AnythingButEthernet

After twenty years, Toorcamp is bringing back the most legendary hacker conference contest of all time!

ANYTHING BUT ETHERNET

Invented by Nate Bezanson at Notacon 2 in Cleveland in 2005, this game is the ultimate test of hacker ingenuity.

Anything But Ethernet

Background

Too many kids, and a fair share of old farts, think the world runs on cat-5. It just ain't so! From the first smoke-signals and drumbeats of prehistory, to modern multi-gigabit optical links, there's a lot more to communication than just Ethernet frames riding twisted pair. This contest aims to celebrate the long and varied history of communication.

How to Enter

1. Bring obscure, working hardware.
2. Set it up so datagrams take a long, silly path from one end to the other.
3. Document your setup in the contest wiki.
4. Demonstrate your setup to a judge.

(if you are forming a team, please email awgh@awgh.org to express interest, get updates, and for any questions)

Scoring

Your setup earns points for each functional hop. String together more crazy gear for a higher score and a better chance of winning! Ethernet may be used, it just doesn't help your score.

Media Type and Points

Media Type	Points
10/100/1000baseT, 802.11a/b/g/n	0
Obscure Ethernet: 100baseVG-AnyLan, 10base2, 802.11(no suffix) etc	1/2
Non-Ethernet wired, using commercial gear: Token ring, RS232, T1, AppleTalk, etc	2
Non-Ethernet wired, using gear of your own construction: Token ring, RS232, T1, AppleTalk, etc	3
Non-Ethernet wireless, using commercial gear: RangeLAN, Ricochet, Terabeam, HamRadio TNCs, etc	3
Wireless, using gear of your own construction: Lasermodems, HamRadio TNC you built, etc	4
Mechanical, using gear of your own construction.	5
Barbed Wire bonus: Use barbed wire anywhere in project for extra point.	1
Laser bonus: Carry data using modulated coherent light for extra point.	1

Each media type only counts once. For instance, you can't just bring a massive stack of token ring routers and score a bunch of points. But data in HDLC over T1 counts separately from data in 56k in a voice channel riding on a T1. Got it?

For homebrewers: It's okay to just pass data in one direction, so you don't have to build two of everything.

Some common sense rules:

1. Don't do anything that would damage the venue, hurt anyone, or impact the event's insurance rates.
2. No unwilling vertebrates. Robo-roaches are probably okay.
3. Human interaction is discouraged but permitted. Feeding paper from a printer to a scanner should be done robotically if possible, for example.

When in doubt, ask a judge!

Judging

For judging, your team will demonstrate your setup, being prepared to explain each step. Passing some intelligible information will be required to win, though there may be a prize for "honorable meltdown". Longer transmissions will win in the case of a tie, but otherwise message length is not used in scoring.

At the moment, I (awgh) am the only judge, but the plan is to recruit two more judges before the event.

The scoring table posted above is the ORIGINAL from twenty years ago except for the addition of the homemade wired category! Nate didn't imagine the existence of ShadyTel, and we have interpreted the general rule as "homemade is worth an extra point" in every category.

Prizes

A game like this requires a significant effort, and we will make the prize as cool as we can.

If you know a company who'd like to promote their product (such as versatile interface devices, soldering equipment, lasers, barbed wire, or other hardware tools) by sponsoring this contest, please let us know.

Attention

Watch this page for updates as we get closer to the event!