[nathanww]

I believe that cell phones have been technically banned for a while, but almost never enforced(it's hard to do with all the spectators). Anyway...

Is using wifi illegal? Probably, since in previous years radio devices have not been allowed, and those don't even work on the same protocol as the IFI radio modems.

Will using wifi hurt anything? Probably not. Wifi as a standard was built to coexist peacefully with other wifi networks, cordless phones, ,bluetooth systems,microwave ovens, and anything else that uses that part of the 2.4 and 5 ghz bands(and be default wifi systems will find frequencies not already in use). That's not to say some performance degradation won't occur--but from our experiences testing at a school with high levels of wireless traffic, the biggest source of performance degradation is e-noise and shielding problems from your own robot, and everything else is pretty minor.

Will you get caught using wifi in the pits? It depends. If you're hooked up to a robot, you're basically announcing your ID through your SSID and the destination of packets, o you'll be easy to track down. If you're more covert about it(i.e.using a seperate wireless system), the only way to track you will be to home in on the signal, and even this can be defeated, for example, by hopping SSIDs or having a mobile AP.