[The Bald Man]

RCC & Cyberdeck are both wireless enabled.  Can I go to the meet, leave my deck in the van, and still hack/Jump-in if I need to?  Can I leave it in my apartment?

I understand that it isn't a great idea to leave your expensive electronics unattended.  Noise between owner and deck/RCC would add to Noise between deck/RCC and device. 

[Namikaze]

Short answer: no.  Long answer: you need to establish DNI with your deck or RCC in order to utilize its functions.  DNI cannot be established wirelessly.

[Marcus]

Hack yes. Jump in No. As Namikaze pointed out you need DNI for Jumping in. But DNI is trap imo! I have long considered just hacking everything in just AR mod. The concept to do it gonna be a little weird but it can work. If you can raise your meat world init, you can totally just hack from AR, and under those circumstances it might be possible to do this. You would be subject to EW issues, but price of doing business i expect.

[Novocrane]

I've been under the impression that datajacks of 2075 are able to be used wirelessly.

[Poindexter]

DNI cannot be established wirelessly.

really?!

I've been thinking of it wrong all this time?
you mean ive gotta have a wire from my head to the rcc if i wanna jump in?

CRAZY!
Why have i been thinking of this wrong for SO LONG?

[Xenon]

DNI cannot be established wirelessly.

Do you have a reference for this?

[Namikaze]

DNI cannot be established wirelessly.

Do you have a reference for this?

How do you sign up? You get DNI by wearing trodes, or having an implanted datajack, commlink, or cyberdeck

All of these methods involve physical connection between yourself and the device.

[Xenon]

All of these methods involve physical connection between yourself and the device.

Ahh... OK, now i see what you mean. Sort of.

You need a physical connection between yourself and the device that provide you with a direct neural interface.

...but once you have DNI you can use that as a bridge to link your brain with other devices (such as an external cyberdeck, commlink or RCC) by either connecting a wire... or by wireless.



Still unclear if we can leave the external cyberdeck, commlink or RCC in the van and still use it to hack a device or remote control a drone we own.... I always assumed you had to bring it with you, but in a world where everything else is wireless...... Theoretically you should be able to use your DNI to wireless link to your external external cyberdeck, commlink or RCC to form your persona and then go from there.

If this is possible then you would have to be mindful of local noise at your body (where your direct neural interface is located), at the van or your apartment (where your external cyberdeck, commlink or RCC is located) and at the physical device you are trying to hack or remote control (where the physical maglock or one of your drones are located) and that you have to count noise due to distance between all three points.

Does a wireless DNI link even have a max range in SR5...??

[Namikaze]

Does a wireless DNI link even have a max range in SR5...??

Wouldn't a wireless DNI have to exist before it can have a max range?  If you leave the deck in the van, you can't use it to hack.  Period.  You have to have your DNI to the deck in order to use it.

[Marcus]

Trodes became an alternative to Data jacks back in 4th. They aren't really wireless. They just don't need a hole in your head to work.
I'll go dig and see if you can DNI wirelessly somehow. But I don't think so.

[Novocrane]

I assumed this had been put to rest about the time you could have DNI to your gun without running a cable between your datajack and the firearm in question. How long has it been since the cable became something backwards, or at best 'old school'?

[Marcus]

It all comes down to hacking in 5th. Lets be honest 4th essentially did away with Deckers. Super Cellphones replaced computers, and all the functions we needed deckers for could be taken care of by a sufficiently advanced software package toted around on your super cell phone. But 5th has pushed deckers with a vengeance, wireless active bonus. All the good tech gear gets solid return from Wireless active bonus, meaning everyone who's not pure magic, is skating around vulnerable to VR Attack. Deckers have been given the ability to be directly useful as a result. We don't see skinlink or DNI cables tech b/c they don't want that avenue of attack closed. You want the good bonuses you gotta have the tech and the role to keep your sh*t from getting bricked.

[JackVII]

A character may use a Free Action to activate, deactivate, or switch the mode on any device that he is linked to by a direct neural interface through either a wired or wireless link.

While I think a lot of things make a lot more sense if DNI is limited to things that you are plugged into directly (for instance, many of the action economy  benefits of a smartlink and the noise reduction benefit of a datajack), it appears that you can use a DNI interface with a wireless connection. Since there aren't much in the way of rules about connecting devices through other devices, it also seems like the only way to be able to control contact lenses with your mind. Honestly, it seems like they started writing about it from a classic PAN perspective and then just changed it half way through. The whole thing would make sense if you could connect your devices to your comlink and then DNI to your comlink with a wire.

[Malevolence]

We don't see skinlink or DNI cables tech b/c they don't want that avenue of attack closed.  You want the good bonuses you gotta have the tech and the role to keep your sh*t from getting bricked.

Cyberdecks and data-
jacks come with a meter of built-in retractable microfila-
ment data cable, or you can always buy a cable for about
five nuyen per meter (some devices, especially those in-
stalled in buildings, are connected by cables to mitigate
noise)

DNI cables very much exist. Skinlink doesn't yet, but I expect to see it show up at some point.

As regards other points brought up in this thread:
Many of those good bonuses are *Wireless* bonuses, not DNI bonuses. The presumption is that DNI enters into it at some point (because pulling your commlink out of your pocket  to interact with it in order to eject a clip seems like a more involved task then just ejecting it normally), but whether you are directly connected via cable, or connected by wireless, the feature is categorized as a wireless function. So, yeah, you could connect to it by wire, but you'd still (for some reason) have to have the wireless turned on in order to get the wireless benefit (such as the action economy stuff that was obviously intended to only require a DNI).

Important to remember - DNI =/= Direct Connection. DC requires a wire (data taps being a potential exception, but the wording is unclear, which is an entirely different conversation), DNI doesn't.

A GM could house rule some "wireless" functionality to still work without  requiring matrix connectivity - just some means to connect to your DNI. This would include things like the tripod's ability to fold up, deploy, or detach as a free action (since this is really just sending a mental command to the device), but not things such as the Smartgun system's dice pool bonus (which requires matrix access to make use of external resources). The rules conflate the two in order to, like you mention, give hackers something to do, even though many don't make sense.

Wireless is handier than running cables to everything (especially since  the concept of a switch seems to have vanished from the world thus requiring you to have a datajack or trode set for each device you'd want to connect to wirelessly), which is probably why they wrote the rules in such a way that they assume that your DNI is wireless enabled, but if you opt to connect to things by wire, they end up looking very odd.

[Namikaze]

A character may use a Free Action to activate, deactivate, or switch the mode on any device that he is linked to by a direct neural interface through either a wired or wireless link.

While I think a lot of things make a lot more sense if DNI is limited to things that you are plugged into directly (for instance, many of the action economy  benefits of a smartlink and the noise reduction benefit of a datajack), it appears that you can use a DNI interface with a wireless connection. Since there aren't much in the way of rules about connecting devices through other devices, it also seems like the only way to be able to control contact lenses with your mind. Honestly, it seems like they started writing about it from a classic PAN perspective and then just changed it half way through. The whole thing would make sense if you could connect your devices to your comlink and then DNI to your comlink with a wire.

This is the only thing I can find that implies a wireless DNI connection.  Doesn't matter in the long run though, since using the deck wirelessly to hack is not an option.  I still can't find any way to provide DNI wirelessly, as the only methods specified were the ones that I quoted before (trodes, datajack, implanted device).