802.11 WiFi shootout

Ever wondered what today's young Amateurs are getting up to in their spare time?

How about an 802.11 WiFi shootout?

Yes four young amateur radio operators from Ohio were dubbed world champs of long-distance wireless networking at the annual DefCon WiFi Shootout. Yes, these young guys achieved 125 miles, smashing the previous 55.1 mile record they set last year.

All day Friday and throughout the weekend, the team braved rain, lightning and winds over 30 mph to setup and test their equipment at their mountaintop base outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. On Saturday July 30 at 11am they successfully made a 125 mile link using 802.11b and ran network applications with their remote team in the mountains West of St. George, Utah.

This possibly qualifies them for a new Guiness record as well.

They used the VCom 325hp+ PCMCIA cards running at a built-in power of 300 mw on each end of the link. At one site the card was connected to a 12 foot satellite dish, whilst at the other end of the link a 10 foot satellite dish was used. The computers they used were both running Linux. And their link quality was so clean that they got 12 ms ping times, ran ssh shell commands, and even used vnc remote desktop.

The team is now considering using the same gear to attempt smashing our old Bluetooth record of 1.08 miles.

The URL for more info on this amazing achievement and a team photo is at
http://www.wifi-toys.com/wi-fi.php?a=articles&id=91

(vk3krb)

Source: Wireless Institute of Australia

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