DefCon WiFi shootout champions crowned: 125 miles

Four young amateur radio operators from Ohio were again dubbed world champs of long-distance wireless networking at the annual DefCon WiFi Shootout. These guys more than doubled the 55.1 mile record they set last year. Way to go!

SoCalWug co-founder Frank Keeney says,

All day Friday and through the night Team PAD 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.

Mike Outmesguine adds,

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

Frank's company provided the Wi-Fi gear to Team PAD. He tells me they used the VCom 325hp+ PCMCIA cards running at a built-in power of 300 mw on each end of the link. The cards were connected to one 12 foot and one 10 foot diameter satellite dish (see photo) on each side of the link. The computers they used were running Linux. And their link quality was so fantastic that they got 12 ms ping times, ran ssh shell commands, and even used vnc remote desktop.

He also said that Team PAD may use the same gear to attempt smashing our old Bluetooth record of 1.08 miles.

Link to team photo and a graphic display of estimated link locations.