3 ms·

I'm interested in this too— ten years or so ago I briefly got into long range wifi and bought a bunch of Ubiquiti gear (eg https://dl.ubnt.com/sr71a_datasheet.p

I'm interested in this too— ten years or so ago I briefly got into long range wifi and bought a bunch of Ubiquiti gear (eg https://dl.ubnt.com/sr71a_datasheet.pdf https://dl.ubnt.com/sr71a_datasheet.pdf). I was never successful in getting much more than 1km, even with their recommended antennas, but I was also working with watercraft, and I know that's hard mode for 2.4GHz, particularly when your antenna isn't able to be very far off the surface and only one end can be directional. My impression though is that recent advancements in wifi have all been focused on getting high bandwidth at very short range, like same room line-of-sight, so I wouldn't assume there'd be much to be gained over b/g/n range performance in trying an ac- or 6-based system.

genewitch 5y ago
I made a comment above about the mavic drones having 8km-15km+ "line of sight" range with their handheld WAP controllers, and my having flown 2km without any issues. I doubt i'll ever go to the max range, but the power is there to get in and around trees, towers, whatever. But with 440mhz i've transmitted data over 100 miles with full decode, from my driveway in a forest with a 6 element yagi. And a couple of years ago the first trans-atlantic 440 (UHF) transmission ever was accomplished. The main issue with consumer wifi is that it's attenuated by water, and by nature, nature is full of water. That's why UBNT switched to 12ghz or 24ghz for their long range "airfiber" stuff, and hacker hams try and find 902MHZ band capable equipment, as 900mhz can "punch through" more vegetation than 2.4 or 5.8ghz.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Are you getting video over that multi-km link? I looked into long range 700 and 900 mhz systems a little bit, but it seemed like they were much more geared for control plane and telemetry type data than being saturated by a real time video feed.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    Sorry i didn't reply sooner; yes, it's compressed video, but no frame drops on a clear path - i was able to get some i-frame weirdness a few times flying low over about 800 meters of trees, but no control issues.

genewitch 5y ago

I made a comment above about the mavic drones having 8km-15km+ "line of sight" range with their handheld WAP controllers, and my having flown 2km without any issues. I doubt i'll ever go to the max range, but the power is there to get in and around trees, towers, whatever. But with 440mhz i've transmitted data over 100 miles with full decode, from my driveway in a forest with a 6 element yagi. And a couple of years ago the first trans-atlantic 440 (UHF) transmission ever was accomplished. The main issue with consumer wifi is that it's attenuated by water, and by nature, nature is full of water. That's why UBNT switched to 12ghz or 24ghz for their long range "airfiber" stuff, and hacker hams try and find 902MHZ band capable equipment, as 900mhz can "punch through" more vegetation than 2.4 or 5.8ghz.

mikepurvis 5y ago
Are you getting video over that multi-km link? I looked into long range 700 and 900 mhz systems a little bit, but it seemed like they were much more geared for control plane and telemetry type data than being saturated by a real time video feed.
- genewitch 5y ago
  Sorry i didn't reply sooner; yes, it's compressed video, but no frame drops on a clear path - i was able to get some i-frame weirdness a few times flying low over about 800 meters of trees, but no control issues.