[linuxboy]

I'm not sure how the crowd's devices would have affected it (I'm not saying they didn't), but I don't think they could have caused an IP conflict. The 10.0.0.0/8 subnet is fairly uncommon for your average user, and they would need to somehow be on the network (the chance of their phone randomly being connected to your SSID with its encryption key are next to none). The only way that there could have been an IP conflict is malicious intent (and I'll talk about the issues with this momentarily). I don't know a lot (nothing really) about RF, but, I suppose that a lot of phones trying to scan might cause interference, but I would think it would be on the 2.4GHz spectrum (which I think the field doesn't even use here in the states, iirc, the 2.4GHz antennas are disabled, but must be inserted anyway). In terms of localized cancellation, I believe the field AP is rated for 16 networks, and is only broadcasting 7, so I don't think that should be a problem.

About malicious intent, the field uses WPA, as does the practice field, WEP is a broken encryption scheme, and is not used by FIRST. The actual field also probably does not have WPS (it isn't a home router after all). Someone talked about just programming a bridge as another team, it would work, but I feel like the problem would be a little less consistent (IP conflicts are strange beasts). That said, MITM is not out of the range of skills of FIRST students, after all, we all know how to use google, but setting up a MITM attack that would survive lots of network disconnects and reconnects would be fairly complicated (ettercap might be able to do it maybe, but I doubt it would work without significant professional training).

I tend to agree that "It should work, therefore it does" however I am aware that the field doesn't always work, and I really hope that you find the source of your issue, I for one will be watching this to see what the result is.

Good Luck,
Oliver