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Students Seek Widespread Internet Access

Posted by michael on from the sure-it's-for-homework dept.

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?"

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. what my school does by toast0 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  2. You can do it together by langbach · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  3. NCREN or UNC-CH? by LWolenczak · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.