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Ricochet May Go Away; Metricom Files Chapter 11
friday2k writes: "As seen on news.com Metricom finally files for chapter 11. This is too sad. Anyone know of good alternatives out there?" Nooooo! Don't do this to me! The story says, "the company intends to keep the wireless Internet service up and running for the time being," so perhaps all is not lost. Even though it's a little pricey at ~$70/month, and only works in a few cities, Metricom's Ricochet is absolutely the best wireless Internet service I've ever used. Their coverage maps have been accurate and they have always treated Linux users decently (unlike this sorry bunch). I hope a decent company buys Metricom, figures out a way to make money with the system, and bring it to the rest of the U.S., even the rest of the world. Meanwhile, all I can do is plaintively echo friday2k's question: Anyone know of good alternatives out there? (Even 19.2KBPS would be okay with me if the service is Linux-friendly and has good nationwide coverage.)
If they'd do that,cool. But they won't. And Verizon's CDPD coverage maps are sort of... errr.. innacurate, and I never got even close to the promised 19.2 K even in the (few) areas where the service actually worked. I have a Novatel Merlin card, and when I called Verizon about my service problems they told me it was the problem, that I should blow $400+ on one from Sierra, that the network was fine. Then I called Novatel and I'm sure you know what *they* said. :)
I finally gave up on both Novatel and Verizon.
I guess I'll try Sprint PCS next. Supposedly the Kyocera phones they offer will handle straight AT commands through the serial port, so they ought to work with Linux fairly easily.
- Robin
They don't do that anymore. They also don't allow point to point connections over their network for devices sold later than last december.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Because when the service goes down, you can still use them to create a decent wireless network in "node relay" mode.
... never seen an unhappy customer, including the 7 people I signed up for their service myself.
Tie a bunch of them together over a wide range, and you can use them to leapfrog all the way back to your own bandwidth.
For me, this will work just fine. I live a block away from my office, where I have good bandwidth, and I won't have much difficulty getting the local coffeeshops to let me set up a wireless modem or two to act as node relays back to the home base...
Yeah, though. It is a shame Ricochet is going belly-up. They provided a really, really good service. I can't work out how they managed to lose out - their service rocks, and I'm perfectly happy paying $79.95 a month for it
Better than I can say for the average ISP, I'd imagine...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You know, you could always use a modem like the rest of us. It's not like downloading pirated music and porn videos is a necessity.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ahhh... I thought he Ricochet incidents were also involved with Niven's setup. I should have read more carefully. Thanks for the clarification!
Bandwidth wants to be free! Really, it does. :)
I wonder how pricey those Zytrax devices are- they look to be a right gem for anything needing wireless lan connectivity.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Verizon's CDPD coverage maps are sort of... errr.. innacurate, and I never got even close to the promised 19.2 K even in the (few) areas where the service actually worked. I have a Novatel Merlin card
I had Ricochet service in DC, but my application was fairly mobile (in a vehicle), and the cell hand-off always seemed to fail. In downtown San Francisco, coverage was dense enough that this was less of a problem, but in suburban DC I would have to re-connect every minute or so while driving.
I went to Verizon CDPD with the Sierra Aircard 300. It's firmware looks like a NIC to the PC, so the connection is more solid...it reconnects automagically so you don't have to.
I found CDPD coverage to be much better than Ricochet, and did though CDPD was a little bit slower, I prefered CDPD...especially on the Amtrak going from DC to New York.
That said, I was hoping that the new high-speed Ricochet would come to DC. The DC suburbs are home to many Net-head early adopters (think MAE East, AOL, etc.)
I've been following Metricom since the first version of Ricochet was live here in DC, and always thought they were cool. R2, at 128 kbps even when traveling up to 70 mph, beats the pants off of anything out there. Yet I didn't invest. Having been burned by Iridium, I was frightened by their debt. Staying away, I probably saved a couple of grand.
Even so, it's painful to see it finally happening. I believe in Metricom, and think that someone else will buy them out of bankruptcy, a la Iridium. That'll be the company to invest in.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...humming Another One Bites the Dust...
I've never tried to use Verizon's wireless stuff, but from the looks of the link, they give you the hardware and the Windows or Mac drivers. That's a bit more than just "what's your nameserver?"
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
TRhe modems are cool type in the serial number of another modem instead of the phone number/id and you connect tot he other modem without using their service. At Michigan State there was a couple of guys that got the modems before metrocom demanded them back if you didnt use the service.
I want the hardware... It's cool. and too bad they are dying.. they could have done well if they would have expanded past california or the "select few".. the service never was available for 98% of the geek population.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ricochet was FAR from a "wireless networking" access technology. Ricochet was more like "wireless dialup that happens to be about as fast as ISDN, maybe a bit faster if you're lucky." Sure, they used 802.11 in their distribution network but it was 900mhz serial for the "last mile."
Pretty much the only way to cost-effectively enter a market with wireless *BROADBAND* internet access is by being a small company with knowledge of the economic climate and physical characteristics of a region. Trying to develop a business plan that encompasses offering wireless service on the rolling, treeless hills of Southern California and also the dense brush of New England is virtually impossible.
If you want information about the ISPs who are offering wireless broadband service using 802.11 and other technologies (personally, I think wireless ATM would make a lot more sense than wireless Ethernet, but that's a topic for another day), go to where the WISPs talk about it themselves... ISP Planet's isp-wireless mailing list (and associated archives) at www.isp-wireless.com.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
What part of plano? I got ADSL service here 1.54m/768k with no major problems. I'll agree the phone lines have MUCH to be desired, but dsl and isdn both work fine. I'm just northwest of Spring Creek and Custer.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I talked with one of the programmers of the modem some time back. (We both used to go to a periodic social event.)
According to him there's a single configuration bit in the modems (at least the ones available several years ago) that switches it between being a portable leaf node and a base station. By flipping a user could donate bandwidth from his high-speed connection to his neighborhood. (Of course he'd have to run it through ipmasq on his firewall...)
Don't know the details. Perhaps somebody from the company could verify and expand, or deny, this story.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I hope a decent company buys Metricom, figures out a way to make money with the system, and bring it to the rest of the U.S., even the rest of the world.
Define "a decent company" nowadays companies are just trying to stay afloat. What does using Linux have anything to do with an ISP anyhow? I have FreeBSD running over Earthlink, Level3, and two other ISP's and have never had a problem using any ISP. I've even set my brother up over AOL so he could tinker with Linux.
There are plenty of other compsnies to choose from regarding Internet services, and anyone who counts on an Internet related company nowadays is a fool considering dozens go kaboom on a daily basis.
Want Root?
Well... yes. I am replying to this on my Ricochet right now. My services is actually through WorldCOM so I don't know what is going to happen.
Not many people know this but the Ricochet can actually handle 256k. I have a patched Linux 2.4.5 kernel and run it over USB (serial can't handle > 128k) and I get 240 throughput often.
It would be a REAL shame if this goes away.
All this dotcom stuff is really going to set back technology. The stupid VC have invested in dump companies (Eazel) and inflated the economy and now smart/cool companies have to pay the price (Ricochet).
ug.
Quite sad given the enthusiasm of the slashdot crowd in the earlier referenced article.
Jeffrey Katz (curious) has his comments on the service here.
Earthlink will give you tech support if you are running Mac OS (I get my Ricochet from them). My Ricochet modem just connects via USB and appears to both Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X as a plain old USB modem, which you connect to with PPP. It took me a few minutes to use the Ricochet installer on Mac OS 9.1 (which doesn't actually install anything, just configures things) and then copy the settings to my Mac OS X box, but I could have set both up without the installer if necessary in a few minutes, because both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X include the modem script for Ricochet. I'm typing this on Mac OS X through Ricochet right now.
... I encourage anyone who is on the fence with Ricochet to dive in ... the water is fine. People see it and they don't believe it, wherever I go. One guy is like, "I pay $25/month for 50kbs dial-up at home, and you're telling me you pay $70 and you're in a coffee shop at 480kbs?" The modem was only $50, too.
I pay $70 per month for unlimited access, and I connect at 480kbs here in North Hollywood. I haven't tried it anywhere else yet, but I hear the LA network is the newest (only came up last January or February) so I was told to expect to be faster here than elsewhere for the time being. 480kbs is faster than my last DSL was. It is a great, great service. I also had a phone briefly that had "Wireless Web" and it was a piece of shit. Besides the fact that the phone couldn't find the network all the time, the content and UI was garbage. It's not worth paying for, which is why most people don't pay for it. Ricochet works great, though
After seeing how effectively the telcos managed to do in the CLECs, I'm thinking wireless may be the only hope of a competitive solution if you want an internet provider other than @home.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
An example is southern Los Altos, California, near the Foothill Expressway/CA 280 intersection. Not exactly an undeveloped area!
My Ricochet connection I have is not a convenience that I use when I just go travel -- it is MY PRIMARY BROADBAND CONNECTION.
Besides Ricochet, the only other option is satellite, which is just as expensive, but with horrible latency problems to boot, making them almost useless for anything interactive like telnet/ssh.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Metricom has been around since 1985, and has been offering Ricochet service since the early 1990s. Much build-out has already been done. But they can't get enough people to sign up to make money on it.
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Service revenues $ 3,231,000
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Cost of service revenues $42,341,000
There is a problem here. Another round of financing won't help.Since UUNet resells Ricochet service, it would be super sweet if they bought them out. I know UUNet's not the most popular ISP here at slashdot because of the spam issues, but they are pretty much the best business ISP.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
__
Who cares if they "support" linux? Just call them up and ask them the basics you need to connect (protocol, addresses, etc) and you should be on your way. Tell them you're running Windows if you must. What you do with the information you get is then up to you, but that's the way it's always been with non-windows/mac operating systems and ISPs. Do you call up Earthlink and ask them how to setup minicom?
--
--
#nohup cat
One of the Baby Bells will snatch it up at cut rate prices...
Mama don't take my Ricochet
Mama don't take my Ricochet
Mama don't take my Ricochet away
sulli
RTFJ.
There will be alot of cheap wireless gear dumped on the market. Lots of hack potential.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
Bankruptcy is common in the wireless world, and doesn't necessarilly mean the end of the company or their service. Iridium kept going for several months after bankruptcy, then came back a year later. Globalstar did even better, emerging from Chapter 11 without affecting service.
To have any connection to the ground? :-)
--
Two witches watch two watches.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Another duplicate post? I mean this was only posted last...oh, wait. It's not.
Well, damn. Now I've got nothing to whine about, and I might actually have to read the article and post something meaningful.
I wouldn't expect to see anyone replace this service anytime soon. The big boys don't want the competition, and I doubt any of them are smart enough to capitalize on the existing network, rather than try to build one from the ground up.
I was in Bethesda, MD last year and the service was top-notch although they did not claim coverage outside the DC area. When I stated this to a company rep they stated that they had wider coverage of Denver than advertised and that they didn't officially launch a coverage zone until it was thoroughly tested.
Perhaps this may be why it did not catch on so fast? Everyone I know who had one loved it.
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims