Just wanted to say I meet a lot of communication folks in my industry and one of my customers and I were chatting about the internet (his was down at the moment) and he was telling me about the days before the internet had fully emerged that he used a radio system to link his computer/modem to a friend and that they had experimented a lot with the system just for fun and although it was slow they still could share data or communicate in a way that was not boring. Sorry I can't remember more of the specifics or offer more info other than I know he used his TV antenna on the roof and low voltage. Seems very interesting...

Originally posted by FiberLight
Just wanted to say I meet a lot of communication folks in my industry and one of my customers and I were chatting about the internet (his was down at the moment) and he was telling me about the days before the internet had fully emerged that he used a radio system to link his computer/modem to a friend and that they had experimented a lot with the system just for fun and although it was slow they still could share data or communicate in a way that was not boring. Sorry I can't remember more of the specifics or offer more info other than I know he used his TV antenna on the roof and low voltage. Seems very interesting...

Well someone I spoke to today, lives on a boat, and he told me about D-STAR and Icom radios and how they use repeaters for digital communications so the signal is clear. Which is great as long as the Internet is up and as long as the repeater is up. And you can text, and send 3 web cam images at a time.

The baud rate was 900 now improved to 4800 bps which is pathetic compared to my do it yourself in the field setup at 26000 bps with the acoustic couplers. But its slick and allows that captain to use the Internet out at sea. He was here in ATS.

All this is nothing though compared to that bridge which does high speed wi fi that you could stream hi res video with for 40 km. For 99 bucks. For 99 bucks, you could be big brother for your city, just make em all tune in.
Or Else!


Chocolate rations are up 50 percent today I know because I just had a king dong.

The radio solution is inefficient, and in all likelihood would not work without massive modification of multiple radios themselves. One also has to consider that these radios are designed with human speech in mind and do not have the fidelity to handle the analog carrier with a low enough noise ratio. One would end up with a communication of all error correction and no actual real data.

The OS has nothing to do the ability to "redirect ports" and have a modem "blind dial" (ignore dial tone). Blind dialing is achieved with the initialization string sent with the number to be dialed to the modem when attempting a connection. Setting up com ports can be done with any OS.

The easiest solution is to use the wifi you already have. It is very easy to set up a "ad hoc" network to go peer to peer between two or more computers with no router or access point involved.

You can also buy USB wifi adapters that will broadcast in the 1 and 2 watt range. Alfa makes a few of them.
In fact I have two if them. The AWUS036H is a 1 watt 802.11 b/g adapter, the AWUS036NH is a 2 watt 802.11b/g/n adapter. You can even get them in kits with a 9 db antenna included with the normal 5 db antenna that normally comes with them. They normally run under $40.00.

Using this solution would provide you with decent speeds, full encryption and the ability to set up with anybody, not just people with a bunch of radios wired into their computers.

I think the specs for the bridge is 30km, but that is based on the propagation delay optimization for maximum bandwidth. With a good enough antenna almost any line of sight distance would be achievable. I've seen experiments where 100km was achieved with only 100mw on a standard Linksys WRT54. They had to have one end of the experiment up on a mountain to get past the curve of the earth at that distance.

Keep in mind that the 30 kms is only going to be achieved with a directional antenna. Good if you are trying to keep a low profile though.

There are several rural Internet providers in my area that put bridges on old satellite dishes (18 or 24 inch), point them along the ground, and manage hi speed links from their towers to farms over 40km away.

The amount of sheer idiocy in this thread makes my head hurt. The only person who has a clue what he is talking about is dainoyfb.

I agree with Dreamwatcher. You will never get 26000bps through a radio that only has a 8khz audio bandpass.

Originally posted by Dreamwatcher
The OS has nothing to do the ability to "redirect ports" and have a modem "blind dial" (ignore dial tone). Blind dialing is achieved with the initialization string sent with the number to be dialed to the modem when attempting a connection. Setting up com ports can be done with any OS.

Lets suppose Apollo 14 would not be coming home unless you could get two cheap GMRS radios scabbed onto a lap top - one on the mic and one on the speaker, to communicate with a mirror setup at Houston.

Are you trying to tell me, that we would have to tell their wives and children that they would not be coming home for Christmas?

Cause it can't, be, done???

Of course it can be done. We just don't know how to do it. Its the same thing that is going on inside the acoustic modem. You just convert an analog signal to digital.

The reason the acoustic coupler has a rating of 26,000 is because anything over that probably has too many errors since its difficult to pick the data out of an analog signal. Like a voice signal.

But if you have good reception on your radio, you will get high baud rates with the coupler.

If you were a computer genius you could do it without the coupler. But for 74 bucks I am just going to buy another coupler.

Want a Christmas present to keep your family comms safe during the apocalypse?

ok. Take a photo of some trees. Cut a 100x100 pixel area and save that as a bmp stamp. Put one stamp on lap top a and one stamp on lap top b.

Every byte you send with lap top a add the pixel value as you go across line by line then start again at the top.

On lap top b, every byte you receive subtract the pixel value as you go across line by line one pixel at a time of the stamp copy. Unbreakable, only those two computers can decode the data. Not in a bajillion years could anyone else ever decode that data. And wi fi can be hacked by a teenage punk with a thumbnail drive in 5 seconds with a couple utilities had on the net, but its almost impossible to hack a simple telephone com chat program and impossible to intercept that message. 35 years of computing taught me a couple things at least.

Thats your wife and daughter there on that island hiding. So when they log onto your computer in the city, they don't use a password. Passwords can be cracked. That computer first sends that stamp. If that stamp matches, ok, you are logged in. If that stamp doesn't match, you are disconnected.

The same goes if you want to access your remote pc on a mountain that is running the server. Although who cares about it.

Your family is more important.

So that computer sends the stamp, the stamp matches, you are logged in, now every byte is encoded with that stamp. If, your daughter uses 10,000 exclamation marks in one post, they might get the stamp.
(10,000 repeated characters will mirror the stamp) so if you are extremely paranoid, scramble the stamp first with a small math algorithm so it no longer looks like trees and then even if they see the stamp, it will look like random noise. You know, x3 div 2 the stamp and save it using a utility you made.

Yes this requires some basic programming skills but you could do it in visual basic even.
Or Delphi which would be probably best for this.

You can download a free com program with source, a simple one, add that and presto! You are super safe.

If someone records the transmission and plays it back it will connect won't it?

So you have to be a little more paranoid than that. You have to have a number system as well. Like date and time.

So that the stamp is modified by date and time every time it is used. However then you have to synchronize your watches so you better have a different system.

Some simple system like every time you connect to each other the com program increments by one. Or you use your birthday, then their birthday, yours then theirs, you will maybe never beat the Pentagon or the code crackers at Princeton, but you will fool most bad guys who might be in the field. And thats really all you need.