WiFi: Record Range Now 382 KM
The record for point-2-point WiFi transmission is now 382 kilometers (pdf). The transmission was made from Platillon to Aguila in Venezuela. This news comes to us via The Foundation Latin American School of Networks website.
The researchers behind the project used the WRT54 Linksys router in their experiment. If they are able to make long distance connectivity work in a stable manner and are able to keep the equipment cheap this could make a huge difference in connecting emerging markets.
Connectivity will make the OLPC even more important and make the use of SMS servers (Radar post) even more interesting. Hacker Friendly Books (Radar post) has continued releasing books that aid emerging markets in building out effective networking infrastructure.
According to Internet World Stats, only 12.8% of Venezuela's population is connected. It's not surprising that the record was broken in a country that is still finding its internet footing. The dominant US method of most people paying for their connectivity will not work in an emerging market.
tags: emerging tech, emerging telephony, web 2.0
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Ermanno Pietrosemoli is the guy most responsible for that long range connection. He has been involved in wireless since the early 90's. I have taught with him at a university for developing country techies in Trieste, and he's been doing projects all over Latin America and some in Africa. He runs a networking school that has been instrumental in getting many Latin American countries on the Internet in 1995.
Today he is in the Galapagos putting in a wireless network, and I'm sure he will be trying some other outrageous long hop next year.
I wonder too about specs. I've tried the pringles can approach and have heard about wraping a cat5 cable around a cell phone for improving signal quality but I've never had any luck goofing around. I just pulled a DirectTV satelite dish out of someone's trash and will try with it to get / send a far off signal. It seems like it'd be a lot easier to recieve a signal than to send one.
I wonder if altitude has something to do with the success. I remember that a prior record was also achieved a higher altitude... anyone knows?
It's maybe the altitude because the air is more thin up there. But in the experiment from above, I think it's more because the earth is not flat!?
The WiFi system has built in time limits on waiting for a response from the other side. These time limits are far shorter than the round-trip travel time of 382 km. They must have made some changes to the equipment to make this work properly with the very large delays involved. They do not seem to talk about that.
On the link budget issue - I can believe that this works out if they have a line of sight situation. I saw some relevant discussions in
http://marconig.wordpress.com/
The WiFi system has built in time limits on waiting for a response from the other side. These time limits are far shorter than the round-trip travel time of 382 km. They must have made some changes to the equipment to make this work properly with the very large delays involved. They do not seem to talk about that.
On the link budget issue - I can believe that this works out if they have a line of sight situation. I saw some relevant discussions in
http://marconig.wordpress.com/
"The dominant US method of most people paying for their connectivity will not work in an emerging market."
What does paying for connectivity have to do with the US?
The dominant US method of most people paying for their connectivity will not work in an emerging market.
People will pay for their connectivity , just not in the same way / or at the same amount as we in the west are used to.
An example of this is mobile phone usage in Africa - there are crowd of entrepreneurs who rent the mobile phone by the minute to the people who need them. Cost effective and gives the benefits of the technology to people , who pay for the service.
I am only familiar with the economics of the US ISP market. That's why i stated US, instead of "western world".
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Chris Blow [06.20.07 03:20 PM]
Wow. The last record was something like 279 KM, so this seems huge. I wish that there was a better writeup on the details; the pdf is both technical and powerpointy.
My main question concerns that actual bandwidth that they have achieved, and what about latency? Could this really hold up under load if it is stable?
Also, I think it is worth pointing out that line of sight is a fundamental issue that will not be overcome anytime soon with terrestrial wifi.
I currently live in a rural area (in NC USA) that has a wireless network but lack of "LOS" is a deal breaker for me and many of my other friends. It seems strange that geography could play such a fundamental role, but if you are in a flat area or a densely wooded area, then you are not going to have a wireless backbone coming to a computer near you.