It's a nice callback to early phone infrastructure, which leveraged barbed-wire fences to bring service to those who lived in rural areas: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire_telephone_lines" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire_telephone_lines</a>
People might find it intersting to know that in the car industry Gigabit Ethernet over unshielded twisted pair is common [1] since it allows to shave off some cents on extra copper.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID=7256" rel="nofollow">http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID...</a>
It would be neat to have a mesh topology that uses the bandwidth and redundancy of multiple fence paths in order to prevent an outage from damage to any one particular fence. Solar-powered routers anyone?<p>Otherwise: <i>Dabnabbit Maude, the cows gone loose again because we lost the interwebs.</i> (I’m half-Texan so it’s not -ist.)
Too bad there are sanctions against North Korea, it seems like this would be a perfect fit for Kwangmyong[1].<p>[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)</a>
Can I run this on a farm?<p>Seriously, this reminds me about the stories I read on HN about how early telephone networks were established by farmers (ab)using their electric fencing for communication.
Are there modules I can experiment with?<p>Related link: <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mMJxcWqm_1oC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=Broadcom%27s+T4&source=bl&ots=73okOWEqdp&sig=1iIW9NPoRbzneLPEiq8X0NyVk44&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwig1qmA9YbYAhXH1CYKHZB7C1YQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=Broadcom's%20T4&f=false" rel="nofollow">https://books.google.com/books?id=mMJxcWqm_1oC&pg=PA34&lpg=P...</a>
> In 1998, Wide-Band Systems demonstrates Gigabit Ethernet running on four pairs of old, rusty barbed wire.<p>Yet in 2017 we still have only 1Gbit Ethernet in LANs :(<p>1Gbps = 125 MB/s !!<p>I am running 1Gbit since 2003 at home. And all f..king home network devices still support only 1Gbit Ethernet. It's not fast enough. When can some network company finally release 10Gbit or 100Gbit Ethernet (copper or fiber) for cheap home usage.