Is it possible to find the distance between two routers?

Question

I was thinking about making a fun project that would tell me where I am throughout my house. My idea was to put two routers in different spots of the house at the same height and then send ping requests or something and check the latency, from that it should be able to triangulate where I am in the house.

I know this would only really work if I was on the same level as the routers, but I'm wondering if this is a reliable way to actually do it. Has anyone else tried to do something like this before, or is there a better or cheaper way to accomplish finding a position of a computer?

Answer 1

I don't think ping time would be a reliable indicator of distance. If the routers are wireless there could be other factors that change the latency between them. Maybe during certain times of day there is more electromagnetic interference in the area which would affect the latency.

As for determining distance through the internet, this also would be impossible to determine through latency as you are passing through many routers which are not under your control. Some could have a substantial load on them which would cause more latency and increase the latency (or decrease) skewing the proportions.

I don't think there really is a way to find the position of a router in 3d space.

Answer 2

You would probably need access to lower level information from the radio in the WiFi system.

The XO-OLPC laptop had a distance-measuring application which would tell you the distance between two XO laptops, but I never was able to try it, so it's certainly possible.

You would also need to (accurately) measure the distance between your base stations.

Answer 3

The XO-OLPC laptops measure distance between themselves using sound instead of radio waves.

Assume your 2 routers were 1,000 feet apart and you were standing between them. It only takes 0.0000005 seconds for the radio signal to go 500 feet. I don't think your computer's clock will be accurate enough to measure that.

Answer 4

You could always use a flux capacitor.