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Community Sets Up Their Own DSL
Thrazzle Throne writes "The folks in rural Ruby Ranch got tired of lame dial-up server. They fought the phone company for use of their un-used lines and installed
their own Dsl service. Very cool read."
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Here's the google cache: linky linky
This *is* cool because it's geeky, but what makes it even cooler is that the people behind the scenes walk you through what they did to make it happen.
In their working against Qwest they had to settle a couple of issues. The include the forms and paperwork they used to make it happen and these can be used as a template.
What pushes this over the cool mode into the must read are the accompanying technical documents. They have network diagrams, monitoring statuses and more. It's amazing.
The best part of their site is a list of other communities have done the same thing.
The site is dynamite and is full of information! One of the best articles I have seen on Slashdot in a long time.
Better pen up the cattle boys, I can see a slashdot brewin' up on the horizon.
I suddenly find myself wondering if this is the first barn slashdot has ever taken down...
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
And for one last dig on Qwest, here's an often-heard Coloradoan joke: What's the difference between Qwest and Enron? About six more months.
--Chag
I also remember reading about these folks who made their own neighborhood 100 Mbps fiber network. The screenshot of the FTP download speed is just plain silly. The creator of the page even mentions "and 25-40 Mbps is possible most of the time - that means it is their single hard disk limiting the speed!". :)
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Oh bother.
I've said this many times before, why are people in this kind of situation rolling out DSL? Why not just lay down new copper in the form of CAT5?
It's dirt cheap. I've done it. Just look at these pics of my neighborhood area network. Currently 10 neighbors share the cost of an internet connection. We also share stuff we've grabbed from kazza, we have a intranet that announces the happenings and events on our street. Very cool stuff. Basically each house has a switch, and we daisy chain houses so we don't run into the 600' Ethernet limit.
I can give a rat's ass about the AUP of my ISP because the question of packet ownership has to be asked. At what point do I own that packet? When I request a document from the web? When it hits my router? When it is on my copper?
People can do this themselves, it's not hard. In a rural area you just replace the AC transformer brick on the switch with a battery/solar panel combo every 600', or you could something that has a bit more distance to it like token ring. Yeah maybe this all sounds silly, but we're doing it out here in silicon valley and it's been working for the last year.
--toq
About the Coop
The Coop offers DSL service to all homes in the Ruby Ranch neighborhood in Summit County, Colorado.
The Coop was founded in 2001 because no one offered DSL or cable modem Internet access in our neighborhood, and because the voice telephone service to the neighborhood is of such poor quality that it is not possible to get modem connections faster than about 26K bits per second. The Coop is a Colorado nonprofit corporation and is federally tax-exempt under 501(c)(12).
The Coop's History
The Coop has launched service.
By far the biggest challenge faced by the Coop, a challenge that dwarfed any of the Coop's technical and financial challenges, was gaining access to subloops from Qwest under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. (The subloops are needed to connect the DSLAM to the subscriber homes. The buried telephone cable in our neighborhood has some three times as many subloops as are actually needed for voice service, and the subloops we wish to rent are among the hundreds of spare subloops which otherwise would generate no revenue for Qwest.) The course of negotiations was such that the Coop found it necessary to file an informal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission and subsequently found it necessary to pursue arbitration before the Colorado Public Service Commission ("CoPUC"). In the arbitration, the CoPUC found that "all of [the Coop's] proposed equipment is compatible with the Qwest network," and that "Qwest is technically able to accommodate [the Coop's] proposal." The CoPUC found that the Coop is entitled to pay "wholesale" rates for the subloops rather than much higher retail rates. Finally, the CoPUC found that because the Coop will be providing only data services (not voice services) and because the Coop will be offering its services to everyone in its service area, the Coop does not need to be a CoPUC-licensed telephone company. (This is very good news, since being a licensed telephone company would impose prohibitive accounting and record-keeping burdens.) After the CoPUC's arbitration decision there were further negotiations with Qwest, and a signed Interconnect Agreement between the Coop and Qwest has been approved by the CoPUC.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
*nick
Zeke: Durnit! All of a sudden, the DSL got reeeaal slow, then it stopped altogether!
Ezekiel: Hmmm, my 28.8 connection seems to be connecting fine... let's just surf on over to Slashdot... OH MY DEAR GOD
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Cause - You throw a dart at a map of the United States.
Effect - Much of the nation can't access broadband if they wanted to.
Solution - For the love of God, DON'T THROW THAT DART!
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation