A team participating in the DefCon WiFi shootout broke the world WiFi distance record, extending a connection across over 125 miles.

The incredible thing is that they were able to achieve a full 11Mbps connection over this distance, and it was unamplified!

Doubly cool: they also said they fully expect that this same rig would work at distances of over 300 miles. Considering most folks have trouble just getting a solid connection in their living rooms, that's totally insane!

At each end of the connection was a surplus satellite dish augmented with some custom welded support scaffolding. Team iFibre Redwire were so confident that everything would work, they didn't bother with a closer test-run, but instead headed directly across the Nevada state line to set up their second antenna on a hill in Utah.

If I heard correctly, they used a 3 watt amplified signal while initially aligning the dishes, but then were able to cut the power to the standard 30 milliwatt gain that a normal wifi device would have. The actual cards they used were 300mw capable Z-com pcmcia adapters.  Some sites are saying they ran the connection at 300mw, but I thought I heard them say they had reduced the gain to 30 and were still able to get a strong 11Mbps connection. I may have misunderstood.

They haven't posted additional updates to their site yet, but more details should follow soon. Until then, check out a few pictures I took of one of the dishes, and there are some maps of the site and discussion over at wifi-toys.

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