[olug] reality of unlicensed wireless

[Neal Rauhauser]

  I've seen some real boyscout posts about how wireless ought to be 
managed; these suggest the high road, but the real world seldom works 
that way. Management of the ISM band in the Omaha metro area is 
accomplished by a combination of microwave network design, jamming, 
cracking, character assassination, misuse of amateur operator spectrum 
privileges, and occasionally prying open the other guy's cabinets to 
improve settings on his stuff.

 Radio in any band is a like a public park, radio in unlicensed bands is 
like a public park on the wrong side of the tracks - lots of big dogs to 
be walked, and no one has the time to deal properly with the after effects.

 Not running homebrew gear is fine advice also. Antenna construction 
isn't such a big deal if you keep the power within reason but the radio 
modifications are a nightmare. I've seen detailed output from one of 
those 30mw to 100mw Linksys mods - the radio still puts the original 
30mw into 2402MHz - 2483MHz and it spatters 70mw of junk all over 
2300MHz - 2550 MHz. I know just one guy in the area who is qualified to 
do microwave radio mods and the HP spectrum analyzer on his bench cost 
$15k when he bought it used ... its not a game for the butter knife and 
heatgun modder crowd with a sure fire recipe they found on Slashdot.