can get a signal to and from geosync orbit with a dish of that size.
The most interesting thing about this is that they found two points on the earth's surface 273 miles apart with a clear line of sight between them.
Neither, if you read the PDF about the experiment, you'll see the aim is to discover whether stock equipment can be used to connect remote areas to the Internet. Connecting people in rural locations is a challenge being faced in many countries, others have different solutions.
Really, I consider myself a bit of a leftie and I'd like to see Mugabe slung out of power as much as any Tory would. Comparing Mugabe to the liberal left is like comparing Karl Marx with Ronald McDonald: pointless and stupid.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
1) Keep my bluetooth headset connected to its base station an amazingly 3 feet away
2) Keep my cellphone connected with a tower a mere 1 mile away. 3) Put Humpty Dumpty together again. 4) ???
5) Profit!