Slashdot Mirror
Students Seek Widespread Internet Access
Russ Jones writes "As a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we have been struggling with finding ways to provide internet access to our growing off-campus students - currently, students have few to no options other than traditional, expensive, commercial providers. After feeling out large contracts through the University with major providers, it has become clear that they do not want to play ball with a public institution. Regardless, as a student I am still very interested in finding a solution to at least some of the woes. Students at Carolina are required to purchase laptops, many of which are wireless enabled. The University has put a lot of funding into wireless initiatives (but has only looked into using short-distance access points). Are there any long distance alternatives, that could possibly stretch a mile or more in radius? Any ideas on possible alternatives?"
If they are living off campus, what responsibility does the school have in providing those students with internet access?
Make them pay for their own ISP, if they want.
You don't subsidize their rent and utilities too, do you?
how about a cable modem? Or is that not pampered enough. Go to a different school. It's not like the laptop thing was a fucking sneak attack by ninja fucking administratos.
you go to a school that is not exactly a 2 year degree mill, but you cannot use google. I shall show you the way:
Click Here. Choose the first link and read. I go to a shitty state school. It took you longer to write that bullshit Ask Slashdot than it would have to use a little common sense. Are you used to having things just handed to you?
No sig is worth reading.
...are faced with the same problem.
In fact, I know a group of upcoming juniors who decided to not live off campus because of the internet connection - it's god aweful and hideously expensive.
I'm not saying that the school should provide internet access to everyone, but really, some of the cases are ridiculous. Houses that have cabling running underneath and above them should be wired - if the house isn't rented to a Tufts student, charge a small fee for the service that you could work out with the provider of our lines, and if it is, provide free access.
The 'net is Huge at schools now. Everyone's on it, even if computer literacy is still very below "techie". I think the schools really ought to do more to bring the net to their surrounding communities, especially in the case of off campus living.
I installed this stuff back in '95, at the time it was still 2Mbps, but the range was 8km.
I don't see why recent access points couldn't do it.
Shit... at best, you're paying around $7000/yr to go to school. Spending an extra $350/yr for dialup isn't going to break the bank. Here I am, taking out loans on $15k/yr, living with my GD parents, and you complain about a public school not subsidising your broadband?
If paying for it is really that bad, move in w/ a couple geeks and spread the cost of the connection between you.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
from places like Time Warner Cable and students can get DSL from Verizon. Again, both in your area. Not good options but at least you have options. Where I am I can't get broadband... period. It sounds like you are complaining because you can't get broadband for free from your school.
Another poster insightfully gave you a Google link that you should use for your wireless dream. I suggest that since your school is dictating that students have laptops and certain kinds of laptops (and I assume the school doesn't pay for the laptops) why not dictate that students also have internet access and pay for it themselves? Really, we are talking about $14.95 for dial-up or $50 per month for broadband compared to a $1400 laptop they already have to buy.
[signature]
my school has ethernet plugs in the dorms, and in most classrooms, and a lot of the 'public areas' (the student center, library etc), and both a local number and a toll free number (not well documented, but a google search finds it), with ppp support.
:)
I'm moving off campus for the next school year, and if I don't have funding for a cable modem or dsl, using the ppp (which i imagine only runs at 28.8 or so) will be fine. Any downloads I need to do can be done while on campus.
I'm going to do my best to find a home on campus for my 'desktop' with the debian mirror on it though, cause updating the mirror on a modem would be sad
I don't know how many students UNC has that would be using dialin lines, but they could start w/ a couple lines and grow as need be... could probably find some used modem racks fairly cheap, especially if 56k isn't important
Need a Catering Connection
If this is going to be a student initiative a wireless/ethernet combination is a g00d idea. You could have several computers close to campus communicating with a wireless network. These computers would act as the 'middlemen' between the the school and external machines. You'd hook up to these machines through cables and would patch that into another set of machines and so on. Problem is that it's expensive and hard to setup.
Another solution is dialup...but that limits you in speed. If you school is willing to jump through loop holes (regulations is all), you can setup your own DSL: info here. The cost to setup can initially be covered by the school and you can rent the modems to the students. A small fee to use the line can also be included in the rental charge.
Here at the University of Waterloo (www.uwaterloo.ca) the Residences have account quotas so that people don't download movies 24/7. Investigation into how you could do that would also be worthwhile, or just keeping track of how much a specific computer downloads (just to give people warnings).
internet like monkeys'
Here in Odense (Denmark) we have achieved getting allmost every dorm online by creating our own network http://odense.kollegienet.dk - sorry it's danish only. By using fiber at short distances (below 1km) and leased lines with 2mbit rad modem more than 20 dorms (ranging in sizes from 30 to 560 residents) in the city has been connected to the university which provides internet access. Everybody pays the equivalent of ~3$ a month. If you can find some people wiling to do some volunteer work you can do it yourself, it takes some planning but i believe it has been woth it.
Have you talked to NCREN or the university?
A dry copper loop is what? 30 bucks a month... and two dsl pipes are maybe 50-60 bucks on ebay... it would be easy to put up a 2.1 or a 1.5 mbit connection.
And don't say there are not enough ip addresses. UNC-G has a class B.... I'm willing to bet CH has a class b also.
http://www.nocat.net
Other than 3G, I wouldn't do "long distance" wireless, because of scalability issues.
What the hell are you smoking? It is a public-subsidized utility, wherein you or someone else forks over large sums of cash for knowledge. In many ways, it is analogous to a water company or electric company...
Ever wondered why they institute so many bullshit requirements to keep you there longer? $$$, my friend, that's what it's all about.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
There's a guy who lives on the big island of Hawaii and has managed to set up antennas to run 802.11b to selected areas of the island. I'm trying to find the article, but I can't... it was linked here on /. a number of weeks ago.
Also, the city of Yakima, WA is mostly wired with 802.11b, according to the sysadmin at my company, who set the system up.
Quite possibly, using a network of directional antennas, a few tall buildings, and inexpensive local access points, you can set up relatively good public 802.11b network that would serve the needs of most students.
The best way to do the local access points would be to set up an omnidirectional rebroadcast relay. From previous reading and no practical experience, it seems that this could simply be a cheap box running linux (even a low-end pentium will work...) with a cheap (can be home-made, I think) directional receiver and a omnidirectional antenna (just a regular 802.11b card will work) and some software to glue the two together.
Can someone else provide accurate technical details? I'll admit that networking is really my weak area.
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
Go to a real school.
Then get a part time job, you lazy fuck!
Our school provides laptops to students as part of their tuition. That way everyone gets one and the cost of the laptop can be included in the financial aid package. Perhaps your school could do something similar with the internet access? I'm sure on campus people pay a fee that goes towards internet access, if you paid the same fee and lived off campus perhaps they could get a group discount or something by paying for the access themselves in bulk and them allocating it to you? I don't know. Purely speculation.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
move off campus to get a nice roadrunner cable modem connection, as the school likes to muck with (read: terminate) connections on ports > 1024, which inhibits file sharing, mp3 streaming, and just about anything else that is useful or enjoyable.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Really, how hard is it? During all the time I lived off campus at UNC, we subscribed to either DSL or Cable (depending upon availability) and shared the connection. You could use wireless today, but we just ran cat-5 (wireless used to be expensive, you know). We built a POS single disk linux router and bought a cheap hub. Today, just buy a cheap home router or a cheap home router / WAP. When you distribute the cost of cable or DSL across 6 or more people it gets pretty cheap.
While extending 802.11b with antennas over a mile should not be difficult, you are going to run into difficulties with all the trees and hills in Chapel Hill. Get your roommates/neighbors together, bite the bullet and order DSL/cable (you can even get it in Carrboro). If you can round up a few collaborators you are looking at less than $10 per month apiece. It's only costing you about a beer a week (uptown anyhow) at that point, so get over it.
Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, has worked with city leaders to install 10Mbs Ethernet connections throughout the entire city. If you want to find a plan that will provide fast, inexpensive connectivity to the entire community (including students living off campus), I'd start poking around at www.bev.net, especially the BEV Digital Library, which tells you exactly how to plan and implement such a system.
You're marked as a troll and they are the one asking the question. Go figure.
I'd suggest your school offer a graduate-level course entitled 'Researching and Aquiring Commodity Resources In The Real World' How aquiring a dialup account is so much more challenging then GETTING into school in the first place is so far beyond me, I'm embarrased.
Why the hell would they need to offer broadband to everybody and their mother at home? Just have some computer labs open 24hrs. It is way cheaper, and they can make sure you aren't d/l porn or warez or mp3s. Sure that takes all the fun out of it, but if you want that shit, you gotta pay to play. My university has a few 24hr computer labs, and our making more and more open 24hrs. Also, who the hell would want to share bandwidth with the university? You would be the lowest priority when it comes to bandwidth, and I'm sure during 9-5pm it would be slower than all hell.
Even here in Blacksburg, VA, supposedly the most wired town in America, this remains a big problem. VA Tech pioneered wiredness with the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a university-backed program to wire the whole town. But somebody dropped the ball somewhere. The university itself is very wired, and indeed there are many off-campus apartment buildings with ethernet. They even advertise it with huge banners, "ethernet available." But once outside these areas, getting connected is a real pain, just like the rest of rural America. Good modem access is difficult. Speeds are low, and the POPs are slammed. There are supposedly a couple of DSL providers in town, but I've been trying a year and a half just to get someone to return my call, let alone show up for an installation. Adelphia provides cable broadband, but it's down more often than not. So basically, it sucks. It's OK for a student, but a lousy place to live for a telecommuter. Unfortunately, they've used the wiredness to promote Blacksburg as a business location. Well, it's all a big, fat lie.
This sounds great, but just try getting a local telco to sell you a dry pair. Unless you're an alarm company, they'll do their best to give you the runaround.