News & Updates

WSU tuned in for world wireless record
No special equipment used to cross big lake

Thr, Dec 4, 2003

By CHARLES F. TRENTELMAN
Standard-Examiner staff
ctrentelman@standard.net

* "What hath God wrought" -- First official Morse Code telegraph message, 40 miles from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., Samuel Morse, May 24, 1844.

* "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." First telephone message, Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant, Thomas Watson, in the next room, March 10, 1876.

* "One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are?" First spoken radio transmission, Reginauld Fessenden to a colleague on Cobb Island, Washington, D.C., a mile away, Dec. 29, 1900.

OGDEN -- In the hit-or-miss world of "first words at historic events," a group of students at Weber State University may not have coined anything for the ages Monday night, but they're still proud of what they did.

Which was, they're pretty sure, to set a world distance record for making computers talk to each other without wires. That may not mean much to people still trying to figure out what the "CTRL" key on their computer does, but it's a big deal to them and has great potential.

What they did was get two computers to talk to each other across almost 72 miles without using the Internet, wires or anything. They used technology that is normally designed to reach a few hundred feet.

And, yes, there are practical uses.

So what did they say? Well, first, what they did.

Professor Kent Cuddeback, their telecommunications professor, said he gave the students the idea of setting a world record as a challenge.

Computers in homes and offices talk to each other over something called a Local Area Network. Recent technology lets them do this without wires, using a type of radio transmitter that normally reaches about 500 feet, at most. Cuddeback said he found, on the Internet, a company in Poland that was claiming a world record of 68 miles, using specially built antennas and other gimmicks.

Nobody records official records for this sort of thing, not even the Guinness Book of World Records, but seeing someone else bragging got his dander up.

"I said 'We can do this, too,' so I challenged the students," Cuddeback said.

Matt Mossbarger, a senior in the class, said the students didn't even do what the Poles did, which was to design special equipment. The students scrounged some old satellite TV antennas, those little dish things you see on roofs, and modified them and some other equipment to suit their needs. Frequencies had to be carefully tuned, but everything they used, he said, was off-the-shelf stuff anyone can buy.

Monday evening they set up one antenna and computer at Promontory Summit, near the Golden Spike Historical Site, high enough to have a clear view south across the Great Salt Lake.

The other computer and antenna was in Magna, 71.48 miles away. They used GPS locators to aim the antennas, which have to be pointing directly at each other for this to work.

Then they fired everything up, Mossbarger said, "and we were able to link the two computers over this wireless link, and we weren't using any sort of Internet connection and were able to transfer a 1.9 megabyte file."

Saturday they are going to try again, this time 90 miles, from Promontory to Point of the Mountain, south of Salt Lake City. And if that works, fame and glory?

Well, probably not. They didn't really invent anything new, just used existing technology well. They did show that anyone can set up wireless networks over long distances without buying a lot of expensive equipment, though, and that has many uses.

One is already planned. The students are going to set up a station at the WSU Davis campus and another on Antelope Island. The rangers at the Antelope Island State Park don't have any phone lines and have to live on cell phones. This will give them Internet access, e-mail and all the rest.

So, what memorable message did these pioneering students send on that world-record-breaking transmission? Was it up there with Armstrong's "One small step for man ..."?

No. They file-shared an MP3 music file. What do you expect from students?

It was "something called 'Blur,'" said Mossbarger, but he said what matters was what they did, not what they sent.

After all, "Bell didn't put any thought into his words," he said. "He just said 'Watson, come here, I want to see you.'"