Last-Mile Solution For A Rural Land Co-op? 312
macguys writes "My community consists of about 150 households spread out over several hundred acres in North Florida. We are far enough away from the nearest city that broadband cable and DSL services don't make it here. We're well organized, and used to working together on projects. We have a lot of home based business offices here and high speed access something that many of my neighbors are hungry for.
We've looked at projects like http://www.magnoliaroad.net and know that others have addressed the issue with 802.11b/g/etc.
There is no big problem getting a T-1 to the community. That part is easy. The hard part is distributing the bandwidth among those here who want to participate. Wireless works in places but in general this land is covered in hardwood and pines and the signal drops off quickly.
We have a long history (community is 25 years old) of working together to solve problems. Running copper or coax is not out of the question if we can find a reasonable way of distributing the bandwidth.
Any suggestions are welcome."
Have you tried (Score:4, Funny)
Satellite dish: $150
Converter box: $200
NIC: $15
Launching your own community based Internet communications satellite: $1,000,000,000
Re:Have you tried (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Have you tried (Score:2)
bandwidth throttling (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, iproute2 is able to selectively throttle connections based on username and other identifiying qualities (such as per IP address, etc.). I haven't looked at the package (no need as of yet), but I would imagine that this would be a good tool to use against kazaa servers, etc..
The best thing is, the luser eating all your bandwidth doesn't have to be told that you're cutting back on h
Yes, but... (Score:2)
Re:Have you tried (Score:5, Interesting)
-j
Long-reach ethernet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Long-reach ethernet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Long-reach ethernet (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, the maximum run for 100baseT ethernet is 100 metres with cat 5 between switches/machines/etc.
The Cisco system must introduce some sort of line amplifier to send data that far, so you'd have to have a pair of them, one on each end. The signals and cable setup itself would be identical to standard ethernet, just with a lot more power.
Re:Long-reach ethernet (Score:4, Informative)
At the customer end you will need either a 575 LRE or 585 LRE The 575 has a single fast ethernet port as well as an analog phone port, the 585 has 4 fast ethernet as well as the analog phone port. You should be able to find the 2950 24 LRE for around $2900 The 575's for about $95 and the 585s for around $150 For around $5200 you can get the 2950 24 LRE and 24 575 CPEs.
Cisco rates the units to provide between 1Mb and 16.2Mb up to a distance of 5000 feet (this is the distance of the copper not driving distance). While the unit is rated for 5000 feet I have personal set up a few of these with distances close to 7000 feet and still was able to pull 1Mb.
Your next step is to order a (well as many as you have customers) dry pair from you phone company. Some telcos will call these opx or alarm circuts. No matter what the case make sure that you specify that you want unconditioned (no dial-tone or battery power) with no side legs/taps (in other words a pair from point a to point b with no other connections along the way.) Depending on the telco these may cost you anywehere from a couple dollars a month to around half the price of a standard residential phone line.
The last part of the equation is some sort of high speed connection run to the location of the lre switch (T1 or higher). The great thing about the Cisco solution that other products mentioned here do not offer is QOS as well as per port rate limiting.
If you want to carrty this one step further you could become your own CLEC by adding a call manager server to this setup and a pri to bring the voice into the mix. Now not only can you provide broadband to your neighborhood you can provide dial tone as well. The pri can carry 24 simultanious calls and can have as many unique did numbers as you like.
With only 24 subscribers on the switch you are actually going to be very undersubscribed on the voice end of things. At the customer side you can either supply an ata 188 to connect to their existing telco wiring meaning that they can use all thier existing phones or you could siply provide a Cisco 7902/7905/7912/7940/7960 phone and have them be straight ip phones and then provide many additional services. The ATA 188 can provide 2 unique call paths so when one of your customers requires a second line all you do is either have them plug into the second port on the ata and configure it to go or you make a service call to them and wire it to a punch down block so that they can add the second line to mulitple phones. The possibilities are endless and while the setup costs might seem a bit high the recurring charges are minimal other than your ISP line and access charges.
Re:Long-reach ethernet (Score:3, Informative)
You can also use the line for a phone at the same time (just like DSL), and the incoming phone line connects to the LRE-capable switch (well, a splitter).
The main problem will be getting access rights to the actual copper phone lines in the ground (which would be owned by the local telco).
Re:Long-reach ethernet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Long-reach ethernet (Score:5, Informative)
Easy (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Easy (Score:5, Informative)
T1 is not the solution here.
For 150 houses, a few T1s are just fine. Figure 15:1 overcommitment and 500Kbps, and you get roughly 5Mb covering everything. Run 4 T1s together and you have all you need. If bandwidth becomes a problem (probably won't), then you can think about Frac-T3s. The reason to stay away from T3 setups is that a T3 is expensive, as is the equipment, and these people are not liekly to be running datacenters out of their farmhouses. Email and web describe the majority of their activity.
Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Wireless mesh (Score:5, Informative)
LocustWorld [locustworld.com] have a system which can be downloaded and booted on a CD [mirror.ac.uk] or via a harddisk. They also sell solid state mesh boxes ready to go. Check out what other community projects have managed to do with the kit [kingsbridgelink.co.uk].
directional 802.11 would work also (Score:2)
Re:directional 802.11 would work also (Score:2)
Second, where do I get an N-connector? Does Radio Shack sell them? The only place I checked was Radio Shack and of course no one there knew what I was talking about. They pointed me to their website, but just try searching for N connector on Radio Shack's site. You'll get every
Laser (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Laser (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Laser (Score:2)
Re:Laser (Score:2)
Re:Laser (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Laser (Score:4, Funny)
Actually microwave would make more sense, and just build some little towers taller than the trees.
On a slightly larger scale, but..... (Score:4, Informative)
If you dig things up. (Score:5, Insightful)
James
Re:If you dig things up. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you dig things up. (Score:2)
James
Re:If you dig things up. (Score:2, Funny)
Solar power (Score:3, Funny)
Oops I'm off to patent that.
Palmtops? (Score:2, Funny)
I first heard the term from people who were talking about unwiring places in the Caribbean.
Fiber (Score:5, Interesting)
I would highly suggest fiber as opposed to just about anything else--- it takes work to install (dig ditch, we put in conduit, then pulled fiber through it), and it requires a special terminiation kit, but the results are extremely rewarding.
~geogeek
Re:Fiber (Score:2)
If you run a hard line, it is best to use glass instead of copper. Otherwise, the effects of a lightning strike can be pretty dramatic: the lightning tends to seek out shallow runs of copper (although it could care less about glass). If you must run copper, use fancy isolators on both ends to minimize the danger to folks and equipment.
Who gets control over the T1? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who gets control over the T1? (Score:2, Informative)
Multiple Options (Score:5, Informative)
If fiber is out of the option, you could run coax, get a CMTS (can be had on ebay for $5k-$10k) and run a cable modem system over your coax. You could also then get a big sat dish (not the DSS things, the C-Band things) and provide basic cable as well for a reasonable cost.
Failing coax, DSLAMs can also be had cheap and run over just about any kind of wire as long as it's twisted together
Basically, you're spread out enough that using the same technologies the telcos and cable services use is feasable. You could also start running T carrier, but that may get a bit expensive in terms of hardware.
As for wireless solutions, look into directional stuff (obviously). A mesh system may be most useful as it would allow the network to keep working even if one residence isn't reachable for repeating. Various 2.4GHz solutions exist, not just 802.11, or you could also look in to free-space optical. The RONJA project (google for it) is kidna neat, but probably not feasable in this situation.
Re:Multiple Options (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Multiple Options (Score:2, Funny)
And while we're on the subject of Cheap and Easy options, why not Just Put a satellite into Geosynchronous orbit and just build a land relay station that just uses microwave frequencies? You just call the FCC and they set you up with a license. Then you just need subscribers and you're set.
With respect to the T1... (Score:4, Interesting)
T1s aren't significantly faster than good DSL service, and can be significantly slower than cable 'net access. For about 20 times the price.
Now, you may have no other option, but do shop around. You won't regret it.
[Magnolia Road post] Re:With respect to the T1... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, with T1 circuits, you are more important to the telco than a DSL, which is just a dry pair and billed much less. In rural areas this may be more important than you think... If you are not too far from a large city, the break-even point for doing a T1 is probably ~12 people willing to pay $50/month and who have Line of Sight to a central point. This doesn't include startup costs, just monthly recurring.
The Magnolia Road coop (from which I am posting this incidentally- I laugh at your puny /. effect) had outages last summer caused by lightning strikes[0] which took out the telco's repeaters.
A T1 outage will get a much faster repair time than average for DSL. With T1, you call up your provider and go through the food chain to get the telco dispatched. With frame relay (at least through Qwest) Enterprise Repair calls you to see if you are available for a dispatch (this is true even when Qwest is not the ISP per se, but just the FR circuit carrier). Frame relay pricing is also not distance-sensitive as T1 is (at least here in Qwest-land, YMMV). It turns out we get better customer service on a FR than T1, while loop costs on the latter are higher!
I mentioned this cam [lazyz.org] in another post just a few days ago. It looks at Thorodin Mountain, which is a central hub site for our network. This is what latency looks like going across that mountain right now (worst time of five separate monitoring points). This is via two hops on 5Ghz Trango radios [trangobroadband.com], ~ 14 miles round trip:
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 3.425/4.236/6.832/0.951 ms
One moral: stay away from 2.4Ghz as much as possible. Everyone and their brother has a 2.4ghz phone/mouse/x-10 cam that will cause interference. Those times above were in 100's of ms when the links were at 2.4Ghz. We still do end-user AP at 2.4, but channel crowding forced us to upgrade all of the point-to-point backhauls to 5.8Ghz
Mike
coyote at magnoliaroad dot net
[0] In one instance, lightning apparently entered a NOC via the T1, and fried a couple grand worth of equipment in one moment. We surmise it was the T1 because all of the radio gear was kicking. The catalyst switch was still semi-functional from the console, but was showing link on ports even after cables were removed :( In another instance, the same storm blew two different repeaters. Qwest managed to replace one of them and restored service for about ten minutes before the next one blew out (at which point I asked them to wait for the storm to pass). Enterprise repair is one of the few parts of Qwest which doesn't suck!
Re:[Magnolia Road post] Re:With respect to the T1. (Score:2)
Obviously cable and DSL aren't available to them ;) They were, however, examples of alternative technologies which are *much* cheaper, even over long distances.
This, indeed, is another example ;)
bandwidth usage (Re:With respect to the T1...) (Score:2, Informative)
This graph [magnoliaroad.net] shows a snapshot I just took of our aggregate bandwidth usage for the core network (there is another discrete T1 not represented there).
Re:With respect to the T1... (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you considered... (Score:2, Informative)
Towers (Score:2)
Use powerlines (Score:2, Insightful)
Something similar's been discussed before (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.rric.net/
Basically, when their local telco refused to provide DSL provision, they invoked a statue which forced them to colocate some DSLAM equipment of their own, and they set up their own DSL ISP. Should be just the sort of thing you're looking for. I'd get a fatter uplink than a T1.
Anyway, yeah, plenty of informative info there, take a look. </karma_whore>
Bandwidth (Score:4, Interesting)
How I would wire a community. (Score:5, Informative)
You could do copper, but you're limited to 300m for Cat5. Anything longer, and you'll have to do some sort of modem. I don't know if you can put ?DSL modems back to back..
You could do fiber, but that'll probably end up costing you some bucks, and you'll have to be sure that the lines are safe (like, no one will accidently dig through them).
You don't say exactly where in N. Florida you are, but knowing Florida you're probably in a relatively flat area with lots of pine trees. You said several hundred acres, so I put that in an area calculator and found 1000 acres = 1.56sq miles, so none of your points are really very far from each other.. I think you're definately a candidate for wireless, if the trees stay out of the way.
Check out fab-corp.com [fab-corp.com] for antennas.. No, not an advertisment. I just bought some stuff from them last week, and they were easy to deal with. They're also located in Florida, so your order will be there quick. My order got to California in about 3 days. If you were to put a sector antenna (like, the first one in the sector antennas section) in the center of the property, you should have good coverage to the whole property. I'd recommend for the best connection, get a good antenna for the receiving ends also, such as a 24db parabolic antenna.. Make sure when you mount them, you bolt them down tight, and be *VERY* sure you do good lightning supression.. I lived in Florida for years, and survived the hurricanes, and daily thunderstorms.
To give an idea of what kind of range you can expect, I bought a "24 dBi Mag Grid Antenna" (bottom of the parabolic antenna list), and attached it to a "Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2" card. From an upper story of an office building, I started sweeping around with this antenna just listening (to estimate range. honest.) With a 4.5db blade antenna, I could hear 6 AP's, but only had a workable signal to one. With the 24db antenna I could hear over 2 dozen AP's. None of them were named for what they were, except one that said "YMCA"..
I asked some of the people who know the area well, "Is there a YMCA in that direction"? I know there's one closer, but it was about 60 degrees from where I was pointing. Turns out the YMCA I heard was a few miles away. So, with my 24db antenna talking to something resembling a normal AP (I doubt they had a directional antenna pointed at my office), I had a workable signal.
Before you start buying cards, I strongly recommend you check out Seattle Wireless [seattlewireless.net]. They have a *GREAT* page comparing wireless cards.. I highly recommend the Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2.. It has two external antenna jacks (external antennas are required on this one). They also show an AP with the same card built in.. The Seano cards are suppose to put out 200mw, as opposed to most cards and AP's that are only around 30mw (check their chart), so you'll get much better range with them.
I hope this helps.
Re:How I would wire a community. (Score:2)
If your customers already have TV towers (like those ugly 50' masts), that would really help.. Put your wireless antenna up on those, and (hopefully) you'll see over the trees.. In Central Florida (where I used to live), we had our TV antenna on a 50' tower to get TV reception.. We could see television from Tampa, Orlando, and Gainesville, depending on which way the antenna was pointing. Sometimes, if atmospheric conditions were right, we'd get the odd signal from Texa
Re:How I would wire a community. (Score:2)
Now add a conduit for injecting helium into it periodically to maintain the altitude, and cabling for an omnidirectional wifi antenna...
Wonder if it'd work. Could possibly get it a few thousand feet up for some pretty decent line-of-sight coverage.
Re:How I would wire a community. (Score:3, Interesting)
If our building management doesn't get back to us with a good answer (lik
Ruby Ranch Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Last Mile (Score:3, Insightful)
Choose a central location for your CO. Contract with the local telephone company to run dark (unused) copper circuits between residences that want DSL and the CO. Most telcos will do this, presumably as a back-up for businesses.
That may or may not be the hard part. From there you'll need to purchase the network (routers, CSU, DSLAM) and customer premises (DSL modem) equipment, and turn up the network.
It is, however, possible.
Consider Waverider 900MHz (Score:5, Informative)
Waverider is the first name that comes to mind, I hear Alvarion has some sort of 900MHz product in the works also.
I'd suggest you go to http://www.isp-lists.com and sign up for the isp-wireless list - plenty of people there will have hands on experience with what you're trying to do - much better source than all of the arm chair quarterbacks that inhabit slashdot.
Re:Consider Waverider 900MHz (Score:2)
re: isp-lists - I hear they did raise the rates on isp-equipment, but I hadn't noticed that this had occured on ISP wireless - I'm in the middle of a move and not paying attetion.
The responder is dead right on the part-15.org mailing list - I'd heard about this from Marlon Schafer or Michael Anderson, just haven't had time to get involved.
You live in the country? This is the thing! (Score:3, Funny)
Cheap, but maybe not that fast...
There also seems to be a reference on slashdot [slashdot.org]!
Hummingbird just might work. Kickass range. (Score:5, Informative)
I've been working here for some time as their resident linux freak / tech support slave / biased security know-it-all / networking software guru / site surveyer. I don't have an easily definable job title (I just HAD to be a religious
We're actually working on getting an entire town in Louisiana, St. Joseph, up and running. Last I heard, we were doing it with a whopping TWO ACCESS POINTS and no range extenders. In a rural area. Two towers, two T1s, no other cabling outside of the towers themselves.
We've also got some interesting stuff in the works for Orange and Volusia counties, under the Wireless Law vendor. Basically, insanely-secure wifi for courtrooms. Biometrics, encryption that'd make the NSA hate us, our families, and our pets if we sold it on the open market, the works.
Despite St. Louis being swamp/forest area, we've been able to get a connection using 802.11b via an integrated laptop card from as much as 2 miles *outside of town.*
Depending on the local topography and what man-made structures might be available, we might or might not want to build a tower or two to provide coverage in your area. If you have a few tall buildings that get enough clearance above the trees, rooftops alone might suffice.
Our antennas, which utilize some dead-sexy proprietary technology that *still* makes me drool, can keep up a connection to the average laptop for up to three miles in open-air under ideal circumstances; the worst range I've seen was 1/2-mile and that was with an *entire office building* between me and the nearest antenna, using a low-power Linksys 802.11b CompactFlash card in my PDA (Sharp Zaurus 5500 ^_^), with the antenna being only a few stories off the ground.
We've yet to see anybody do that without using a system that looks like a cold-war-era radar dish, let alone push that kind of signal through an entire building and into the rear parking lot successfully. Even the radar-looking setups don't do that as well as we do, despite being several times the size.
We don't even need to over-amp the antennas.
We also implement some decent QoS that, instead of simply capping your bandwidth like a cable modem, just gives you a "fair share" of what's available.
We can run from anything as simple as a 56k modem up to a set of full data T1s *per antenna*, the main limitation being the 802.11b protocol's limited bandwidth. This will go farther once 802.11g is finalized. In addition, we can (of course) set up range extenders with our antennas to make the most of a single pipe.
If you're ever going to be in the Maitland area just north of Orlando, contact us and we'll see about doing a demonstration of our technology at the local testing site. We have other locations in the works in Florida, but this is the only one we currently use for demos.
For more information, visit http://www.hbwireless.com/ and read up. Contact info sits up there as well. I'm known in the company simply as "Ken" if anyone asks.
Alternate Topology with 802.11 (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been running the system between my office and my apartment (1/4 mile away) through trees for almost a year. I'm using off-the-shelf Linksys access points (1st gen, at that) and antennas I bought from a place in Canada. The access point in my apartment is programmed to be a client, and the "master node" just acts like a regular access point.
The system work well through trees, though I do tend to get a lot of noise during rain storms. I don't have rooftop access in my apartment, so I'm actually shooting the signal out of my apartment window.
If I had the remote on the roof with line of sight, I'm told the system will reach 2 miles.
The office access point has an 8db omnidirectinal antenna the focuses the energy into a flat disk. The remote has a panel-style antenna the focuses the energy into a 20degree cone. You don't have to be too picky with the aim, I can turn the panelmount 45 degrees either way.
Had it not worked, I was going mount the access point in a pelican case, bolt the panel antenna onto the outside, and drill a hole for the pigtail and the ethernet cable.
I also had plans to run power over the spare 2 pair of wires in the cat-5 jack. Rather than one of those hundred dollar POE kits, I was planning on boosting the voltage at house end, and have a 5V voltage regulator ($5 at radio shack) on the other.
Hell when I finally get laid off, that's my scheming Dotcom idea.
Slow? (Score:2)
Every time an article like this is posted to Slashdot, the poster mentions that they want to use a single T1 divided by 150-500 people.
Now, what on earth is the point of that? Why don't they all chip in on a modem for the local library or something like that? It'll cost less, and the speeds will be about the same, if you calculate in the time spent waiting in line.
Re:Slow? (Score:2)
look to fibre (Score:3, Interesting)
If not - look into incorporating your own telco and see if you can get the local authorities on side.
Physical installation will be expensive - but if _can_ look at a fiber link. Last I checked 6 conductor single mode fiber for overhead was only a wee bit more expensive than copper. Underground will probably be similarly expensize.
Last I checked there were ethernet to fiber drivers that ran 100 base-t (2/3 of a T1) for 50 miles and cost under $1000 USD. (allied telesyn for example). This issue here is that the capital cost is not out of line and the capacity is awesome.
With so much capacity you should be able to run local telephone dial up service and TV signals on the same fibre (but I haven't researched how). I just know there is a ton of bandwidth available.
Furthermore the infrastructure if it is put in properly will be viable for the forseeable future. I'd say over 100 years - but with technology who knows - maybe within 5 years something comes along. You have to take that chance. It is better to spend a little extra now and have something that is solid.
T1 will probably not be adequate for your users. But you can look at backbone links and if you do it right - other communities might join you and you can put the big ugly telcos out of their beauracratic misery.
Good luck.
Re:look to fibre (Score:2)
Since when is a T1 154 MB? Try 1.54.
Re:look to fibre - corrected (Score:2)
Typically a telco likes to get $500 - $1000 per month for a T1 (24 "circuits" = 24 DS0's). In europe it is an E1 (30 DS0's).
T3 is 30xT1 so it would cost about $15,000 per month minimum and 100base-T would be billed at about $30,000 per month minimum.
One can quickly see that the cost of physical infrastructure is pretty small when faced with billing rates like this.
Re:look to fibre - corrected (Score:2)
Try 28 instead of 30..
similar situation (Score:3, Interesting)
We're probably going to use a combination of cat5e in the ground (fiber was too expensive for us) and wireless (802.11g) with good antennas and maybe some mesh technology (if it's reliable and easy to maintain.) The bandhwidth shaping tools that I've read about would be nice but the expense is high and it may be one of those situations where it's best to wait for the problem before applying the solution. Good luck!
DIY DSL? (Score:3, Informative)
Alvarion 900 Mhz Wireless (Score:2)
Wire Up The Cows (Score:3, Funny)
I got a solution for you (Score:3, Informative)
BushLAN (Score:3, Interesting)
BushLAN is a low cost 'last mile' solution specifically targeted at Internet distribution for rural areas. It uses lower frequencies (VHF) than 802.11. As a consequence the signal propagates further (3-100km). If you have television reception it should work.
I'm not directly affifialted with BushLAN, but I do work in a simliar field within the same country, so I am not completely disinterested.
Use 802.16 (Score:3, Funny)
trees? (Score:2)
Microwave and LAN-style wireless (Score:2, Interesting)
I think they had about 8 sites, connected in a ring topology using some Marconi ATM switches [marconi.com] connected via a local ds3 or ethernet connection to the towers.
The toplogy was basically like this:
Customer House---802.11b---Ethernet/Tower--Microwave--Tower /Ethernet--Router/switch--Internet
Depending on the si
Don't forget robustness (Score:2)
If you're not sure the optimal way to design the network topography, call your local university's systems engineering department. I'm a Ph D candidate at Boston University [bu.edu]'s Center for Information and Systems Engineering [bu.edu], and one of the things we research is how to design topogra
Go for it all ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean - you could co-op everything - High Speed Internet, Cable TV and Phone for that matter.
While wireless can offer a low-cost solution, it has many potential problems across a geographic area.
The most effective means of distributing high speed access would definitely be to lay fiber. I mean if you decide to dig up the ground, don't screw around with copper this would severely limit you.
Fiber would allow you to really leverage the investment of hacking up that ground - Internet would be easy, a couple of T1's multilinked together and some smart allocations of a class C of public numbers and your off and running (a T3 would be total overkill IMHO).
But you can leverage this investment to allow delivery of Telco service as well.
You could simply order up an ISDN PRI or two and a block of about 300 DID numbers. The best part is that at this level of service - you can get an incredible amount of competition. All calls anywhere for under 2 cents/minute any time - and I mean ANYWHERE and WHENEVER - Free of course within the Co-Op
I recommend using this product from Sphere (www.spherecom.com) I just got certified on this product and am completely AMPed about it. It is a pure IP VOIP product that delivers the station end as regular analog phones. So customers need nothing special at their end.
If you model your distribution method after the Bells model of hubs to CO's etc. - you could really do something very cool here.
rural last mile (Score:2, Informative)
We are using wireless. Actually I am using a linksys (with a decent antenna) and it works well going out to half a mile or better with decent antennas (15 db mini-dish). One of the new link
Get the Telco to Do It For You -- or DIY (Score:2)
Actually, better still, you could get the telco to do it for you. If they'll centrally install T1, they'll also probably install DSL if there are enough customers interested. They'll put it anywhere if they have a sufficient subscriber base (30-50+ users). This has been done before in rural areas, or in new developmen
wireless may work anyway (Score:3, Informative)
The only mailing list that I know of dedicated to long-distance WiFi (802.11) links is wireless-longhaul [openict.net]. You can subscribe here [openict.net]. There's also a Wiki [openict.net] with plenty of links to projects that have successfully deployed long-distance wireless networks in all kinds of different places.
Don't go into proprietary wireless unless you absolutely have no other option. There's some interesting new technology that's already available e.g. from Alvarion, using OFDM you can make non-line of sight connections at microwave frequencies. Eventually there will be 802.16 standards for them but right now it's not ready yet. The proprietary solutions are many thousands of dollars for each box.
simon
Re:wireless may work anyway (Score:3, Funny)
It's Flordia! I think half the state is below sea level.
Easy - Don't take it to the last mile. (Score:3, Interesting)
Pick four or five community centers, or even just one, and put a few computers in there. Instant gathering place.
High-speed internet access in every home, you might as well be living in the suburbs. With goats.
-carl
Intentional Communities are a broad movement (Score:3, Informative)
Commies (Score:2, Flamebait)
No, Communes and Communities are very different (Score:3, Informative)
In short, a community is a village; an Intentional Community is a village founded and tended on the principle that everyone really, really likes the color blue; and a commune is where everyone who's part of it dedicates all of their possessions and income to the community's goals of promoting the color blue, kindof like
Re:A first for the /. editors (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A first for the /. editors (Score:5, Funny)
Now, if we lived in a physical universe where there were limit to how long you can run coax cable without loss of signal, or if we lived in a world where there were complex laws regarding crossing roads and boundaries with wires, then questions would be different. I am so glad I live in Slashdot where things are simple.
That type of world has different people designing different solutions for different problems.
Re:DIY (Score:2)
Oh, let's see....farm community. Hmmm, Wire costs a lot and tractor drivers in farms have a tendency to uproot cable.
Gosh, why not go wireless. Put a tower thingy on a hill, and people buy modem thingies that point to the towers...like they do in other farming communities.
Re:DIY (Score:2)
From the blurb:
Wireless works in places but in general this land is covered in hardwood and pines and the signal drops off quickly.
Re:FreeBSD w/DummyNet (Score:2)
distribution (Score:2)
Another idea is a singular server for file sharing with the outside work so that you dont waste bandwidth with 100+ gnutella nodes through your T1.
Re:Energy (Score:2)
Why don't you run coaxils along the power lines
That's probably illegal. Besides, I doubt the power company wouldn't be too happy with someone stringing up wires on their poles. Also, you run the risk of electrocuting yourself while putting the wires up.
neurostarRe:Energy (Score:2)
It is illegal. Only utilities can use poles. And beyond that, there's rules for utilities. Like no matter what pole you look at, the actual electrical lines are the highest tier of wires.
not necessarily true (Score:2)
Re:ummm, not enoug bandwith.... (Score:3, Informative)
your 56kb actually runs in a DS0 which is 64KB/sec with inline switching so it is 24 lines.
Regardless how the lines are shared - normal browsing is highly asymetrical and so is web serving. The two co-exist quite nicely.
Games can place a very significant demand for bandwidth.
Re:ummm, not enoug bandwith.... (Score:2)
They need to figure out a way to install underground fiber. Someone else posted that Anexiter was selling 6 conductor for about $1 bux per foot. Those were the same people I was talking to about 4 years ago.
Still - this is going to cost them about $7,000+ per mile when they factor in the cost of a cat to bury it. Probably it is money well spent but they will need the revenues from the cable and voice services to help pay for it. At a reasonable ROI
Re:Switch? (Score:2)
Negative much? (Score:2)
That's what the guy means by "we are used to doing things together"
Generally setting up access like this for a small community involves setting up a small ISP, as a real bus
What community is yours? (Score:2)
ic.org lists about 500 intentional communities, ranging from hippie communes to apartment buildings trying not to be boring to Quaker villages I know old people from to some things that probably are run by wackos (or would be if they could get organized).
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