2 ms·

"Ideal" isn't doing as much heavy lifting as I thought it would be in this article. This is a basic wardriving setup on flat ground. Standard wifi is phy limit

by kawfey 2mo ago

"Ideal" isn't doing as much heavy lifting as I thought it would be in this article. This is a basic wardriving setup on flat ground. Standard wifi is phy limited to ~1600m unless you can increase ack response time limit, otherwise retransmissions will be sent by the sender while ack's are being transmitted by the receiver. Then, per friis equation, with enough power and antenna gain (it's the antenna gain that really matters) the limit is only obstructions/terrain. Get yourself high enough (mountains, planes, satellites, moons, etc), or bounce of an opportune reflector (planes, moon, aurora, meteors, ionosphere, rain, hail, etc), and there is no real limit, besides how big of an antenna you're willing to build in orbit :P or just make the throughput really really really REALLY slow and ice your receivers with liquid He. Hams make a game of it: https://www.arrl.org/files/file/WA50-Standings/Distance-Records-13-June-2025-Final.pdf https://www.arrl.org/files/file/WA50-Standings/Distance-Reco...

BetterThanSober 2mo ago
For discussion purposes just "WiFi" isn't doing much. I doubt typical AP<->phone 802.11ac on 5GHz can achieve >1km let alone 802.11ax/be on 6Ghz carrier, even 802.11n can only reach a few hundred meters with line-of-sight, sunny day, and no interference Long range WiFi is a "solved" problem with 802.11ah with sub-Ghz carrier and can reach more than a km depending on bandwidth requirements All that assuming tx power is within regulation, no enterprise grade antenna, and all with commercially available parts
- pseudosavant 2mo ago
  I've been running a 1.1km 5Ghz 802.11ac wifi link between two highly directional antennas for three years now. They have line-of-sight, albeit just barely. The kit I got cost $100 at the time. It was quite easy to setup even and supposedly can go much further than I'm using them for. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083JRFQ24 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083JRFQ24
  - itopaloglu83 2mo ago
    With so much benefit we’re getting from wireless connectivity, one hopes that more frequency bands would be opened up, especially in the sub-1GHz range, to enable long distance connections. And it should be open to public use. Not yet another carrier frequency they will charge us an arm and a leg to use, some of the cell phone connectivity charges are insane, hundreds of dollars for low bandwidth iot sims.
    - neilalexander 2mo ago
      It is immensely frustrating that there is so little unlicensed spectrum available vs the massive amounts of spectrum available to militaries and very rich network operators. Worse is that the unlicenced spectrum that is available is often so heavily encumbered with restrictions in many parts of the world. Wi-Fi HaLow for example, in ETSI regions, is limited to a paltry 14dBm EIRP in no wider than 2MHz channels and an unacceptably punishing duty cycle restriction in most cases that render it barely able to make a TCP connection (some mitigations exist that involve channel hopping on some products but nothing that works for things that require fixed channels, e.g. IBSS or 802.11s).
      - ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
        > Worse is that the unlicenced spectrum that is available is often so heavily encumbered with restrictions in many parts of the world It's one of the great things about the UK. As long as you're not causing interference to anyone that's actually paying for a licence, you can pretty much do what you like.
        inigyou 2mo ago
        Is it a practical thing as in they won't catch you, or does the law actually say that?
        ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
        It's not possible to investigate it, and there's no-one to report it to. Ofcom have about two dozen engineers for the whole of the UK, none of whom are equipped to deal with it. In general, though, in the UK if you're not making a nuisance of yourself the laws are pretty optional, and this is a pretty good example of it.
- ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
  Ubiquiti do 5.8GHz bridges that work well over long distances. I used a pair to link from my house to a nearby block of flats, around 9km LOS, and back to my friend's house (we didn't have LOS to each other) around 15km. They worked well at full link speed, around 80Mbps. These were just bog standard off-the-shelf ones, although for space considerations I "mix'n'matched" the links using one with a 10dB dish at one end and the patch antenna at the other. Here in the UK at least, you can use as high an EIRP as you like, so there's nothing to stop you taking a cheapy USB wifi or bluetooth dongle and 3D printing an adaptor to mount it on the boom of a cheap satellite dish.

by kawfey 2mo ago

BetterThanSober 2mo ago

For discussion purposes just "WiFi" isn't doing much. I doubt typical AP<->phone 802.11ac on 5GHz can achieve >1km let alone 802.11ax/be on 6Ghz carrier, even 802.11n can only reach a few hundred meters with line-of-sight, sunny day, and no interference Long range WiFi is a "solved" problem with 802.11ah with sub-Ghz carrier and can reach more than a km depending on bandwidth requirements All that assuming tx power is within regulation, no enterprise grade antenna, and all with commercially available parts

pseudosavant 2mo ago
I've been running a 1.1km 5Ghz 802.11ac wifi link between two highly directional antennas for three years now. They have line-of-sight, albeit just barely. The kit I got cost $100 at the time. It was quite easy to setup even and supposedly can go much further than I'm using them for. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083JRFQ24 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083JRFQ24
- itopaloglu83 2mo ago
  With so much benefit we’re getting from wireless connectivity, one hopes that more frequency bands would be opened up, especially in the sub-1GHz range, to enable long distance connections. And it should be open to public use. Not yet another carrier frequency they will charge us an arm and a leg to use, some of the cell phone connectivity charges are insane, hundreds of dollars for low bandwidth iot sims.
  - neilalexander 2mo ago
    It is immensely frustrating that there is so little unlicensed spectrum available vs the massive amounts of spectrum available to militaries and very rich network operators. Worse is that the unlicenced spectrum that is available is often so heavily encumbered with restrictions in many parts of the world. Wi-Fi HaLow for example, in ETSI regions, is limited to a paltry 14dBm EIRP in no wider than 2MHz channels and an unacceptably punishing duty cycle restriction in most cases that render it barely able to make a TCP connection (some mitigations exist that involve channel hopping on some products but nothing that works for things that require fixed channels, e.g. IBSS or 802.11s).
    - ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
      > Worse is that the unlicenced spectrum that is available is often so heavily encumbered with restrictions in many parts of the world It's one of the great things about the UK. As long as you're not causing interference to anyone that's actually paying for a licence, you can pretty much do what you like.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        Is it a practical thing as in they won't catch you, or does the law actually say that?
        ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
        It's not possible to investigate it, and there's no-one to report it to. Ofcom have about two dozen engineers for the whole of the UK, none of whom are equipped to deal with it. In general, though, in the UK if you're not making a nuisance of yourself the laws are pretty optional, and this is a pretty good example of it.
ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
Ubiquiti do 5.8GHz bridges that work well over long distances. I used a pair to link from my house to a nearby block of flats, around 9km LOS, and back to my friend's house (we didn't have LOS to each other) around 15km. They worked well at full link speed, around 80Mbps. These were just bog standard off-the-shelf ones, although for space considerations I "mix'n'matched" the links using one with a 10dB dish at one end and the patch antenna at the other. Here in the UK at least, you can use as high an EIRP as you like, so there's nothing to stop you taking a cheapy USB wifi or bluetooth dongle and 3D printing an adaptor to mount it on the boom of a cheap satellite dish.