Wireless

11b equipment is 300 to 1,500 feet. Of course, this estimate is what is printed on the side of the box, and the number is chosen to be somewhere between actual technical constraints and the marketing department's agenda—and should therefore be ta...

Over short distances (within a few hundred feet), wireless networks can tolerate a few objects in the way. But as you try to push your signal further, having clean Line Of Sight (LOS) is absolutely critical. How can you tell if a given point ha...

It depends on all sorts of factors, including the power output and sensitivity of your card, quality of your cable, connectors and antenna, intervening clutter and noise, and even weather patterns (on long distance links). While it's impossible t...

At distances up to five miles or so, this is rarely a problem. Just so long as you have enough total gain to overcome the path loss, which you should have calculated by now [Hack #81]. At greater distances, getting the antennas pointed directly a...

In order to maintain communications as the available signal fades, the radios need to transmit data at a slower rate. Normally, the radios attempt to work out the available signal on their own and automatically select the fastest possible speed f...

An electromagnetic wave is actually comprised of two simultaneous and inseparable fields: the electrical field and the magnetic field. These two fields are perpendicular to each other, and both are perpendicular to the direction in which the wave...

While there is a huge amount of data available about the surface of our planet, most of the tools used to query and view the data are far from simple. The NoCat Map project combines two powerful GIS programs to build a sophisticated but easy-to...