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Wireless Internet Co-Ops?
einstein asks: "How many other geeks out there are purchasing high speed commercial net connections to the remote areas they live, and then selling access to their neighbors to help cover costs? I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house all of which could access a wireless lan connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection. I'm planning on bugging the neighbors to see if there interested soon, and I'd like to have some idea if this has worked for other people. So, who's doing this in a Co-Op fashion, and how is it working?" This probably won't be possible with most residential DSL providers, however would they let this fly on their commercial lines?"
I'm doing it now with my ISP's commercial connection and there seems to be no complaints on their part...
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.
And you might want to make sure the 1.5 ADSL has a good upload speed, because if it's something like 90k, that's going to fill up really quickly. (One person uploading could bring the speed down for everyone quickly.) If you get DSL, I'd probably look into SDSL.
I recently did this with a DSL connection to my condo. I have mostly ghetto neighbors, we can only get IDSL here (144K up/down), and I only need it for e-mail and casual newsreading.
It's $120 a month, a bit pricey, so I talked to a few neighbors, and told them as long as they won't leech or kazaa or download massive amounts of porn, they can jump in with me.
I have it as a commercial account, asked if there is a limit to the number of users (no), and let about 10 of my neighbors on.
Built a simple gateway that keeps track of ONLY the number of bytes take by each user (in order to see if anyone is abusing it). 3 months, no problem.
I dunno what exactly I'd do if someone DID start leaching, since I have no real contract, but then again, I have the switch in my condo, so all I need to do is pull the plug.
You'd be surprised how far a low-ping quality IDSL can go for as many people as are on it. Its definitely far and away better than ISDN or dial-up, even with 6 or 7 people browsing the web at once.
Oh, and when I need to download something big, I remote access a client who has a few T1's worth of bandwidth, and download it there, then dribble download it to my PC at home.
I haven't looked up other providers other than RR-Austin, but I would guess that most allow the resale of their services. A quick look on Roadrunner's site in Austin found something related in their business class of circuits. Though the writer isn't technically a developer or MDU it is sort of the same thing that he/she is wanting to accomplish. The drawback is the price; the business class circuits are always going to be much steeper in price (though this may be balanced out if enough people were interested). There are probably other more specific TOS's out there for other providers.
Reselling high capacity commercial circuits is extremely common. I don't see the difference between what the author suggests and the regular ole' mom&pop local isp and their modem banks.
I'd be concerned about liability. What if one of your neighboars does something sleazy and/or illegal like scanning for vulnerable servers and r00ting them or sharing tons of music or movies on a file sharing network and the RIAA sends a cease and desist letter? You might get your service terminated because one of these bozos does something stupid.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
...show a man your broadband connection, he will surf for an hour. Share with him your broadband connection, and you'll be his tech support for life!
Internet service has cool scruples
This article speaks for itself.
80N
I used to work for a backbone company, and I have never seen a contract for commercial connections that do not allow you to resell the bandwidth, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Just keep in mind that if one of your 'users' does something like send out spam or does illegal activites, you may be held responsible since it's your/company name on the contract with the ISP (hence get contracts drawn up for your users who will connect, in which case you'll need to do some type of monitoring in case the cops show up investigating a possible crime).
In other words, cover your ass.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
However if you start up a not-for-profit company, which is jointly owned by the people who want to use the service the ISP probably can't do a damn thing about it.
The main problem you can face is leaching. If possible set up VPN software so that they have to log in with different passwords. If you monitor their usage, you should be able to ensure that nobody leaches or shares the bandwidth with their friends.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"A few of my friends in Tasmania are working on this sort of thing. It's meant to be a public access wireless network that allows users to be on the same network as everyone (theoretically) else in Tasmania. It doesn't have an internet access point, yet, and from what I've heard, when an internet gateway is established, at some point in the future, there will be a small fee for access. The URL is as follows.
http://www.tas.air.net.au/
Check out Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative Association at http://www.rric.net/
/. a few months ago about ruby ranch.
there was also a story on
As the power flows in, the screen grows warm, another day starts, I'm at work again...
I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house
all of which could access a wireless lan
connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection.
If you can get ADSL there it isn't remote.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I own a smallish ISP in Florida. We have been looking at this for some time. The problem is the cost of getting the neighbors equipment. Wireless equipment starts at around $100 and goes up from there. With the Phone companies and the cable companies trying to knock each other out with signup free offers this is a hard sell. Comcast is offering free sign/equipment and $20 per month until the end of the year. $40 after the end of the year. Also as stated most cable and DSL providers prohibit sharing of any kind. Some even go as far as to say it constitute "theft of servervice". Also setting up the antennas and running the coax cable inside and hooking everything up is a a very labor intensive problem. Also the range of the low end equipment along with ever present "line of sight" problem would mean selling to a fairly small radius (1/2 mile is what I think would be safe). This would mean finding enough people within this radius to make it worth while. We tested a pair of Linksys WAP11's with homemade antennas in point to point mode and got a very solid connection at 1.1 miles (across the river where we had clear line of sight) We tried starting one of these in the neighborhood where my head tech lives. We distrbuted flyers inviting everyone (about 30 people) to come over to his house for a meeting to answer questions and see the equipment needed. No one came. I am about to try here where I live and use a door to door sales technique. Since I own an ISP (www.cyberstreet.com). I am aware of the need to log everything. We would assign everyone a static IP so we could quickly track down any spammers/ DOS attacks. This would even be easer than doing this with dynamic dialup. But make no bones about it, this is a lot of work. We are activly looking for people in South West Florida who want to do this in their neighborhood. We would supply the High Speed connection and the local rep would make contact with his/her neighbors. We would take care of logging and most other server issues. I will make a future post if this goes anywhere.
I've been trying to set this sort of thing up in my neighborhood for about a year now, but it seems tough to get it started. The plan is to purchase a T1 line and split the bandwidth with the community up here using a wireless POP. The problems are basically:
1. Cost of the T1 is about $1200/mo including the local loop, free setup and router.
2. Cost of initial setup is about $10K for all the wireless antenna and equipment capable of penetrating the trees and such where we live
We live in a rural community near Lake Tahoe that will never get DSL. Distribution via wireless is difficult because of all the trees (we live in a forest). This forces us to use high-gain antenna at both the POP and the client. With our startup costs, the costs of the T1 and the client costs of about $500, it is hard to convince enough of the locals to sign up. Most are second homeowners that only use their house on weekends and holidays and don't feel like coughing up $500 and $70/mo. We figure we need about 20 people to break even.
One nice aspect is that the longer we wait, the better technology gets. The new Motorola Canopy system (check old Slashdot) seems interesting. The price of bandwidth also keeps falling. I expect that I'll probably end up splitting the T1 with just a couple of people using hand-strung fibre. It will probably be easier to find three or four people close by willing to spend $200-300/mo anyway. Besides, I have a real job and I don't feel like playing ISP with all my spare time!
Dan
http://www.doconnect.com
http://www.flarg.com
and I have a 1500/128 DSL connection that costs $52.00 per month. Four of us share this connection (and the cost of the DSL). Fortunately, when the condo was remodelled six years ago they used cat 3 wire for the phone connections. All I did was connect a 10 base T mini hub up to two unused cat 3 pairs going to each condo. The hub lives in the common area and is powered by an unused cat 3 pair. I plugged the hub into my Linksys router/switch, which provides firewall and DHCP. An added bonus for them is that they get to access my MP3 server which has 5000 plus songs on it. Each of us has broadband and it costs each $13.00 per month. All in all it seems to work out just fine..and we're even thinking about upping the connection to 7100/768 if we can get the fifth person interested. Alas, that would cost each of the five $40.00/month though.
I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house all of which could access a wireless lan connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection.
Wouldn't it be funny if one of your neighbors agrees to split the ADSL connection with you and then sets up his own wireless network and convinces the other 18 neighbors to split his half with him.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for an hour. Hit him with a fish and he'll go away and leave you alone!
Well Rob? You gonna remove "funny" now?
Ruby Ranch bears no resemblance. They're basically a co-op ISP with their own T1 connection. Their big issue was not their upstream provider -- a bandwidth wholesaler that assumes most of its customers are reselling -- but forcing the local phone company to lease them the necessary local loops.
Check out Seattle Wireless and NoCat. They are quite advanced in similar projects.
Good luck, and make sure it's legal before you do it.br. Mihai
I am getting ready to do this in Silver Springs, Nevada. Right now I have a Omni-Directional antenna on my roof and one connection about three miles away. We get about 5mbits/sec on the connection to my server. We are using Linksys WMP11 cards, a cantenna's at the client site. So far its working perfect.
We have about 70 people interested in joining. I'm going to charge $35 per connection. The T1 is going to cost me $1313 a month with a $1200 setup. I have a 32 mile loop (included in price). I have all the server equipment to get started. I figure it will be about $150-200 for the customer to get hooked up. The linksys WMP11 is about $65-80. The Dish is about $45-60. The cable is about $20-40. We can setup cantenna's for most people. Since this is the desert, no trees. All I want is about 100 customers. That is about all I can handle.
So far everything is working out great. I have a few more tests to do with more people on the line and if everything works, I'm ready to start.
The main problem I'm trying to figure out right now is how to have user logins. I can go VPN or PPPoE. I am leaning to PPPoE right now. All I need is a login with password to verify people and not allow free rides. I think this is going to be the hardest part.
I am going to write all the plans on how to get things going when I get things going so that other people in other places can do the same.
The above is not worth reading.
Then it dawned on me... I've been thinking for a bit that I want to install a wireless LAN in my neighborhood (even using 802.11a, so I get 54+ Mbps, as opposed to the usual 11), and be a sort of ISP for the neighborhood. Places like D-Link offer "Turbo" modes that can do 72 Mbps; wouldn't you pay $75/month or something for a 72 Mbps "broadband" connection? Even if you use the $3,000/month figure for an "ISP" Cogent line, I'd only need to find 40 customers at $75/month, and I'm breaking even. And I bet that the actual bandwidth usage would be VERY small; even Slashdot doesn't pull 72 Mbps sustained.
The nearest Cogent-served city is almost 100 miles away, and a lot of my neighbors are the "No thanks, I like my AOL" type, but if Cogent ever comes to town, this is something I'd very seriously consider.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
For casual users, this would be a good way to scaroo the local telco. Your neighbors with cell phones could even cancel their telco service...magnifying the savings. Watch out-the local telecos might try bearing down on you, cause they are a bunch of jerks.
Of course, the big problem is that one of the bozos in the neighborhood might try running P2P on the pipe--ruining the whole thing for everyone else; so you would have to monitor the system and be prepared to bear down on your neighbors who hog the bandwidth.
Sorry, but this actually *does* work. My condo unit splits a 1.2Mb SDSL between 20 units. That gets our cost down to $20/month/unit. The HOA takes care of billing. We had some upfront costs (installation, purchase of a switch for the basement), and it does take some time of a couple of volunteers (myself and one other) to help the less Internet-savvy folks get hooked up, but all in all, it's a great deal and everyone is very happy.
We do have to police a little about P2P systems, etc, but to date have really had no problem - education when you hook up a new user is the key. Our bandwidth usage is nowhere near capacity, and a number of people are running low-usage websites. Remember, for email and casual web-browsing, 20 users will mean 4-5 at peak, with much of their traffic interleaved. Trust me, it works.
I am in the same situation but I am one of the customers (wish to be anyway). There is a small wireless ISP a few miles away from where I am. The only problem and the reason I am still using a crummy modem is because of the bloody trees around my house.
To get over all the trees, it was approximated that I will need to purchase some sort of tower that is about 70ft+. Only problem is a tower of that height costs a ton ($1000+). Atleast I could not find one at an affordable amount. So right now I am waiting until March when I get my bonus and I am going to buy the tower.
But I must ask, is there some sort of antennae that would be powerful enough that trees would not matter? Or does anyone know where I can get an affordable tower?
Please help a poor broadbandless family (with children I might add).
Of course, there are loads of wireless community groups out there, with varying methods of deployment/philosophies/etc. You might look here and start browsing the different groups to see how they run things.
NoVAWireless might be a place to look at -- they seem to be involved with organization of clusters of small, neighborhood-based WISPs.
So it's alright to hog the telco's bandwith and cry about it when they try to limit it. But when someone else hogs your bandwith it's bad. How is that possible?
I should have used preview.... Check out Sugarloaf.net they are providing wireless broadband to a location not served by other means.... Also, you might want to check out Motorola Canopy for the wireless hardware.
--- I would prefer a prehensile tail....
I'm sure that would be a nice goal, but I'm sure the price is prohibitive at that level. For 20-30 houses (even asuming that the all sign up, and all get online at one time) you're looking at a worse case scenario of 30 people sharing 45mb. Even if all of them are downloading at the same time large files from sites that can sustain maximum speed each person would still have a 180kB/s download. To me, that's clearly overkill. Figure at most you're going to have 15 houses sign up, then out of that more than likely only 5-10 using at a time. Now, most residential use is sporatic (web browsing) so more than likely one 1 or 2 downloading any files of any substatnial size. So, even at 1.5mb (about T1 speed on download) the people should be able to easily achieve a 60k download most of the time. Even if 5 people are downloading large files at once you'll still be able to recieve at about 20-30k, which I'm sure is just fine for the cost.
matguy(.com)
I've looked into different solutions from non-line-of-sight systems to homebrew LOS solutions with pringles cans. The next step is to tour a few places and test these networks out in the real world. We're small and don't have a huge amount of cash to spend, and will initially support up to 50 small business offices, maybe 250 users at the outset.
Anybody out there have a wireless setup (yeah, I've done a google search and have a few sites to visit on my list) they're particularly proud of that I should add to the list? East Texas and all of Louisiana are easily accessible.
Sure. The key was we had a wise developer who wired every unit with 8 pair of cat 5 cables (plus 12 pair of cat 3). At our first HOA meeting, someone brought up the idea of shared internet and we found that half a dozen people had had the same idea and some had even done research. We just assigned a few volunteers with the following tasks:
1. Helping people wire their units for ethernet. Each unit was expected to pay for materials, but the labour was all donated.
2. Buying a bunch of 10baseT cards on ebay (this was four years ago) to keep costs down. This obviously wouldn't be an issue today.
3. Buying a used switch. Also less of an issue today.
4. Figuring out the Internet service - we had to generally check out business services rather than residential because we needed more IP addresses and less overall restrictions.
5. Using a donated PC to set up a Linux box as the community mail and webserver. This sits in a locked electrical closet in common space.
All in all, for a little shared investment of time and money, we've had spectacular service at less than most people pay for dialup. Only one out of 22 units decided not to go with this option and put in his own DSL (I still don't know why) and we are considering changing this "option" on HOA billing to just be included - a utility like hot water. We've also added new features on since then such as wireless access on one floor and the roof.
One other thing, feedback from both those selling their units and those renting them out has been that high speed internet is a significant selling point, and that the return on our (small) investment has been wonderful. This is a good argument for those who are on the fence, or wouldn't use the service themselves.
I happened to read an article about Allegany Co., MD, setting up it's own wireless broadband system - a rural county which has virtually NO chance of getting any broadband from a big telecom company in this lifetime. And this is the case with most of Appalachia as well. I just tried to remember where that article was and looked it up - it was in the Baltimore Sun and so if you try www.sunspot.net and search on Allegany and wireless it should pop up for the next week or so.
I also remember reading over a year ago an article by Cringley about getting a wireless DSL connection by finding someone down a line of sight from him who he could pay to get it, and then setting up an access point and an antenna - I think his set up cost him about $1000 plus paying for the other guy's connection.
Anyway, as long as you buy a commercial connection with a contract that allows you to resell, and set yourself up properly legally for your area, it should be no biggie technically to set up. Financially and technically, you have to cover yourself if your customer decides to oh...say do something illegal. Or set up a webcam and broadcast 24/7 and other fun stuff like that.
Used to live in Reno... used to go camping out at Lahontan, that would be cool driving through there knowing that all the little houses and trailers with antennas are getting a better connection than my cable modem...
Bleh!
If you're hung-up on the whole idea that the mailman is acting on behalf of a govt. agency and not a truly "private business" -- how about this scenario?
I receive a phone call from a guy who asks me to assist him with robbing a bank. I agree, as long as I get 60% of the money.
Afterwards, we're both caught. Can we name the local telco as an accessory to the crime? After all, it was their service that made it possible for us to communicate about the crime.
I think not.
Same with an ISP. I really feel that legally, there's no good reason they should be responsible for their users. Any legal cases ruled in this manner were wrong and subject to question.
Sure, people will come to the ISP first if someone hacks a system using their service. The police may well come to the telco requesting a trace, or a list of numbers a customer called too.
In the case of the telco, it happens that govt. already passed specific legislation forcing them to give police/FBI access to call traces/monitoring. Otherwise, the telco could simply say "Sorry. We just don't keep track of that type of information." and there'd be nothing they could really do about it.
Being a govt. regulated monopoly, the telco doesn't get that option.
Some of the Internet's most basic functions assume a lack of monitoring, in fact. Usenet newsgroups are probably the best example. If it was designed so the identity/location of original posters were always logged someplace - you wouldn't see much of the traffic it gets each day.
If your going to try and be a wISP, join in the isp-planet.com forums. isp-wireless@isp-wireless.com WAP11's work for some people, not for others. They are a VERY bad pice of hardware, random lock up, droped connections, search the BAWUG.com lists' for more information. Dont add antenna's to hardware that it is not FCC certifide for. That only makes more noise(thats bad) in the 2.4 ISM and makes it harder for a real wISP to fuction. Also the FCC gets upset and makes rules that prevent us from offering better service. ala 802.11a is very well stamped for indoor use only. If your going to be a service provider you have to have some form of QoS. WAP11's and cantenna's might be nice and cheap, work well today, but what about tomorrow? the day after?? You install crap, you get crap back. I would not use a cantenna for a paying customer. I am working the business model out for doing a community isp right now. They live out where they have no chance of getting dsl, 25 miles or so from town. I would rather pass them up then give them something thats little better then dialup. Remember 11b is much like a wired lan with a hub. 1 client talk's at a time, but the speed is much slower. 11b with cisco gear gets 6.5mbps. The cheaper hardware is lower, some doesnt do better then 2mbps. If you realy want to do this, get a consultant. Don't ruin it for the rest of us, keep it legal. CrackersnSoup
He made no mention of amplifiers, so he is running WELL within the FCC requirements, esp. if using a cantenna.
You can run 802.11 up to 1 watt into an omni legally. (Over 100 mW you need to have automatic power control though - To keep the minimum power required for minimum 11 MBps operation.) You can run even more than 1 watt ERP with a directional - I don't remember the exact rules, it's in a HOWTO/FAQ somewhere, but for every 3 dB of gain in your antenna, you only have to reduce input power to the antenna by 1-2 dB (I forget how much, but it's less than 3).
In this case, he's using Linksys WMP11s - FCC certified, and in no way are they being run in excess of the FCC regs for the band. The WMP11, like almost any Intersil Prism[1;2;2.5] card, runs only 25-30 mW - Even having to reduce input power by 3 dB per 3 dB of antenna gain, he is still within limits for a 15 dBi antenna (quite a bit of gain, good for many kilometers LOS). Given the regs, he's good to 20 or 25 dBi of gain legally. Only the larger dishes can hit this range - Cantennas definately cannot.
Let's not forget that with good antennas on both ends, he can have 20-40 dB of total path gain if he wishes with an omni at one end. (15 dBi omni, 20-25 dBi directional is realistic. 10 dBi omni and 15 dBi directional is much easier/cheaper and will still give you incredible range.)
Plus, it looks like he IS setting up a "real" wISP - Including a 32-mile T1 loop. If you can't compete effectively with an (expensive) setup like his, maybe you should go find another line of work or rework how you're doing things.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Couple of points, two are confirmations of what others posted:
-4 dB is a lot. It's over twice your power, although given the specs you stated you should be seeing 5-6 dB of loss (6 dB is losing 75% of your power) - The receiver saturation someone mentioned could be why.
The question is: Does the system work at 11 Mbps? If so, don't bother. If not, you have two options:
Both involve getting rid of the LMR-400. You mentioned HOAs - oh the joys of antenna restrictions. To those who suggested PoE, he likely can't do that due to various housing regulations. (He's lucky to be even able to use a helical - Well, they're small.)
Maybe a hybrid solution: PoE to the entrance point of the coax into the building, and then coax outside to the antenna.
The last solution: Get better coax. Unfortunately, this costs $$$. LMR-400 is amazing given its similarity to RG-8 (Same dimensions, compatible connectors), but it still sucks at 2.4 GHz. 6.65 dB/100 ft, more if you're using the Ultraflex variety (7.8 or so dB).
You have two options, I'm not sure which will be cheaper: Get larger sized LMR, or Just Say No to braided-shield cable. Get some good semirigid, even better, get air-dielectric semirigid - It's a bitch to work with, but it is VERY high-quality and very low-loss. One of the biggest names in semirigid is Andrew Corporation (http://www.andrew.com/) - they make HELIAX, which is VERY well known to hams and broadcasters. Their 1/2-inch EFX-series foam dielectric cables have a loss of only 3.25 dB/100 ft at 2 GHz. Their 7/8" (warning, it's going to be VERY tough to work with and probably quite expensive) has a loss of only 1.86 db/100ft at that frequency.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?