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No Wi-Fi Around Huge Radio Telescope
JG0LD writes "Students at a tiny Appalachian public school can't use Wi-Fi because any such network can throw the radio equivalent of a monkey wrench into a gigantic super-sensitive radio telescope just up the road. GBT's extraordinary sensitivity means that it's very susceptible to human-generated radio interference, according to site interference protection engineer Carla Beaudet. 'If there was no dirt between us and the transmitter, a typical access point ... would have to be on the order of 1,000,000 km [more than 620,000 miles, or about two and a half times the distance from the Earth to the Moon] distant to not interfere. Fortunately, we have mountains around us which provide lots of attenuation, so we're not seeing everything from everywhere,' she said. A standard Wi-Fi access point would wipe out a significant range of usable frequencies for the observatory. 'It simply ruins the spectrum for observations from 2400-2483.5MHz and from 5725-5875MHz for observational purposes,' wrote Beaudet."
The National Radio Quiet Zone has been there since 1958. It's not like it was just discovered yesterday. People living in this zone have always had to live without radio transmitters. Not having 802.11 is just another of the services they cannot use, like wireless garage-door openers and cell phones.
Can they not use lower power wifi so that their signal does not extend that far beyond the school? Typically in these cases we have more than 1 AP connected together but all of them with lower transmit power so that the signal does not go far.
Just hope that the aliens aren't using the same Wi-Fi as us, and this won't be a problem.
Just let FedEx handle all your data transfer needs.
She'll leave the lights on for ya.
This is also a huge problem for spaceborne radiometers that observe the Earth's surface (example paper). A radiometer is essentially a very sensitive receiver, and there are portions of the UHF and microwave spectrum reserved specifically for scientific research so that terrestrial stations don't interfere with the measurements. Unfortunately, interference may occur from transmitters directly in the band, from adjacent channels, or inadvertent harmonics from poorly-filtered transmitters. Pinpointing and correcting these sources is a logistical nightmare, especially when you have to deal with every individual country's RF regulators.
Bluetooth. Finally a reason to put up with it.
So some kids can't get Wi Fi. A vast majority of people around the world grew up without WiFi and of those most who went to school did so without WiFi.
What ever happened to that wifi blocking wallpaper?
NSF plans to cut the funding for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank. So I guess the kids will soon have WiFi and cell phones. This is a good thing, right?
... they can eavesdrop on wifi from a million KM away.
If they really need to use the frequencies that a technologically developed society uses all the time, then they should build their instruments in a remote enough location that regular use of technology would not be likely to interfere with them, instead of building it near enough to a town or city that a school could reasonably pose a threat just by using wifi.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I don't see what this has to do with the GBT or the National Radio Quiet Zone.
They want the same organization who steps in to solve their connectivity problem to also buy each student a laptop.
I would like to see a cost analysis of the wired vs. (prohibited) wireless solution. I expect they could afford neither.
do and doing what won't be standing th3 longest 0r architecture. My of OpenBSD. How are about 7000/5 = 36400 FreeBSD BUWLA, or BSD
Why is anyone even making an issue of this?
The article doesn't explain why the tablet computers must have a network connection to be used to read digital textbooks. Is there any reason why the digital textbooks can't be loaded from a hardwired connection and then used when the tablets are offline?
The article also doesn't explain why every student in the entire school must have simultaneous internet access in order to take the online standardized tests. It should be possible to set a computer lab with enough computers to allow every student in a single grade to take the online standardized tests.
The article mentions that there is a highly restricted NSA facility near the school. I'm sure that the NSA knows how to limit signal leakage and radio frequency interference. Perhaps the NSA facility can find a solution to this problem that doesn't require a wireless network.
The summary is restating the obvious but the actual article is about how the school district and state are moving to use ebooks and online testing so this school needs a lot of additional networking gear to keep everything wired only. They also mention how 802.11ad would work since it's signal range is too high to get through the atmosphere so the observatory doesn't care about it, but 802.11ad isn't readily available yet.
This is why the proposal to build a radio telescope array on the far side of the Moon has been around for so long. Having the moon between us and it is one helluva lot of dirt for blocking stray signals. Plus no atmosphere to get in the way. All you have to worry about then is reflection of Earthly signals off of other bodies in the solar system.
Too bad about the expense...
This is the second post I've seen in as many days on Green Bank, and no mention of the fact that the NSF is planning on closing the facility to save money. Green Bank is the largest movable radio telescope in the world. If you feel--like I do--that this would be a detriment to the nation, please sign the petition or, even better, write your Congressperson.
Your better off running a wire network in the first place. I may be wrong ( which I'm not ) but couldn't you just put the school in a magnetic cage so to speak there for blocking it from giving off / taking unwanted fields.
iPads don't have USB ports
Of course it does, and both genders at that.
or any sort of removable storage whatsoever
Come again?
Fortunately this situation is not a problem since it is in Appalachia, as when a guy there talks about his "WiFi" it merely means his spouse is back on the methamphetamine. That does not interfere with telescopes or modern electronic devices, unless she gets too high and disassembles them.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Most cell carriers do not have coverage at Snowshoe Mountain Resort just down the road from it. When I go skiing there I don't expect to use my cell phone.
'It simply ruins the spectrum for observations from 2400-2483.5MHz and from 5725-5875MHz for observational purposes,' wrote Beaudet.
Brought to you by the mindless tautology department of mindless tautology.
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
earth is too polluted with all kinds of pollutants including radio.. put it on the far (or dark) side of the moon!
So many devices come with 802.11? and Bluetooth, it's not possible to control or police it. Some laptops have hardware switches for wireless, some have software swithches (thanks to airplane regulations), but many just leave it running. There's a lot of things which operate in the 2.4 GHz band, which the residents will not even think about, even if they are well-meaning and diligent. Thermostats, weather stations, cordless phones are some examples.
On the other hand, this place would be a haven for those people who are afraid that RF radiation can cause health problems.
They should have built the telescope on the back side moon if they wanted quiet.
I'm detecting a bit of a red herring in the article. Seems that the school is complaining about the cost of the required laptops in addition to the cost of the cat5 drops in the school rooms due to the shift to digital text books.
The cost of the laptops would have to be spent regardless of the school's location due to the shift to digital text books, so the only "additional" cost would be that of the cat5 drops in each room. However, the following quote from the article:
Green Bank Elementary/Middle has a strong and long-standing relationship with the scientific facility up the road - the NRAO installed Cat-5 cable throughout the school years ago, and Beaudet says the organization provides as much support as possible.
Rather strongly implies that the school is fairly well wired already. But even if they weren't, the only additional cost to the school due to its location would be that of adding the cat5 drops in each room.
After all, if the Appalachian kids can't get access to the Internet that all of the good schools in America are getting, that can't possibly prevent them from competing on an equal level with all of the kids who went to good schools. Companies couldn't possibly discriminate on the basis of not having decent technological knowledge, right?
There's a WiFi transmitter within 100 miles of that dish, with nothing but plain air separating, at least 14 hours a day.
Like it or not, the school has a point. Networks are becoming ever more important to public schools and the vast majority of school districts simply have to come up with the money for a few industrial routers. They cannot. Ethernet is considerably expensive to deploy to every damn desk in a public school, let alone an entire school system. There was no foreseeing this effect when the schools were initially built, when the people began living there and it is in the government's interest that the students be educated with modern technology. The school district asking the public and/or the government for a work around is not outlandish, and a news article trying to shed light on the matter neither wrong or frivolous. Goodness.
The new telescope seemed sort of "porky" when I noticed its genesis at the time. The old telescope rusted out and fell over. Money was allocated for the new one really quickly because of (in my opinion) the pull of the two very senior senators from WV, especially Robert Byrd. That doesn't mean there wasn't scientific merit, just that with Byrd as senator there was no doubt that lots of millions of $$ would be sent there to rebuild. Which brings up a point I haven't seen yet -- this observatory must have brought hundreds of millions of federal dollars to WV over the years, dollars which that state couldn't easily do without. I would think that the residents nearby would appreciate that and not complain or make it hard for the site to operate. Those federal research $$ (what few there will be in the future) could easily end up going elsewhere. Robert Byrd isn't senator anymore.
They cannot.
The telescope has been recommended for defunding by the NSF's radio astronomy committee (along with five other radio telescope programs) according to this six-month-old article at Physics World. It's been around and doing great science for over half a century. For me, as a nerdy kid in the Sixties, Green Bank was the stuff of legends, with the added bonus of being real. A sensitive, steerable antenna is an amazingly powerful tool for doing radio astronomy, and it has more than justified its existence. I'll be sad if and when it is defunded by the NSF, but why the sudden concern over RF emission constraints that people near the site have been *voluntarily* living under for the last fifty-odd years? The GBT and the other five programs (including the VLBA!) that have been recommended for defunding by the NSF can (in theory, anyway) still get alternative funding from other sources than the NSF. This controversy over the RF emission constraints doesn't make any sense to me, unless there is somebody trying to discourage those other sources of funding, by creating a public controversy. Tin foil hat aside, who stands to benefit by seeing GBT closed down?
griffin, in their less than infinite wisdom, based the 30 pin opening on the charger cable
Complain to Griffin, or use a Dremel product.
[With] the 30pin to USB converter [...] Cameras can be used. But hard drives are right out
How does the iPad tell the difference between a camera that implements USB mass storage and a hard drive that implements USB mass storage?
Kluges on top of kluges. Sometimes, when you use an ipad, the walls are enshrouded in fog.
I agree. I was just trying to make sure that all participants in this discussion have something to agree on.
About 35 years ago over beers some of us in Military "A" school conjectured it would be really funny to sneak in the middle of one of those radio-telescopes under cover of darkness with a walkie-talkie and start spouting gibberish. Good times.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
omitting the many, many caveats isn't true, isn't informative, and isn't useful.