Internet Where It Did Not Exist
We’ve become so accustomed to accessing our data wherever we are that it matters even more once you’re in trial. Local copies of the data always seem to fall short of covering everything. So how do you get online when even cell phones can’t get a signal?
This happened to us on a large trial in Orange County. The courtroom we were using sat right next door to a maximum-security courtroom: cell phone dampening, all the bells and whistles. That kind of tech tends to bleed, making phones basically useless in our courtroom too.
Try To Do It The Right Way
We got a court order signed asking for an internet circuit, one for each side, to be installed in the courtroom. Should have been easy. It wasn’t. The judge wasn’t happy, phone calls were made, and the attempted install was stopped. After the dust settled, the judge made his expectations very clear: he wanted a little “black box,” and had no interest in hearing why a little black box wouldn’t work. You’ve got to love this job.
Internet, Or Your Job
Never said out loud, but strongly implied. What do you do? A request like this needs three things: money, time, and people. We had money and people. Time, not so much. So we started researching.
Standard cell reception was out. High-gain antennas to boost the signal? Also out: interference from the neighboring courtroom was too strong for anything beyond maybe one or two people, and we needed to support VPN traffic and general browsing for a full team.
After some beer and very serious research, we landed on a plan: very high-powered WiFi. High-powered WiFi gear is built to bridge networks miles apart, but only with line of sight. Getting internet into a courthouse without line of sight made things a fair bit harder, which is what our first three prototypes taught us.
With time, money, and people, we eventually landed on a working solution, helped along by the fact that we also had a war-room across the road. The setup:
- One sending unit (heavily modified consumer WiFi router)
- Two high-powered access points
- Two high-gain antennas
- One banker’s box, to keep the whole thing hidden in the breakout room
(We’re not going to say exactly what gear was used.)
Did It Work?
There was no measurable difference between internet speeds at the router and speeds in the courtroom. The system ran the entire multi-month trial without a hitch, while we watched the other side scramble for a signal of their own. Toward the end of the trial they figured out we had internet. They just could never work out how. The banker’s box turned out to be a great disguise.
And yes, we won the trial.