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?"

Comments

possible solution

[oo7tushar]

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).

WiFi

[SerialHistorian]

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.

24hr computer labs

[cybercrap]

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.