[gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[El Nino]

dear friends,

i have a 128kbps Internet connection to my home & now i want give
access to my college friends to it. (i already have two running
squid+firewall gentoo servers)

I'm looking for wireless technology to do this. all friends are within 1km.

can anyone give me a solution to do this?

all advices are warmly welcome...


--
...
"The future lies ahead."
 _______________________
< Have you mooed today? >
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                    | |-----w   |
                    | |        | |

2.6.14-gentoo-sinhalese-r1

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Re: [gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[Willie Wong]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 11:02:09AM +0600, El Nino wrote:
> i have a 128kbps Internet connection to my home & now i want give
> access to my college friends to it. (i already have two running
> squid+firewall gentoo servers)
> 
> I'm looking for wireless technology to do this. all friends are within 1km.

A noble pursuit, but I doubt it could be done easily... AFAIK
IEEE802.11 is mostly reliable only for clients within 100 meters.
Unless you live on the top of a hill with wide open space all around
you for kilometers, I doubt you'd get coverage all the way out of 1
kilometer. And if someone happened to be using wireless on neighboring
frequency bands to the one you are using, and if that someone happened
to be physically closer to your friend than you are, there's almost no
hope in establishing a connection...

Of course, you could mean wireless other than 802.11, but I don't
think IP over carrier pigeons or bongo drums[1] would do you much good
either. 

If you have line-of-sight, you might be able to make do with a
pair of directional antennae set up in the right way, and you might
need a way of increasing the power output of the antennae. Any such
modifications, however, is surely ILLEGAL in most civilized
municipalities. 

The long-range wireless guys who have been doing stuff like this all
have ham licenses, and are allowed quite a bit more power from their
devices then us lowly consumers....

Best

W
> 
> can anyone give me a solution to do this?
> 
> all advices are warmly welcome...

[1] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20030929-2886.html
-- 
This one's a bit....ummm...graphic?
"Lagrangian Mechanics with Differential Equations is like masturbating. You do 
what works and what makes you feel good."
~DeathMech, Some Student. P-town PHY 205
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 21:59
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Re: [gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[John Jolet]

On Saturday 12 November 2005 23:51, Willie Wong wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 11:02:09AM +0600, El Nino wrote:
> > i have a 128kbps Internet connection to my home & now i want give
> > access to my college friends to it. (i already have two running
> > squid+firewall gentoo servers)
> >
> > I'm looking for wireless technology to do this. all friends are within
> > 1km.
>
> A noble pursuit, but I doubt it could be done easily... AFAIK
> IEEE802.11 is mostly reliable only for clients within 100 meters.
> Unless you live on the top of a hill with wide open space all around
> you for kilometers, I doubt you'd get coverage all the way out of 1
> kilometer. And if someone happened to be using wireless on neighboring
> frequency bands to the one you are using, and if that someone happened
> to be physically closer to your friend than you are, there's almost no
> hope in establishing a connection...
Actually, my brother works for a company in Virginia that is doing wireless 
ethernet over distances this great or greater.  I doubt the technology they 
use will be cheap enough for this application, though.
>
> Of course, you could mean wireless other than 802.11, but I don't
> think IP over carrier pigeons or bongo drums[1] would do you much good
> either.
>
> If you have line-of-sight, you might be able to make do with a
> pair of directional antennae set up in the right way, and you might
> need a way of increasing the power output of the antennae. Any such
> modifications, however, is surely ILLEGAL in most civilized
> municipalities.
>
> The long-range wireless guys who have been doing stuff like this all
> have ham licenses, and are allowed quite a bit more power from their
> devices then us lowly consumers....
>
> Best
>
> W
>
> > can anyone give me a solution to do this?
> >
> > all advices are warmly welcome...
>
> [1] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20030929-2886.html
> --
> This one's a bit....ummm...graphic?
> "Lagrangian Mechanics with Differential Equations is like masturbating. You
> do what works and what makes you feel good."
> ~DeathMech, Some Student. P-town PHY 205
> Sortir en Pantoufles: up 21:59

-- 
John Jolet
Your On-Demand IT Department
512-762-0729
www.jolet.net
john@jolet.net
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Re: [gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[Stroller]

On Nov 13, 2005, at 5:51 am, Willie Wong wrote:
>
> If you have line-of-sight, you might be able to make do with a
> pair of directional antennae set up in the right way, and you might
> need a way of increasing the power output of the antennae. Any such
> modifications, however, is surely ILLEGAL in most civilized
> municipalities.
>
> The long-range wireless guys who have been doing stuff like this all
> have ham licenses, and are allowed quite a bit more power from their
> devices then us lowly consumers....

I think you're mistaken here. 802.11 is on an unregulated part of the 
frequency spectrum, so ham radio operators have no more rights when 
operating in it than the rest of us.

802.11 is perfectly achievable over distances of a kilometer, providing 
line of sight is available, and legally. The requirement is not to emit 
more than a certain signal strength (about 18dB or 20dB, I think) but 
signal strength is a product of transmitter power and amplification 
caused by the aerial. A very directional aerial amplifies the signal 
lots, but if you combine this with a low-power transmitter then you can 
still creep in under the legal signal strength.

One might ask, "but if I'm transmitting 20dB with a low-power 
directional aerial, that gives me the same range as 20dB using a 
non-directional aerial (like the rubber-jacketed kind that are supplied 
with wireless cards) at high-power" but this doesn't take into account 
receive attenuation. The directional aerial at the OTHER end will pick 
up the signal more clearly - it's listening in only one direction and 
effectively "amplifies" that signal for the receiver.

Instructions for building directional aerials are posted widely on the 
net, and the OP will be able to find them easily with a bit of 
searching (check out the Seattle Wireless & Guerilla Wireless websites) 
but it's harder to find wireless cards that will transmit at low enough 
power to make them (legally) useful. Last time I checked I could only 
find the expensive Cisco "Aeronet" (??) kit to be documented as being 
used in this way; I suspect there's not much available in 
Linux-compatible "54G" kit out there. When I looked at doing this 
line-of-sight was a bigger hurdle.

Stroller.
  

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Re: [gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[Willie Wong]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain; charset=unknown-8bit, Size: 2769 bytes --]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 03:18:16PM +0000, Stroller wrote:
> On Nov 13, 2005, at 5:51 am, Willie Wong wrote:
> >
> >If you have line-of-sight, you might be able to make do with a
> >pair of directional antennae set up in the right way, and you might
> >need a way of increasing the power output of the antennae. Any such
> >modifications, however, is surely ILLEGAL in most civilized
> >municipalities.
> >
> >The long-range wireless guys who have been doing stuff like this all
> >have ham licenses, and are allowed quite a bit more power from their
> >devices then us lowly consumers....
> 
> I think you're mistaken here. 802.11 is on an unregulated part of the 
> frequency spectrum, so ham radio operators have no more rights when 
> operating in it than the rest of us.

My bad. Somehow I thought 802.11 is regulated, which, of course, on
hindsight, is completely stupid. Barring that, there are still
transmission power limits by local governments. 
> 
> 802.11 is perfectly achievable over distances of a kilometer, providing 
> line of sight is available, and legally. The requirement is not to emit 
> more than a certain signal strength (about 18dB or 20dB, I think) but 

Hum, you are probably more knowledgeable then I am, but I am sure
there are both absolute power limits AND power density limits imposed
by most governments?
  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/802dot11/chapter/ch15.html
of course, one presumably won't go hacking the transmitter to output
more power than was set at the factory, which is probably close to the
legal limit anyway. So one does need to only worry about power
density. 

> signal strength is a product of transmitter power and amplification 
> caused by the aerial. A very directional aerial amplifies the signal 
> lots, but if you combine this with a low-power transmitter then you can 
> still creep in under the legal signal strength.

If, you are in Europe, for example, to get reliable 1km coverage from
the 66mW legal limit on the transmitting device, some simple math (or
a quick search on the internet-what I did) says you need a 10-12dB
gain from your antenna. You probably need a good Yagi or Parabolic for
your antenna to get the required gain. And I would _hate_ to be the
one having to set up the line-of-sight link between two parabolic
antennae....

W
-- 
(aikamuotojen käyttö aikamatkustuksessa)
"You can arrive (mayan arivan on-when) for any sitting you 
like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you 
can book retrospectively, as it were when you return to 
your own time. (you can have on-book haventa forewhen 
presooning returningwenta retrohome.) "
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 1 day, 11:03
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Re: [gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[Nick Rout]

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:51:12 -0500
Willie Wong wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 11:02:09AM +0600, El Nino wrote:
> > i have a 128kbps Internet connection to my home & now i want give
> > access to my college friends to it. (i already have two running
> > squid+firewall gentoo servers)
> > 
> > I'm looking for wireless technology to do this. all friends are within 1km.
> 
> A noble pursuit, but I doubt it could be done easily... AFAIK
> IEEE802.11 is mostly reliable only for clients within 100 meters.
> Unless you live on the top of a hill with wide open space all around
> you for kilometers, I doubt you'd get coverage all the way out of 1
> kilometer. And if someone happened to be using wireless on neighboring
> frequency bands to the one you are using, and if that someone happened
> to be physically closer to your friend than you are, there's almost no
> hope in establishing a connection...

What bollocks. 802.11 is capable of 5 km at least with a decent card and
directional aerials. Directional aerials can be built from quite cheap
materials like woks and other asian food implements, or you can buy
commercial directional aerials.

examples:

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/g.mckenzie/Radio%20Dish/Radio%20aerial.htm

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/


-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>

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Re: [gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[Jonathan Wright]

Nick Rout wrote:

> What bollocks. 802.11 is capable of 5 km at least with a decent card and
> directional aerials. Directional aerials can be built from quite cheap
> materials like woks and other asian food implements, or you can buy
> commercial directional aerials.

The world record is set at ~125 miles (~200km) using an un-amplified signal:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000970052590/

http://wireless.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000407052562/

http://www.wifiworldrecord.com/

-- 
  Jonathan Wright
   ~ mail@djnauk.co.uk
   ~ www.djnauk.co.uk
--
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  up 7 days, 19 min, 3 users, load average: 0.96, 0.97, 0.75
--
  cat /dev/random (because u never know, u may see something u like)
--
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Re: [gentoo-user] looking for wireless technology

[Willie Wong]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 11:15:06AM +1300, Nick Rout wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:51:12 -0500
> Willie Wong wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 11:02:09AM +0600, El Nino wrote:
> > > i have a 128kbps Internet connection to my home & now i want give
> > > access to my college friends to it. (i already have two running
> > > squid+firewall gentoo servers)
> > > 
> > > I'm looking for wireless technology to do this. all friends are within 1km.
> What bollocks. 802.11 is capable of 5 km at least with a decent card and
> directional aerials. Directional aerials can be built from quite cheap
> materials like woks and other asian food implements, or you can buy
> commercial directional aerials.
> 
In my defense:

  1) I did mention directional signals LATER ON in my post. 

  2) Notice that  he said "FRIENDS". Plural. 
    So of course I start by commenting on the usual capability of an 
    802.11 signal for an omnidirectional antenna. 

Nick: I notice you use that word (bollocks) a lot. I don't know if to
you it is as offensive as it is to me, but I'd appreciate if you don't
call it on me before reading my entire post or considering why I wrote
what I did. If you had said, for example, "What Bollocks, 802.11 is
unregulated band" in response to the misinformation I gave in that post
(which someone else corrected), then I'd say "ha, my bad" and move
on... 

W
-- 
BOOK	...Man had always assumed that he was more 
intelligent than
	dolphins because he had achieved so much... the 
wheel, New York,
	wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever 
done was muck
	about in the water having a good time. But 
conversely the
	dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent 
than man for
	precisely the same reasons.
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 1 day, 21:39
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