The BBB (p.225) states that 'scanning for hidden nodes in general' has a threshold of 15+. Realisticly, wouldn't this make your PAN the last thing you'd have to worry about giving away your presence?

Running a PAN without interfereing and hacking whomever is trying to detect you is like getting into a gun battle without dodging whomever is shooting at you.

When the shooting starts people will know you're there anyhow. Might as well turn on the wireless and get all the additional info that comes with the added teamwork. Sure, there are still risks but you're not exactly in a risk averse profession.

Good point, Lord Ben. Once the bullets start flying, survival rather than steal is probably top priority.

True, but remember that the limit on extended tests of intervals no more than dice pool is an optional rule.

A 50/50 Chance of being caught is quite a gamble...

Erm... you know that most Scanners are automated Sensors? Thats simply cheaper.

Area Jammers would only cause them to go on alert.

I'm sensing a great did of "I want it to work, let's find something to justify it" from the pro-wireless crowd here.

Frankly the decking/hacking rules in every edition of SR were never realistic. They never made sense. They were never a good model of reality.

There are only two points that matter:

1. Does the lack of realism bother you?

2. Are the rule fun?


Point one was always answered 'yes' by me, but there were outweighed by point #2 (at least with the VR 2.0 rules). It was fun, it fit the genre, things were good.

Wireless as present so far (I want my book) blows on point 1. No problem if point #2 comes through. Anyone have thoughts on that aspect of the question?

Wireless in SR4 is nice, just more usual than in SR3 - it was there, in the Matrix SB.

In fact, the system works better than SR3, especially when it comes to Drones.

OK, i am a late-comer to this thread, but if I can attempt to summarize the two major sides:

1. Haveing your PAN on at all, even to transfer data to/from your cybereyes, ect. is a bad idea because you could be detected by security. (while on a run) It does not matter if they can see WHAT you are transmitting, just that there is a wireless network there that should not be, and that it's time to send in the guys with the big guns and heavy armor.

2. The odds of being detected are small because the game mechanics say they are small. The extremely high threshold required to locate a hidden node is evidence of this.

Looks to me like there are two diffrent argumants here. Position 1 is argueing a technichal point (potentialy erroniously as I will show shortly), while position 2 is arguing a game mechanichal reason for why running with a hidden PAN is a low-risk activity. I am of the opinion that both are somewhat right.

The key element of position 1s concept is that radio signals are easaly detectible over short ranges. This is true in some cases but not all. Let us consider "frequency-hopping" transmitters. These transmit on a rapidly changeing frequency. The transmitter and reciver "hop" simultaniously so the connection is uninterupted, but someone watching a single frequency will see only an infrequent "blip" of radio energy, which could be caused by anything. (solar flare, lightning discharge, the guy nextdoor microwaveing some popcorn.) A refinement of this technique is "spread spectrum". In this technique the signal is "smeared out" over a wide bandwith with low signal energy. Total signal energy is the same, but there are no "blips" to look for. The apperiance of this to an observer who is not aware of the signal may only see a slight rise in the nose floor of the area. This noise floor frequently changes naturaly due to thousands of factors, may of which are not easy to quantify. For a short range system such as a PAN, the signal would rapidly fall below the noise floor, perhaps even within the 3m boundry. If you know the PRN (psuedo-random noise) code used to generate the Spread spectrum signal (SSS) it is possible to recover the signal, even from below the noise floor (this area is currently under research, but is considered possible) while being for all intents undetectible, or at least UNRECOGNISIBLE by by observers who do not know the code. The security scanner might see an increased level of electromagnetic noise, but it would not be able to tell if this was caused by a runners PAN 2m away, or the power plant across town spinning up another generator, or a solar flare that happed a few years back on proxima centauri.

Does running a PAN THEORETICLY pose a risk? Perhaps. But a reasonable in-game justification can be made for makeing it extremely difficult to detect hidden PANs.

P.S. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Spread-spectrum technology and GPS.

Fun-Fact: Did you know GPS satelites broadcast the comertial GPS signals (L1 channel) on 1.57542 Ghz? All the satelites use this same frequency band. Know how? They all use diffrent PRN sequences! Your handheld GPS unit has a chip called a "discriminator" which can "lock on" to some number of these at once. Current models typicly can handle 14 satelites, which is the theoretical maximum that can be in the scy over a given point at once, assumeing a standard 24 satelite distribution. Old recivers could handle only 8, 4 or even 1! Those units would often have to lock on to 1 satelite then the next, then the next to get a fix, and were therefore less accurate.

I like Lebo

I never said running a pan was not without risk. But to me in most instances the benefits of your PAN and network with your team outweighs the risk in most instances.

Lebo --

a few questions since things are more scientifically based

1 What about susceptability to jamming??

2 can you see a possibity for any methods of detection?

3 How large is the frequecy variance with rotating frequencies?

4 If there are 4 or 5 devices on, would you see a signature?

Now?

No, as this is automatic for any Commlink or the like... geee.

I think there is far too much worrying going on in this thread. If I had the choice between breaking into a place guarded by dogs with biomonitors connected to alarms or a place with an intelligent scanner searching for hidden PAN's I'd pick the one searching for PAN's.

Runs never were easy, this just gives the DM something extra to throw at the parties. Could there be signal searchers under ever floor tile waiting for a party to get within 3m of them? Sure, I guess. Just like every tile could be pressure sensitive connected to land mines too I guess.