Broad band internet in my hood?

[MendoDave]

Out at my house I only have dial up for internet services. I take the laptop in to town every few days to suck down updates and watch those youtube videos and such. But 2 weeks ago the Comcast guy drove into my yard asking if this was 27,050 Hwy 1.  I said no, I think that's the guy out by the road. (He had just moved in) He's gettin TV? I asked. No just internet he says. Internet! He gets internet?

Now the gears are turning. At last! Internet has come to my part of the woods. So I skip the 1 800 call to India, and go directly to the Comcast office and speak with the lady about getting an appointment, to have TV & Internet hooked up. Next Monday she says. This is just great. I think. I'm going to cancel Dish, drop AT&T and go VOIP while saving a little money. So I make the arrangements with Dish and when Monday comes around, the technician says all that cable coming from the road is no good. Trees fell on it too many times and its old, they don't even use that stuff anymore. To put in new line they would charge me $15 a foot or about $2,200. So you know what I said.

So Looks like I'm sticking with dish for now, which is fine, but I wanted Internet. Maybe this guy in the front will let me put in a router and share the bill with me.

[victor441]

you might even be able to share your neighbors connection wirelessly by building a wifi wok...made one myself from a Weber BBQ lid and it works well.  There are lots of sites on the subject but this is a good place to start   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WokFi
and much more info is at http://www.usbwifi.orconhosting.net.nz/ 

[MendoDave]

Well I have an extra parabolic dish laying around Maybe I can get a signal If I mount it on the roof. It would be awesome if I could get a signal and route it to a wireless router. What would be a good setup for that?

[NAKID]

I was under the impression the company was responsible for the cable coming too the house, you were responsible for the cable in the house. I would call them back and speak to someone else...

[somegirl]

Bummer....

We also had a disappointment a few days ago.  One Comcast guy told us internet was now available in our area, then we were told again by two other people that it's not, eventually maybe but no time soon.  Still stuck with satellite for now.

[MendoDave]

Tell me about your satellite experience. I know that because of the high latency that VOIP is impossible but otherwise how is it?

[eltristo]

I was under the impression the company was responsible for the cable coming too the house, you were responsible for the cable in the house. I would call them back and speak to someone else...

I don't know exactly how it works, but there is something like that.  Our complex just got new cable after about 2 years of arguing - a local attorney made it happen in the end because it was their responsibility.  Somehow.  The details are beyond me.

[MendoDave]

The guy put me on some kind of list. In case they get money to build out the network, I'm on this list now. But who knows when that could happen.

[somegirl]

Tell me about your satellite experience. I know that because of the high latency that VOIP is impossible but otherwise how is it?

Well, you get it if you can't get DSL or cable but need better than dial-up, which I need as I sometimes work from home.  We also have no cell phone service anywhere nearby.

We have HughesNet (the WildBlue installer thought we had too many trees).

Our plan costs $65/month.

We have a bandwidth cap of 425 MB data download per 24 hours (there is a 3-hour grace period in the middle of the night).  This is called the FAP (Fair Access Policy).  If you exceed that then you are punished with ~1 kbps for the next 24 hours.  You learn quickly not to exceed it.  We have a little utility that monitors our usage.  You can also use download schedulers so you can have downloads happen during the grace period.

Basically the cap means that we don't watch any videos or play games.  Pictures are ok but we try to avoid picture-heavy sites (especially from people who forget to reduce the resolution before they post).  VOIP would suck up too much bandwidth.  Web-surfing all day long without videos or gaming is pretty much fine.  I set Outlook to only download headers automatically so I can choose which emails to download (some colleagues seem to think it's no big deal to routinely send out 20-30 MB attachments).

I can do some webexes for work, an hour a day is fine but I wouldn't do it for much longer.  The performance is not great because of the latency but it is tolerable.  The security protocols in VPN do not play well with the satellite technology and it is basically unusable.  Dial-up is better than satellite for VPN.  Uploads are also very slow.

Anytime I need to do serious uploading or downloading, webexes where performance is critical, or use the VPN, I need to ride/drive to somewhere I can use my aircard or Peet's free wireless (30-minutes one-way is the closest).

The performance is better during the day than in the evenings.  Bad weather makes it very flaky.  Multiple people using it definitely slows it down.

Tonight's performance:


Daytime performance a few days ago:


When we thought we had a shot at getting cable, we were more than ready to pay the $400 early termination fee to quit the satellite.  However, I will happily keep it so as not to have to depend on dial-up.

[MendoDave]

Thanks for all that. That's the kind of info you don't get from the companies themselves. I only have to drive/ride about 5 miles into town to suck up WIFI from somewhere. But its still a pain.

[mookieo2]

Can you run the cable yourself? A 500' spool of RG11  should only cost a few hundred dollars then maybe they will terminate it for you.

[victor441]

Well I have an extra parabolic dish laying around Maybe I can get a signal If I mount it on the roof. It would be awesome if I could get a signal and route it to a wireless router. What would be a good setup for that?

don't know about hooking a router up, have only used my wokfi w/ a laptop and a internet radio (seperately)....but IIRC the first computer can share it's connection if you have two NIC cards

[hbliam]

Daytime performance a few days ago:

Ahh!  I'd pull my fingernails out at that speed. You must very very patient. 

A few minutes ago:

[il d00d]

Kind of a long shot, but if there is power available at the street, you could install the modem there, do LoS wireless to your house.  You would also have to keep the modem protected from the elements - that might be another technical challenge altogether.  As for your dish, I don't know much about the radio aspects of this steup (that is to say, actual useful science), but it looks like not all parabolas are designed to amplify the wireless B, G, and N frequencies.  A yagi-style antenna (there are a lot of outdoor ones out there) might be a better bet.

What kind of cable do they want to run to your house?

[MendoDave]

No idea what kind of cable they want to run. I don't know if they would let me run it myself that's a good question. Hooking up a modem on the pole seems doubtful. Asking the neighbor to run one of my wireless routers seems more likely.