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Technology

1KM 802.11b @ 2MB 271

Posted by Hemos from the if-you-build-it,-your-costs-will-fall dept.
OffTheRack writes "Check out this web site to see how a guy in Egypt built his own line-of-site (H:Get? It's Punny.) 1KM broadband connection. Plenty of nice pictures." Pretty cool set-up.
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1KM 802.11b @ 2MB More

1KM 802.11b @ 2MB

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  • not for long (Score:3, Funny)

    by danthedanish ( 632820 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:23PM (#5077989) Journal
    Plenty of nice pictures. not for long.
    • I'm starting an article boycott. I think I've had enough of seeing poor servers being brought down to their knees by slashdot. I'd like to think that some way can be figured out to make sure we don't harm/piss off any webmasters. This is not a matter of legality, it is completely legal for Slashdot to link to this sites, but I believe it is in the moral duty and mere common decency for Slashdot to figure out some way to not fry some of these webservers.

      • Re:Article boycott (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Shanep ( 68243 )
        This is not a matter of legality, it is completely legal for Slashdot to link to this sites, but I believe it is in the moral duty and mere common decency for Slashdot to figure out some way to not fry some of these webservers.

        Huh? Moral duty? It would be nice if /. would cache a page before posting a story (after requesting approval if copyrighted) and maybe including real links for future reference.

        But moral obligation?

        Piss off webmasters? Do they post web sites in the hope that as few people as possible see them? If that were the case, they ought to have private sections.

      • I know that a lot of webmasters need and value the hits they get because it affects their advertising revenue and, for that reason, are loath to let users view static cached versions because they don't collect the right counts.

        But I think you have a good point.

        There ought to be some agreed upon way for sites to defer to mostly-static caches located downstream closer to the big pipes. Call it a cacheing router.

        Would there be much of market for spiky demand service? It's not like Slashdotting saturation is going to do much for your web site's popularity. If 90% of peak visitors timeout, they're likely to leave with a less than favorable impression anyway.

        If the cache operators would simply save rudimentary static hit counts and client IP addresses and then send them to you later (even perhaps by emulating the client side HTTP requests at a trickle rate), would you be happy?

        Would owners of big services be willing to offer such services?

        Would there be a simple way to flag that your site would defer to assistance during times of stress?

        Or is this all a stillborn idea?

    • heh.
      Well, as far as I can see, the server with the article is located in the US.
      Anyway, it would be nice to see someone post a log displaying the slashdotting. I remember someone did it some time ago. Tt would be nice to see it on a popular article.
      The counter on the page for this article showed about 48000 hits when I first read it, so I guess we can see something there. Still a breakdown of unique visitors would be nice to see.

  • this is old! (Score:3, Funny)

    by phreak03 ( 621876 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:23PM (#5077992) Homepage Journal
    this site has been up for several years, back when the pringles can first came out, sheesh, get some new contenct (like those cool dlink repeaters for 802.11b)

  • Line-of-site (Score:3, Funny)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:23PM (#5077994) Journal
    "Line-of-site" is what the surveyors drew along an edge of a pyramid which was to be built.
  • And he did it pretty cheap too... his only real expense was the wireless access points (way to go Linksys).

    How's the weather in egypt? Wonder how it does in storms.

  • Cancer (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarthWiggle ( 537589 ) <sckiwiNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:25PM (#5078001) Journal
    I wonder if the great scourge of the twenty-first century will be runaway cancer rates with all the RF radiation we're pumping into the air. Cell phones, LOS broadband, radar, radio...

    I feel my children growing third arms, though they be but little swimmers in my special place.

  • Text from article (Score:4, Informative)

    by Acaila ( 259043 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:25PM (#5078003) Homepage Journal
    Don't know how long this server will last so:

    ----------[snip]---------------
    1KM, 2Mbps, 802.11b wireless link using
    Linksys WAP11 + Yagi, in Hurghada, EGYPT

    By: Hassan Adly
    Hurghada, Red Sea, EGYPT
    Posted December 10, 2001
    Background:
    I have an Internet cafe in Hurghada, Red Sea, Egypt, with an expensive broadband satellite connection, located 1 km from my house. The roofs of both buildings have a clear line of sight between them. At home I was previously limited to a V.90 modem connection, and remote administration of the cyber cafe network was impossible.
    A fast connection between my house and the cafe was becoming more and more necessary, mostly in order to provide remote administration at acceptable speeds, but also of course to finally get fast Internet at home! Me-wann' download quicky-quicky now!
    The Project:
    A lot of aimless browsing brought me to I, Cringly. This man is a genius. On his "Pulpit" section is a treasure trove of articles on what I would call survival techniques in the digital age. After considering rolling my own DSL on an analog leased line, which would entail for me a hefty annual telecom fee (plus the rather high cost of Pair-Gain SDSL modems), I stumbled across This article about 802.11, which describes how Bob Cringley, with little trouble (use of telescopes notwithstanding), connected his rural home to a DSL connection he had set up 10 miles (16km) away.
    So according to the theories gleaned from Cringley's article, I realised I could connect my domestic LAN to my workplace LAN, with the help of two wireless LAN bridging devices, and a couple of good antennae (and no annual fee!). Obviously worth further investigation..
    I started with Cringley's 802.11 links, which sent me well on my way to wireless Nirvana. Detailed instructions and antenna designs abound, along with some innovative ideas (mostly about saving money, which is good).
    After some quick price-researching I found that the cheapest 802.11 unit available that suited my purposes was the Linksys WAP11, which has detachable antennae, LAN-bridging capability, 128bit WEP encryption, and best of all, at the time of writing only costs US$134.- on Amazon.com! This unit has the best value for money available for this type of device right now. I lost no time in ordering me a couple of these gems and having them delivered to a friend in California who just happened to be on his way to Egypt a few weeks later. Lucky me!
    The WAP11 has an out-of-the-box claimed maximum range of about 450 meters under ideal conditions, which even if true falls well short of my 1km requirement. I Also want to be able to connect at high speeds. A replacement is required for the antennae (obviously). So, logitech wheel-mouse in hand, I set about building some!
    My first project was based on the ingenious Pringles can design. The hardest part for me about emulating the design on Rob Flickenger's website was finding Pringles cans for sale in Egypt. Fortunately I found a supermarket that stocks them and was able to build a pair. If you want to try the Pringles design let me warn you: Under no circumstances should you eat more than a few Pringles at a time! After eating a canful I was positively sick, to the point that all antenna construction was halted for two days! Unfortunately after all my efforts the "Pringletenna" link refused to work, either through a design fault of my own, or noise, or whatever. Maybe it's the grease in the pringles..

    After much hand-wringing, beard-ripping, hair-pulling, etc, I decided to construct a more "industrial standard" antenna, which I did without much ado (pictured right). Sporting a 3 full wavelengths collector (compared to the pringletenna's 1 wavelength), and weather-proof PVC piping as the outer shell, these antennae from the start looked as if they meant business, and indeed they did, because as soon as they were installed and properly aimed, they produced a 2Mbps signal at 1km distance. Hurrah! Me do download at home quicky-quicky now!


    At one side of the connection the LAN switch is more than 40 meters away from the antenna, with the other side about 20 meters. Instead of trying to push the WAP11's FCC-impaired signal through long antenna cables I decided to put my WAP11's right next to the antennae. Since the WAP11's aren't weatherproof I had to use a weatherproof housing.
    I found these boxes (pictured above and left) at about US$10.- a piece at a local electrical parts store. To the left you can see how my access point as well as its DC adapter fit inside the box, with the LAN, power, and antenna cables entering through the side. BTW the DC adapter included with the WAP11 works internationally, supporting voltages from 110-250VAC. Very thoughtful on Linksys' part.
    The roofs of both buildings are relatively secure, so theft of the AP is unlikely, however I am concerned about the fallibility of my housings, at the time of writing it is winter here, with average temperatures around 20-25C during the day, however in summer temperatures here in the Sahara desert can reach 50C. Additionally we very ocassionally experience high wind speeds (over 100km/h) and sand storms. The housings are rain and wind-proof, but whether the AP's will survive the extreme summer environment and sand storms is still a question unanswered. In theory I could install some forced-air cooling such as computer power-supply fans, but I've decided to let next summer be my creation's token reliability test (perhaps Linksys could pay me and use it in an ad-campaign like: "tested in the Sahara desert"..).

    The WAP11's antenna connectors, I found to my chagrin, are unlike anything available in northern Africa. The "pigtail" connectors I have read about on American sites are unavailable in Egypt and considering that they cost about $60 each anyway, all the better. After days of driving from one electronics shop to another with no success, I decided to dismantle the standard WAP11 antenna and modify its connector for my purposes. After a lot of clamping, hammering and grinding, this is what I ended up with, a brutalized Linksys connector with a standard satellite dish N-connector jammed onto its backside. So instead of a $60 pigtail, I got a solution that cost me about $1 for the n-connectors (including the ones I destroyed during experimentation). I got the approximately 4 meters of cable I needed for free from a sat-dish repairman I know.
    So far the most expensive modification was the 60 meters of Cat5 cable I had to pull from my LAN switches to the AP's.
    For now I've set up one WAP11 as an AP, and the other as an AP client. I am using 64-bit shared-key WEP encryption (the WAP11 supports 128-bit WEP but higher encryption reduces speed). To support bridging mode and 64/128 bit WEP the WAP11 requires a firmware upgrade.
    I should note here that the WAP11 has a nasty habit of going to sleep (for lack of a better expression) when there has been no traffic for a while. I solved this by setting my proxy server to continuously ping the client WAP11 from the other side of the link. That keeps them lazy WAP11's awake! I think Linksys should include a "keep alive" function in the next WAP11 firmware update, because this issue appears to be confusing a lot of people.
    In order to preclude any unauthorized wireless access to my network I am planning to implement a Linux router behind the AP with CBQ routing to experiment with bandwidth management and deny bandwidth to unauthorized IP addresses. Not that we have many wardrivers in Egypt, but you can never be too safe, especially in Africa, eh?
    My Costs:
    2x WAP11:
    $298.- (now $268 incl. shipping!)
    60 meters CAT 5 cable:
    $30.-
    Yagi antenna parts:
    About $10.-
    2x Weather-proof boxes
    $20.-
    60 meters Electrical cable
    $10.-

    So for a total cost of about US$360.- I built a 1 km wireless link, running for the past 2 months at 2Mbps. Yay!


    Future mods:
    I am beginning to suspect that my choice of coca-cola cans as reflectors on the Yagi antennae may be affecting signal quality (hence the maximum speed of only 2Mbps). Hence I am looking for a flat-based can that has the same diameter as the coca-cola can.
    Another modification I want to try is putting an Omni-directional antenna on the AP side. I'm combing newsgroups and websites for designs and ideas as time allows. My Dad has a nifty Senao wireless phone with a 60km range, and I'm trying to convince him to lend me his station antenna :)
    For really long range links and highly improved signal strength, I believe one would require a bi-directional 2.4GHz amplifier like one of these hard to get wonders. Dear Santa, I want a couple of those military-spec 10 Watt amplifiers for Christmas!
    Last on my wishlist is a UPS connected to each WAP11. I find that after power-outages the AP's take a while to see each other.



    Noise issues:
    Although I live in a small-ish town with presumably little electromagnetic interference, it is worth mentioning that this high-gain, 3 meter tall GSM network monstrosity is located about 7 meters away from my AP antenna, on the same roof. I really can't tell whether or not it is affecting my antenna. Across the road are a pair of of GSM omni-directional antenna towers (pictured below) which to my knowledge also don't seem to affect my link.








    By: Hassan Adly

  • Two uses! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:26PM (#5078005) Homepage
    Download pr0n and kill some birds at the same time!

    • Re:Two uses! (Score:3, Funny)

      by isorox ( 205688 )
      When looking at using 2.4GHz to beam a video signal from one side of campus to another, we did mention a bonus would be extra food for starving students as the birds would fall out of the sky ready cooked.

  • Why is this a big deal ?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by netnerd.caffinated ( 473121 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:27PM (#5078012)
    Egypt is pretty flat, so LOS is easy. All you need is an AP & a Pringles can.
    Now if they were wiring all the pyramids with net access or something. then that would be cool.

    • Oh Come On! Wire the PYRAMIDS?! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Myriad ( 89793 ) <myriad@the[ ]d.com ['bso' in gap]> on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @12:49AM (#5078435) Homepage
      Now if they were wiring all the pyramids with net access or something. then that would be cool.

      Why? Do you feel that while you are checking out the bowels of Khufu's pad you'll suddenly really need to check your E-Mail on that little PDA?

      If the answser is Yes to the above question you need to logout right now and run (don't walk) away from the computer. You are hearby banned from all eletronic gizmo's for the period of 48 hours.

    • The only downside being that since hes not used to western syle junk food he got sick eating the pringles.

      I think his pipe idea was better since that will probably last longer..

  • Interference (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:28PM (#5078020) Homepage Journal
    Although I live in a small-ish town with presumably little electromagnetic interference, it is worth mentioning that this high-gain, 3 meter tall GSM network monstrosity is located about 7 meters away from my AP antenna, on the same roof. I really can't tell whether or not it is affecting my antenna.

    I think the more important question would be, "Is your unlicensed amplified antenna affecting their transmissions"

  • amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by satsuke ( 263225 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:30PM (#5078031)
    amazing - a site that has all

    Clear text
    Clear reference links
    adequate pictures
    interesting topic matter

    and no popups or ads

    Sounds like the internet around 1995 .. when you could use lynx and download individual gifs and view them without problem ..

    • not really amazing. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 )
      Why be amazed at the lack of spam? That's the way you would make a web site, right? What's amazing is that this dude in Bum#@!$ Egypt can get nice service like that and, ta-da, run a web site, where most people in the US have to beg their ISP or Tripod or some other advert hole for 10 big megs of space. Pay once to get on the toll road then run to CandadaISP or some such to get hosted. What's amazing is that my ISP should forbid me to use my cable modem to serve. If I were to serve, it might get in the way of someone else's adverts, what a sin. OK OK, enough of my whining.

      Hey, Snake, did you know that childlessness is hereditary? That's right, if your parents never had children, there's a good chance you never will either.

      • What's amazing is that this dude in Bum#@!$ Egypt can get nice service like that and, ta-da, run a web site

        Nope, the web site is hosted by Interland [interland.com] in Atlanta GA. He is paying no less than $16.95/mo (their cheapest plan).

        where most people in the US have to beg their ISP or Tripod or some other advert hole for 10 big megs of space.

        Only if they spend more time whining than looking for an alternative. Check out Nearly Free Speech [nearlyfreespeech.net]. $1/1GB transferred, no monthly payment, no setup fees. For a personal site you can just put a few bucks in your account and they will last virtually forever. Even a slashdotting shouldn't hurt too much - other providers charge much more than that per GB if you exceed your monthly limit.

        • It looked like d128 [d128.com] was in Egypt, as that's where the principle people involved with it are. Interland does not look like the host. Netcraft says d128 is running on linux [netcraft.com] and interland is a M$ shop [netcraft.com] but that's my bad, as:

          willhill@hesiod:~$ ping www.d128.com
          PING d128.com (64.227.2.228): 56 data bytes
          64 bytes from 64.227.2.228: icmp_seq=0 ttl=51 time=57.8 ms
          64 bytes from 64.227.2.228: icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=39.6 ms
          64 bytes from 64.227.2.228: icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=42.5 ms

          --- d128.com ping statistics ---
          3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
          round-trip min/avg/max = 39.6/46.6/57.8 ms
          willhill@hesiod:~$ whois 64.227.2.228

          OrgName: Interland
          OrgID: INTD

          NetRange: 64.224.0.0 - 64.227.255.255
          CIDR: 64.224.0.0/14
          NetName: INTERLAND-5
          NetHandle: NET-64-224-0-0-1
          Parent: NET-64-0-0-0-0
          NetType: Direct Allocation
          NameServer: A.NS.INTERLAND.NET
          NameServer: B.NS.INTERLAND.NET
          NameServer: C.NS.INTERLAND.NET
          Comment: ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE

          But so what? My complaint is that I can't use the wires that hook up to my house.

  • He should try this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:31PM (#5078039) Homepage Journal
    http://trevormarshall.com/biquad.htm

    I read direct TV dishes are a lot easier to build and go alot further.

    • Re:He should try this (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @07:29AM (#5079624) Homepage
      direct TV dishes do not work well... they are not designed for the right gain that you are looking for and are more expensive than the correct dish...

      Get a set of primestar dishes... they re larger and the feedhorn on them can easily be modified for this use. I use primestar dishes only and they work awesome for my hub links.

      Primestar dishes are free, cince TCI abandoned it back in 1996 there are still many of them floating in yards or at hamfests with the reciever for $5.00

      Otherwise if you really want a good solution that is ready to go, ramsey electronics sells turnley 802.11b point to point 22dbi dishes... plug it in and you are working... no building anything.
  • There is no way that those Bridges will last in that box outside . I've seen comercial wap equipment that's kept outside in the us go bad , and this stuff I'm talking about is meant to be kept outside . But i do have to say he has better grammar than most slash dotters ;) .
  • With a little more power you can get 11Mb/s AND cook your chicken.

  • Oh, yeah... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was melting out in the sands of North Africa. Y'know, I had this stupid home connection even though I had expensive broadband at my OWN cafe. Like, bummer. Yeah, it was like, I was a haiwan in my own backyard.

    Me-wann' download quicky-quicky now!

    And that's why I got a Macintosh.

    My name is Hassan Adly, and I own an internet cafe.

  • Lightning (Score:5, Funny)

    by Leebert ( 1694 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:38PM (#5078072)
    I sure hope they don't get serious electrical storms in Egypt, or this fellow may find himself with a big problem on his LAN.
  • Technology + challenge + good old-fashioned ingenuity = effective and efficient solution. Note - if he wanted to get *really* fancy, he would set up 2 small parabolic dishes to boost signal gain (could be very effective at reducing noise, esp in crappy weather). One dish on the cafe, one on his house, pointed at the other building's antenna (hard to work, but not impossible). It might be cheaper than getting military grade transmitters lol.

  • Egypt? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:42PM (#5078098) Homepage
    Anyone else picture WAPs on the tops of all the pyramids when you read the summary?
  • May it be possible that now he won't be stuck in westcoast groupthink?

  • From the article: " Dear Santa, I want a couple of those military-spec 10 Watt amplifiers for Christmas!"

    c'mon guys, why not help him out.. I'll start by sending him a buck to get him started..

  • Like a true geek... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter AT tedata DOT net DOT eg> on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:45PM (#5078117) Journal
    After who knows how much time spent on planning and building the project, he finally gets it working, much to his delight: ...these antennae from the start looked as if they meant business, and indeed they did, because as soon as they were installed and properly aimed, they produced a 2Mbps signal at 1km distance. Hurrah! Me do download at home quicky-quicky now!

    But, like a true geek,

    Future mods:

    I am beginning to suspect that my choice of coca-cola cans as reflectors on the Yagi antennae may be affecting signal quality (hence the maximum speed of only 2Mbps). Hence I am looking for a flat-based can that has the same diameter as the coca-cola can.

    It works! It's perfect! Now let's take it apart merely for the sake of making it faster!

    I guess "quicky-quicky" just isn't quick enough.

  • So would this... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:46PM (#5078123)
    only solve the last 3/4 mile problem then? what about that last 1/4 mile?

  • 1km? No biggie. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 4ginandtonics ( 455958 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:49PM (#5078139)
    Linksys outputs 50mw. If you were to go to the FCC regulation maximum of 100mw (1 watt), you would do better.

    If you use Cisco's Wireless Calculator Excel spreadsheet [cisco.com], you will see that a 21 dbi parabolic dish (as seen here [cisco.com] could grant you 76.1 kilometers.

    Now you have problems with this distance. Line of sight, for one.

    The common calculation calls for a cone shaped space from each antenna meeting at the middle. This is called the Fresnel Zone [bldrdoc.gov] The calculator says that this zone, for 76km is 28.2 meters (92 feet). So, you have to have 92 feet of clearance. No trees. No buildings. Nothing.

    At this distance (44.5 miles) The earth curvature is 90 feet, somehow your signal must peak over that!

    So, you are going to need antenna heights of over 150 meters to set up a 802.11b wireless like of this long.

    Most engineers say this is simply not feasable. Other issues, such as antenna alighment, water (nasty multipath bounce), WiFi hotspot interferance, and the actual time it takes for a signal to travel that far are issues as well.

    So just remember line of sight. If you have clean line of sight to the other endpoint, and clarity through the Fresenel Zone, you might just have a chance for point-point 802.11b wireless.

    Cheers!
    • /me wonders if the FCC have juristriction(speling?) in egypt??
      • Sorry about that. Us Yankee's often forget to see beyond our own little world.

        Since I'm a cisco bigot, let me quote them once again with Cisco's Maximum power listings

        Unfortunately, Egypt is not listed there. A lot of the Arab world follows EMEA.

        100mw is the maximum across the world. Many countries have lower maximums.

    • Re:1km? No biggie. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @12:11AM (#5078251) Journal
      If you were to go to the FCC regulation maximum of 100mw (1 watt), you would do better.

      not to nitpick, but is it 100mw or 1 watt....100 mw = 0.1 w

    • ...and the actual time it takes for a signal to travel that far are issues as well.

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the signal travel at the same speed -- the speed of light -- in both wireless and wired mediums (air and copper)? RF is still RF...

      nlh

      • Nope, air is FASTER! :) (Score:3, Informative)

        by PaulBu ( 473180 )
        The plastic in your coax (or insulation on your twisted pair) has epsilon of more than 1, slowing signal down. Light is fastest in vacuum, in air it's just a notch slower, but when you start adding solid insulation, it can get you down quite a bit.

        Paul B.
      • Yes. But your link layer protocol has to take that latency into consideration.

      • Re:1km? No biggie. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mamba-mamba ( 445365 )
        It turns out that what matters is the dielectric constant of the medium in which the electric wave travels.

        In the case of wireless, that medium is air, which has a dielectric constant very nearly the same as free space (vacuum).

        But electrical signals travelling in twisted pair wire (like category 5 cabling) travel a bit slower because the dielectric material they are travelling in is really the insulation in the wire. That's right, the signal is really travelling in the dielectric, not in the wires, per se.

        So the speed of propagation doesn't depend on the properties of the wire conductor, but on the dielectric in between the two conductors.

        You can calculate the speed if you know the relative permitivity of the dielectric. This is very closely related to the index of refraction, by the way.

        Anyway, in most practical situations (i.e., in non-magnetic materials) the velocity equals the free-space speed of light divided by the square root of the relative permitivity of the dielectric. So in typical fiberglass circuit board, called FR4, where the '4' represents the relative permitivity, the speed of light is C/sqrt(4), or about half the free-space speed. Since the free-space speed is 300 Million meters per second, half of it is 150 million meters per second. You could also say that it is 150 meters per microsecond, or 0.150 meters per nanosecond, or 150 mm/ns.

        But this is really only true for signals which are not on one of the surface layers. Surface layer signals experience a medium partially of FR4, and partially of air, so they travel a little faster.

        --
        MM
    • I know this won't work for everyone, but where I live is between 500' and 2600' above the surrounding terrain. For everyone else, something like this, or better solutions that overcome line of sight and other problems, is exactly what we need to extend access beyond the end of the line, and without expensive and relatively slow connections by other means such as ham radio or cell phone. Likewise, there are many Bush communities and residents all across Alaska and Canada who could benefit from advances like this.

      Pentagon Seeks Robots-Prize is $1 Million [xnewswire.com]

    • running ~22 kilometers with 802.11 equipment. parabolic grids on each end. One end mounted 10 feet off the ground, the other probably about 100 to 150. works perfect at 2 mbs! (older wavelan cards, only capable of that anyway) (No amps either, just a lightning supressor on each end) Ryan kc0lmo http://acit.aero.und.edu/

    • Re:1km? No biggie. (Score:3, Informative)

      by isorox ( 205688 )
      Ahh, to have American FCC regulations.....

      http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ ps 430/products_configuration_guide_chapter09186a0080 0e0299.html#1013548

      Americas - 4W effective power (out of the antenna). You can stick a 13.5dB antenna on a full power 100mW access point, no problem
      Europe - 0.1W effective power. You can stick a 0dB antenna on a 100mW access point, or 2.2dB on a 50mW AP.
      China - 0.01W effective power. You can stick a 0dB antenna on a 5mW access point. Anything more powerful you cant.

      I geuss that rules out legal long range (or even short-range) hops in the UK. Anyone got any more information?

      CPC sell a 22dB antenna with a high-power 2.4GHz video sender too. very naughty.

  • best quote... (Score:3, Funny)

    by cmckay ( 25124 ) <cameron.mckay @ c o lorado.edu> on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:50PM (#5078148) Homepage
    Best quote from the article:
    "Me-wann' download quicky-quicky now!"
  • Seriously this is nothing new (I personaly saw this artical over 18months ago).

    Despite this blokes seemingly good experince with linksys WAP11 i sugest ppl look around the net and read other peoples bad experinces with these units before making a purchase. HOwever at least this article might help convince people that pringels cans are not suitable for permanent links (despite the hype, pringles can antennas suck.. u can build a much better antenna with some tin cans)
  • I've used them (version WAP11 2.2) at work. The bridging dies every few hours and does not resume until the unit is power cycled. This seems to be a hardware problem, as it exists across firmware. They will become relable, you can run dlink firmware on them, and run one end as an ap and the other as an AP client. I haven't noticed problems with the bridging on the WAP11 v1.1s, but we only have one pair of them.

    (I work for a wireless ISP that made the mistake of using linksys gear for bridging. Nightmare.)
    • He found that problem and blamed it on some sort of sleep mode. Fixed with a keepalive.
      • I had a problem like that with my WAP11. It seemed to me like the task that was supposed to broadcast the SSID was crashing within a couple of hours. After much e-mail back-and-forth with a Linksys tech support guy, it got to the point where I was convinced it was hardware problem and demanded an RMA. Then he attached me a beta firmware that fixed the bug.

        So if this guy knows there's an update out there, why isn't he using it?

  • Shocking (Score:3, Funny)

    by skeedlelee ( 610319 ) on Monday January 13, 2003 @11:56PM (#5078175)
    No one has come to the defense of Pringles yet!

    He quite plainly accuses of making him sick for days. I figured some geek would be defending their favorite snack food by now.

    I guess you can't just dive into two cans. Without a digestive system attuned to American junk food, you have to work your way in slowly.

    Either that or those pringles could easily have been off. He looked for them for days, who knows how long they'd been around and what summer in the desert does to them.

    And I second the observation - clean text no advertisements, what is this the web circa 1996.

    Ick
    • Exactly, his stomach has been pampered with food that has direct origins in either the earth or some sort of animal. American stomachs on the other hand have had to grow tough enough to deal with Ho Ho's, McDonald's food, and pringles.

      I respect his enthusiam but he's just not ready for top teir junkfood yet.

      Vanguard

  • 128 bit encryption internationally? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by i22y ( 10479 ) <mike AT islerphoto DOT com> on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @12:15AM (#5078274) Homepage
    I may be way off base here...but I was under the impression that 128 bit encrypted products couldn't be exported without a permit of some kind. The author mentions that a friend in California brought the products to Egypt. Wouldn't that be illegal to export such a product?

    And yes, I do find it cool what he did... just curious about the legality by US laws.
  • From the article:

    Another modification I want to try is putting an Omni-directional antenna on the AP side. I'm combing newsgroups and websites for designs and ideas as time allows. My Dad has a nifty Senao wireless phone with a 60km range, and I'm trying to convince him to lend me his station antenna :)

    Does anhone have any clue what kind of wireless phone does what kind of tricks to get 30+ mile range?
    • Hmmm, guess what, this [senao.com] will take you to their damn ugly website where I'm sure you can find out more! I can't be bothered to read up on the phones, but did notice that they have a range of 802.11b hardware for up to 25kms that this guy would love to have, why? well they have lightning protection (surge arrester) aswell as being watertight and weatherproof with POWER over Ethernet (never heard of it before myself). He'd also have got a standard N-type connector, 273K-323K temperature range (he could still go to high though, just). The only wierd thing (is it not) is that it has a 10 Base T connector for the local network, so your 11Mbs suddenly gets chopped to a theoretical 10 before you even try to get anything out of it.

  • no big deal (Score:3, Interesting)

    by presearch ( 214913 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @12:29AM (#5078334)
    I'm using a HyperLink omni and amp on a 20 foot mast on
    top of a two story farmhouse. The amp is fed by an Airport
    base station. My rev. A iBook gets 2mb from 2 miles away
    with it's internal antenna if it can LOS the antenna.

    I'm in rural flatland Indiana so it's pretty easy to spot the
    house and antenna from far away.

    I'm running below legal power limit but I'm feeding the
    antenna with a 75 ft. feed from the amp so I'm very
    sub optimal. Gotta get things spiffier in the spring
    but for now, it's cold out there. No way I'm going up
    on the roof for a couple months.

  • 2Mb not 2MB (Score:5, Funny)

    by nihilogos ( 87025 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @12:38AM (#5078374)
    And as everybody knows you get more chicks if you can tell the difference.

  • Hmmm . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by CleverNickName ( 129189 ) <wil@wil[ ]aton.net ['whe' in gap]> on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @12:54AM (#5078463) Homepage Journal
    Am I the only person who glanced at this headline and thought that Slashdot was posting headinlines in leet?
    • thought that Slashdot was posting headinlines in leet?

      No, I just read it as if it was normal english, and that scares me.

      Now if only I could do the same with a foreign language
    • headlines in leet

      Apparently noone in the submitter/editor chain understands SI units like the rest of had to learn in high school. It should probably be:

      1 km 802.11b @ 2Mb/s

      Case is important [colostate.edu] in SI units. One still has to read Geek, but at least it's meaningful to fluent speakers of Geek.

  • How I'm spending MY night (Score:5, Funny)

    by blitzoid ( 618964 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @01:18AM (#5078598) Homepage
    This guy has a page hit counter at the bottom of his page, it's quite funny to refresh it and watch it go up extremely fast. 45845... 45900... and so on.
    • I hit his page last night (4:30 AM rebuild of a machine with a failed hard drive) right when this article hit /., and his page counter was 19363.

      That is why network admins fear the /. effect :-)

      I love his comments on the pringles can, and appreciate that he dumped it as fast as his GI tract dumped the pringles. Real RF hackers build yagi antennas, not helical cantennas. The only reason to go with a shielded helical cantenna is when you want to block unwanted signals in a noisy area, like the centres of large cities when war*ing. In a coastal resort town, just trim down an old TV antenna to the right length/spacing and don't alert the thieves/authorities (same thing) to something interesting on your roof.

      the AC

  • Remember Olestra? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ctar ( 211926 ) <christophertar@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @01:23AM (#5078618) Homepage
    Under no circumstances should you eat more than a few Pringles at a time! After eating a canful I was positively sick, to the point that all antenna construction was halted for two days!

    Sounds like he got the Olestra version...(although even the regular pringles are pretty damn greasy)
  • I have a hard time getting 802.11b from my basement (where the cable comes in, hence a good place for the firewall/switch/basestation)

    It's a WAP11, and the linksys card won't reach the bedroom on the second floor, opposite end ofthe house. The Orinoco card does slightly better.

    Anybody recommend a better antenna? how bout a better base station? I'm planning on changin out the linksys firewall and the WAP11 for an all in one product as the firewall is starting to 'fall down'. (one port is dead, two won't negotiate higher than 10 mbps)

    p.s. an alternative would be relocating one of the removable antennas to another more useful location, any suggestions there (URL's ould be appreciated.) /me heads off to google now...

  • Not that cool (and some ideas) (Score:4, Informative)

    by m_frankie_h ( 240122 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @02:20AM (#5078858)
    2Mbps at 1km point p-t-p is not much - we do that at work all the time (I'm working for a wireless ISP).

    Linksys WAP11 is one of the worst pieces of HW I have seen (I haven't even looked at the worse ones). You need a trained monkey to monitor it (no SNMP - try using Cricket or MRTG) and have to reboot it once a week. Even if you have the monkey, the box won't tell you anything - no signal strength, no retransmission counter, just the packet counters (at least in version 1.009).

    If you intend to build such a link, use either decent FHSS devices [alvarion.com] (but those are quite expensive), or something like SparkLAN (sorry, no URL, try google) - a friend of mine is using those for 5km 8Mbps links (under ideal conditions, of course). These are about $200 in Slovakia, don't know about US (or Egypt).

    It is also better to use high-gain (like 24dBi) antennas - have a look at Andrew [andrew.com]. Do not use omnidirectional antennas.

    Also try to keep the HF cables as short as possible (the guy could have made them some 2ft shorter) and water-proof your connectors - or your link will go down anytime the rain coes (and will not come up after some months due to rust)
    • Be careful what antennae you use if you're in the US. For 802.11 in America, point to multipoint links are limited to 36dBm EIRP, which would be exceeded by 8dB using a 24dBi antenna with a WAP11. However, you're allowed 48dBm EIRP for a point to point link.

      Also, before you go run out and buy a high gain antenna, be mindful that any consumer access point has TWO antennae - one for transmit and one for receive, so you'll need two high gain antennae. Access points that only have one antenna actually do have two. The receiving antenna is external and the transmitting antenna is an internal stubby. here [ie-ap.org] is a picture of the inside of one of my D-Link 900AP+ access points. You can see the stubby transmit antenna on the right.

      What I did for my long-haul link is remove the coax and connector from another access point, and swapped it with the stubby. This leaves me with one access point having two external antenna jacks and one with two internal stubbies. The latter is fine for use around the house while the former handles my local hotspot [ie-ap.org]. Here [ie-ap.org] is a picture of my antenna pair.

      I think I was able to put together a single AP/Antenna pair for about $700, which included the two antennae, the custom cables, the two AP's required to make one with two jacks, and all the necessary hardware, weatherproof enclosures, mounting frame, power over ethernet (homemade), and support structure.

      The longest link I've been able to establish to date is a 9.1mile link at 1Mbit, which survived for about 45 seconds. I can reliably make 2 miles at 22Mbit as long as the other side has the same setup.

  • cheaper + easier.. dunno where i found the link.. 10mbps at 1 km and gpl:ed design.. works perfect even with heavy rainstorms. http://ronja.jikos.cz/
  • It would be better if he could have spelt 'sight' properly (context: "line-of-site")...

    Score: +1 Insitefool

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @07:12AM (#5079583)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Wow! I got Slash-Dotted! (Score:5, Informative)

    by HassanAdly ( 641007 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2003 @07:47AM (#5079671)
    Hello everyone,

    Stop! I can't take all this attention!

    Anyway I wanted to shamelessly use this opportunity to post some comments:

    Since I wrote that article my network has improved significantly. I now use proper N-connectors and RG213 cable, and I've got some links at about 5km now. I now have ten nodes installed, including one AP with a 9dbi omni.

    All my AP's survived the summer and winter with no problems, the oldest units have been up for more than a year now.

    If anyone is wondering how well the WAP11 deals with heat, they would be interested to know that last summer we had 47degC temps, and besides the operational nodes staying up, I left a WAP11 in my car. When I got to it it was warped and melted - but it worked anyway!

    I never expected this kind of attention, else I would have updated my article.

    Thanks everyone for the comments and emails!

    Regards, Hassan
  • Now with that subject line (the news, not this post) it is for sure.

    Gosh, they even threw in an @!!!

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