Slashdot Mirror
Last-Mile Solution For A Rural Land Co-op?
macguys writes "My community consists of about 150 households spread out over several hundred acres in North Florida. We are far enough away from the nearest city that broadband cable and DSL services don't make it here. We're well organized, and used to working together on projects. We have a lot of home based business offices here and high speed access something that many of my neighbors are hungry for.
We've looked at projects like http://www.magnoliaroad.net and know that others have addressed the issue with 802.11b/g/etc.
There is no big problem getting a T-1 to the community. That part is easy. The hard part is distributing the bandwidth among those here who want to participate. Wireless works in places but in general this land is covered in hardwood and pines and the signal drops off quickly.
We have a long history (community is 25 years old) of working together to solve problems. Running copper or coax is not out of the question if we can find a reasonable way of distributing the bandwidth.
Any suggestions are welcome."
Satellite? Start up fees are kind of high, but once you get going, it's not bad:
Satellite dish: $150
Converter box: $200
NIC: $15
Launching your own community based Internet communications satellite: $1,000,000,000
Cisco has a system for using ethernet over regular phone wire up to 5k feet with 5-15mbps performace
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Run ethernet to all the houses. Maybe you want to run fiber in between and stick a transceiver at each end, for future expansion. Run them all into a Cisco and use packet-shaping to put bandwidth limitations on each house. Run them all into a pair of T1s and whee, fast internet access. (Probably won't be as fast as cable though since you probably can't pay for lots of bandwidth... for example, my local cable for example is faster than a T1 at times.)
LocustWorld have a system which can be downloaded and booted on a CD or via a harddisk. They also sell solid state mesh boxes ready to go. Check out what other community projects have managed to do with the kit.
Got line-of-sight?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
This site might be of interest.
Cliff usually handles all the Ask Slashdots, so I can understand this.
If you end up digging things up to lay coax, lay fiber as well you don't have to connect it to anything, that way you will have lots of room for expation without having to go back the the ground again. Otherwise you be in the situation cable companies are in of wishing they had layed fiber but coax was cheaper in the short term. Of course if you have cheap labour, you might not care about having to redo things in the future.
James
I think what is needed are solar powered tree mounted wireless bridges.
Oops I'm off to patent that.
In my community, we chose to use ethernet over fiber. You avoid any electrical concerns, and the fiber can be buried. We purchased 6 strand fiber from Anixter, and have been very happy.
I would highly suggest fiber as opposed to just about anything else--- it takes work to install (dig ditch, we put in conduit, then pulled fiber through it), and it requires a special terminiation kit, but the results are extremely rewarding.
~geogeek
I know you say your used to "working together" well then who be in charge of maintaining the T1 connection and equipment? Seems to me any incompetent management of that equipment might invite shotgun wielding neighbors.
If you're willing to run lines and fiber is possible, you can just run fiber from the most central place to everywhere else and run 100Mbit or GigE over it. Ethernet can go a very long distance over fiber.
:)
If fiber is out of the option, you could run coax, get a CMTS (can be had on ebay for $5k-$10k) and run a cable modem system over your coax. You could also then get a big sat dish (not the DSS things, the C-Band things) and provide basic cable as well for a reasonable cost.
Failing coax, DSLAMs can also be had cheap and run over just about any kind of wire as long as it's twisted together
Basically, you're spread out enough that using the same technologies the telcos and cable services use is feasable. You could also start running T carrier, but that may get a bit expensive in terms of hardware.
As for wireless solutions, look into directional stuff (obviously). A mesh system may be most useful as it would allow the network to keep working even if one residence isn't reachable for repeating. Various 2.4GHz solutions exist, not just 802.11, or you could also look in to free-space optical. The RONJA project (google for it) is kidna neat, but probably not feasable in this situation.
With respect to the T1 ... god, PLEASE shop around for options.
T1s aren't significantly faster than good DSL service, and can be significantly slower than cable 'net access. For about 20 times the price.
Now, you may have no other option, but do shop around. You won't regret it.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
one of these?
Yes, farms and condos are almost the same. Farms have cows, some of the people in condos look like cows.
Now, if we lived in a physical universe where there were limit to how long you can run coax cable without loss of signal, or if we lived in a world where there were complex laws regarding crossing roads and boundaries with wires, then questions would be different. I am so glad I live in Slashdot where things are simple.
That type of world has different people designing different solutions for different problems.
Check out http://www.commsdesign.com/story/OEG20030423S0042.
I can't find the story but check these guys out:
http://www.rric.net/
Basically, when their local telco refused to provide DSL provision, they invoked a statue which forced them to colocate some DSLAM equipment of their own, and they set up their own DSL ISP. Should be just the sort of thing you're looking for. I'd get a fatter uplink than a T1.
Anyway, yeah, plenty of informative info there, take a look. </karma_whore>
I would much sooner go with a DS3 which to my understanding is about $5000 a month. For each home that works out to about $35 a month. I would find out first which homes in the community are interested and then find the cost to each home using the chosen technology. Ethernet might be good, or you can setup your own DSL ISP for the community. It would probably be wise to setup a co-op or non-profit corporation to organize costs and the collection of money for monthly bandwidth costs.
Funny that you just posted this to Slashdot.. We've been trying to figure out how to connect several locations (houses, apartments, and offices) in an urban part of Los Angeles, without having to pay outragous fees for bandwidth and even simply the wiring. We have an office in a centralized location that already has a T1, going back to one of our colo's with real bandwidth...
:)
You could do copper, but you're limited to 300m for Cat5. Anything longer, and you'll have to do some sort of modem. I don't know if you can put ?DSL modems back to back..
You could do fiber, but that'll probably end up costing you some bucks, and you'll have to be sure that the lines are safe (like, no one will accidently dig through them).
You don't say exactly where in N. Florida you are, but knowing Florida you're probably in a relatively flat area with lots of pine trees. You said several hundred acres, so I put that in an area calculator and found 1000 acres = 1.56sq miles, so none of your points are really very far from each other.. I think you're definately a candidate for wireless, if the trees stay out of the way.
Check out fab-corp.com for antennas.. No, not an advertisment. I just bought some stuff from them last week, and they were easy to deal with. They're also located in Florida, so your order will be there quick. My order got to California in about 3 days. If you were to put a sector antenna (like, the first one in the sector antennas section) in the center of the property, you should have good coverage to the whole property. I'd recommend for the best connection, get a good antenna for the receiving ends also, such as a 24db parabolic antenna.. Make sure when you mount them, you bolt them down tight, and be *VERY* sure you do good lightning supression.. I lived in Florida for years, and survived the hurricanes, and daily thunderstorms.
To give an idea of what kind of range you can expect, I bought a "24 dBi Mag Grid Antenna" (bottom of the parabolic antenna list), and attached it to a "Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2" card. From an upper story of an office building, I started sweeping around with this antenna just listening (to estimate range. honest.) With a 4.5db blade antenna, I could hear 6 AP's, but only had a workable signal to one. With the 24db antenna I could hear over 2 dozen AP's. None of them were named for what they were, except one that said "YMCA"..
I asked some of the people who know the area well, "Is there a YMCA in that direction"? I know there's one closer, but it was about 60 degrees from where I was pointing. Turns out the YMCA I heard was a few miles away. So, with my 24db antenna talking to something resembling a normal AP (I doubt they had a directional antenna pointed at my office), I had a workable signal.
Before you start buying cards, I strongly recommend you check out Seattle Wireless. They have a *GREAT* page comparing wireless cards.. I highly recommend the Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2.. It has two external antenna jacks (external antennas are required on this one). They also show an AP with the same card built in.. The Seano cards are suppose to put out 200mw, as opposed to most cards and AP's that are only around 30mw (check their chart), so you'll get much better range with them.
I hope this helps.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Given the terrain you describe the most likely wireless solution is something in the 900MHz band - it'll work well through trees & such which is something that can not be said for 2400MHz solutions.
Waverider is the first name that comes to mind, I hear Alvarion has some sort of 900MHz product in the works also.
I'd suggest you go to http://www.isp-lists.com and sign up for the isp-wireless list - plenty of people there will have hands on experience with what you're trying to do - much better source than all of the arm chair quarterbacks that inhabit slashdot.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Also, with T1 circuits, you are more important to the telco than a DSL, which is just a dry pair and billed much less. In rural areas this may be more important than you think... If you are not too far from a large city, the break-even point for doing a T1 is probably ~12 people willing to pay $50/month and who have Line of Sight to a central point. This doesn't include startup costs, just monthly recurring.
The Magnolia Road coop (from which I am posting this incidentally- I laugh at your puny /. effect) had outages last summer caused by lightning strikes[0] which took out the telco's repeaters.
A T1 outage will get a much faster repair time than average for DSL. With T1, you call up your provider and go through the food chain to get the telco dispatched. With frame relay (at least through Qwest) Enterprise Repair calls you to see if you are available for a dispatch (this is true even when Qwest is not the ISP per se, but just the FR circuit carrier). Frame relay pricing is also not distance-sensitive as T1 is (at least here in Qwest-land, YMMV). It turns out we get better customer service on a FR than T1, while loop costs on the latter are higher!
I mentioned this cam in another post just a few days ago. It looks at Thorodin Mountain, which is a central hub site for our network. This is what latency looks like going across that mountain right now (worst time of five separate monitoring points). This is via two hops on 5Ghz Trango radios, ~ 14 miles round trip:
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 3.425/4.236/6.832/0.951 ms
One moral: stay away from 2.4Ghz as much as possible. Everyone and their brother has a 2.4ghz phone/mouse/x-10 cam that will cause interference. Those times above were in 100's of ms when the links were at 2.4Ghz. We still do end-user AP at 2.4, but channel crowding forced us to upgrade all of the point-to-point backhauls to 5.8Ghz
Mike
coyote at magnoliaroad dot net
[0] In one instance, lightning apparently entered a NOC via the T1, and fried a couple grand worth of equipment in one moment. We surmise it was the T1 because all of the radio gear was kicking. The catalyst switch was still semi-functional from the console, but was showing link on ports even after cables were removed :( In another instance, the same storm blew two different repeaters. Qwest managed to replace one of them and restored service for about ten minutes before the next one blew out (at which point I asked them to wait for the storm to pass). Enterprise repair is one of the few parts of Qwest which doesn't suck!
IPAC with QoS!! RFC2549!
Cheap, but maybe not that fast...
There also seems to be a reference on slashdot!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.hbwireless.com/
/. reader, didn't I?) but I was originally hired for tech support so that's what I get referred to as. We're based out of Lake Mary but we work just about anywhere that has adequate demand, particularly in central and northern Florida.
;)
:)
I've been working here for some time as their resident linux freak / tech support slave / biased security know-it-all / networking software guru / site surveyer. I don't have an easily definable job title (I just HAD to be a religious
We're actually working on getting an entire town in Louisiana, St. Joseph, up and running. Last I heard, we were doing it with a whopping TWO ACCESS POINTS and no range extenders. In a rural area. Two towers, two T1s, no other cabling outside of the towers themselves.
We've also got some interesting stuff in the works for Orange and Volusia counties, under the Wireless Law vendor. Basically, insanely-secure wifi for courtrooms. Biometrics, encryption that'd make the NSA hate us, our families, and our pets if we sold it on the open market, the works.
Despite St. Louis being swamp/forest area, we've been able to get a connection using 802.11b via an integrated laptop card from as much as 2 miles *outside of town.*
Depending on the local topography and what man-made structures might be available, we might or might not want to build a tower or two to provide coverage in your area. If you have a few tall buildings that get enough clearance above the trees, rooftops alone might suffice.
Our antennas, which utilize some dead-sexy proprietary technology that *still* makes me drool, can keep up a connection to the average laptop for up to three miles in open-air under ideal circumstances; the worst range I've seen was 1/2-mile and that was with an *entire office building* between me and the nearest antenna, using a low-power Linksys 802.11b CompactFlash card in my PDA (Sharp Zaurus 5500 ^_^), with the antenna being only a few stories off the ground.
We've yet to see anybody do that without using a system that looks like a cold-war-era radar dish, let alone push that kind of signal through an entire building and into the rear parking lot successfully. Even the radar-looking setups don't do that as well as we do, despite being several times the size.
We don't even need to over-amp the antennas.
We also implement some decent QoS that, instead of simply capping your bandwidth like a cable modem, just gives you a "fair share" of what's available.
We can run from anything as simple as a 56k modem up to a set of full data T1s *per antenna*, the main limitation being the 802.11b protocol's limited bandwidth. This will go farther once 802.11g is finalized. In addition, we can (of course) set up range extenders with our antennas to make the most of a single pipe.
If you're ever going to be in the Maitland area just north of Orlando, contact us and we'll see about doing a demonstration of our technology at the local testing site. We have other locations in the works in Florida, but this is the only one we currently use for demos.
For more information, visit http://www.hbwireless.com/ and read up. Contact info sits up there as well. I'm known in the company simply as "Ken" if anyone asks.
I've been running the system between my office and my apartment (1/4 mile away) through trees for almost a year. I'm using off-the-shelf Linksys access points (1st gen, at that) and antennas I bought from a place in Canada. The access point in my apartment is programmed to be a client, and the "master node" just acts like a regular access point.
The system work well through trees, though I do tend to get a lot of noise during rain storms. I don't have rooftop access in my apartment, so I'm actually shooting the signal out of my apartment window.
If I had the remote on the roof with line of sight, I'm told the system will reach 2 miles.
The office access point has an 8db omnidirectinal antenna the focuses the energy into a flat disk. The remote has a panel-style antenna the focuses the energy into a 20degree cone. You don't have to be too picky with the aim, I can turn the panelmount 45 degrees either way.
Had it not worked, I was going mount the access point in a pelican case, bolt the panel antenna onto the outside, and drill a hole for the pigtail and the ethernet cable.
I also had plans to run power over the spare 2 pair of wires in the cat-5 jack. Rather than one of those hundred dollar POE kits, I was planning on boosting the voltage at house end, and have a 5V voltage regulator ($5 at radio shack) on the other.
Hell when I finally get laid off, that's my scheming Dotcom idea.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Communes and Communities are very different, although I suppose it might be hard to tell just visiting. I suspect most communes are examples of Intentional Communities, but not the reverse.
In short, a community is a village; an Intentional Community is a village founded and tended on the principle that everyone really, really likes the color blue; and a commune is where everyone who's part of it dedicates all of their possessions and income to the community's goals of promoting the color blue, kindof like they're all married to each other.
Basically, any group of people who live together and interact are a community. A group of people who live together on purpose are an Intentional Community (or generally capitalized Community) who will generally share many ideals.
The governance and ownership of the IC could be open to everyone living there or more restricted, sometimes to the founders or long-timers. Or pick any governance system you like. Typically there is some kind of arrangement where you have to work and/or pay to live there.
In a true commune all of your possesions and income are shared within the community. Being in an IC _often_ does not involve giving up the ownership of personal possesions or whatever income you might have. And some people do live in Communities and have "normal" jobs.
Of course, a bunch of people who don't believe in possessions living in a Community would be pretty hard to tell from a commune, even if the part about the possessions wasn't a prerequisite for living there.
(My sister lived for a while at the Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage in Missouri, which has some people who hold communist ideals but also some who are downright capitalist)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Your biggest issue will probably be right-of-ways. If you can get everyone on the community to agree to a right of way then you have a number of options.
If not - look into incorporating your own telco and see if you can get the local authorities on side.
Physical installation will be expensive - but if _can_ look at a fiber link. Last I checked 6 conductor single mode fiber for overhead was only a wee bit more expensive than copper. Underground will probably be similarly expensize.
Last I checked there were ethernet to fiber drivers that ran 100 base-t (2/3 of a T1) for 50 miles and cost under $1000 USD. (allied telesyn for example). This issue here is that the capital cost is not out of line and the capacity is awesome.
With so much capacity you should be able to run local telephone dial up service and TV signals on the same fibre (but I haven't researched how). I just know there is a ton of bandwidth available.
Furthermore the infrastructure if it is put in properly will be viable for the forseeable future. I'd say over 100 years - but with technology who knows - maybe within 5 years something comes along. You have to take that chance. It is better to spend a little extra now and have something that is solid.
T1 will probably not be adequate for your users. But you can look at backbone links and if you do it right - other communities might join you and you can put the big ugly telcos out of their beauracratic misery.
Good luck.
We're probably going to use a combination of cat5e in the ground (fiber was too expensive for us) and wireless (802.11g) with good antennas and maybe some mesh technology (if it's reliable and easy to maintain.) The bandhwidth shaping tools that I've read about would be nice but the expense is high and it may be one of those situations where it's best to wait for the problem before applying the solution. Good luck!
At peak times we see ~ 100 devices on the radio net.
This graph shows a snapshot I just took of our aggregate bandwidth usage for the core network (there is another discrete T1 not represented there).
I used Net-to-Net Tech's Point-to-point products to connect two places a few thousand feet apart. I emailed them a few questions and they were quick to respond.. Maybe contact them for a solution since it seems they have a wide array of products. They could probably use existing leftover copper pairs rather than trying to bury new cable/fiber.
Build a mesh network by stapling 802.11g access points to the backs of the cattle...
Play Well
I have been designing networks for a couple of years now. I believe the foundation for this particular situation is going to be wireless. Proxim has been one of the major wireless equipment providers for some time now. They have a new product call the Tsunami MP.11 access point. It is a point-to-multipoint geared towards "last mile" solutions. The AP cost about $700. You will place this as close to the center of the community as possible. Then you will receive the signal through residential receivers. You can purchase them in 5-packs for about $1,200. I agree with the other Slashdotters as far as the T1. If possible go with NxT1 (IMA) or a T3 if possible. A single T is not going to be that much bandwidth for the community. This solution is ideal because you will not have to dig trenches, place conduits, and run fiber or copper. For more information on the Tsunami MP.11 visit http://www.proxim.com/products/all/tsunami_mp11/mp 11.html#ordering
Any questions please e-mail me at jackblack5769@hotmail.com.
Cheers, Netwalkr
Actually they are not fucked.
your 56kb actually runs in a DS0 which is 64KB/sec with inline switching so it is 24 lines.
Regardless how the lines are shared - normal browsing is highly asymetrical and so is web serving. The two co-exist quite nicely.
Games can place a very significant demand for bandwidth.
BushLAN is a low cost 'last mile' solution specifically targeted at Internet distribution for rural areas. It uses lower frequencies (VHF) than 802.11. As a consequence the signal propagates further (3-100km). If you have television reception it should work.
I'm not directly affifialted with BushLAN, but I do work in a simliar field within the same country, so I am not completely disinterested.
The correct standard for this type of application is not 802.11. IEEE 802.16 has been designed specificly for this type of application. A quick read of the earlier responces indicates most /.er are a little behind the times. This is understandable. Prior to the new standard, 802.11.whatever was the only way to go ( by default). Manufacturers and Service providers have been applying it to problems outsides its targeted domain. These entities have been marketing their products/services and thereby obscuring the definition of the domain for which 802.11 is applicable. Now that 802.16 exists, and products are coming to market, implimentors should stop missapplying the older standard and current 802.11 systems should be migrated where appropriate.
I think they had about 8 sites, connected in a ring topology using some Marconi ATM switches connected via a local ds3 or ethernet connection to the towers.
The toplogy was basically like this:
Customer House---802.11b---Ethernet/Tower--Microwave--Tower /Ethernet--Router/switch--Internet
Depending on the size, either a point to point style network could be configured or a ring style topology. With a ring, you have some level of redundancy.
This works very well for them and allows them to grow the network easily. A starter node shouldn't be that expensive either..so if you can put up a tower or two, you should be in great shape.
The network spans many hundred miles over microwave..so distance really isn't a problem for them.
Good luck, and you should come back in a year or so and let us know what you decided on doing!
I first heard the term from people who were talking about unwiring places in the Caribbean.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
After reading this thread - one thing came to mind: If you do decide to lay fiber - go for it all!
I mean - you could co-op everything - High Speed Internet, Cable TV and Phone for that matter.
While wireless can offer a low-cost solution, it has many potential problems across a geographic area.
The most effective means of distributing high speed access would definitely be to lay fiber. I mean if you decide to dig up the ground, don't screw around with copper this would severely limit you.
Fiber would allow you to really leverage the investment of hacking up that ground - Internet would be easy, a couple of T1's multilinked together and some smart allocations of a class C of public numbers and your off and running (a T3 would be total overkill IMHO).
But you can leverage this investment to allow delivery of Telco service as well.
You could simply order up an ISDN PRI or two and a block of about 300 DID numbers. The best part is that at this level of service - you can get an incredible amount of competition. All calls anywhere for under 2 cents/minute any time - and I mean ANYWHERE and WHENEVER - Free of course within the Co-Op
I recommend using this product from Sphere (www.spherecom.com) I just got certified on this product and am completely AMPed about it. It is a pure IP VOIP product that delivers the station end as regular analog phones. So customers need nothing special at their end.
If you model your distribution method after the Bells model of hubs to CO's etc. - you could really do something very cool here.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Intentional Communities are a broad movement, ranging from student-oriented housing coops to hippie communes to old Quaker villages to apartment buildings that don't want to be boring. (OK, some of them probably _are_ cult-like - the ic.org web page lists about 500 of the things.) I know people who've lived in a number of these things - some have stuck together for 50 years, while others have fallen apart in a year. Some people like being closely involved with their neighbors, while others don't; suit yourself.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I am in a similar situation. That is I am in a rural area, and broadband solutions of DSL or cable modems are not possible here. As there is no cable system here, and the phone system CO is about 4 miles as the crow flies (longer by wire) and the wire is circa 1970.. phone modems work at somewhere between 21 and 33 Kb.
We are using wireless. Actually I am using a linksys (with a decent antenna) and it works well going out to half a mile or better with decent antennas (15 db mini-dish). One of the new linksys would do better, or you could go with a 24 db dish and get something like a factor of 3-5 on range (+3db = double the power). A lower frequency will work through trees better (900 Mhz). In our case (2.4 Ghz) a tree kills about 5 db (more if it is wet) or drops you to 30% range. In your case it depends on how many trees are between the customer and base stations. Note there are limits to the linksys for number of people connected, so if you are going to have a lot per node (greater than 30) you should invest in enterprise level (cisco or tranzeo, I did like aeronet (cisco), but their new software has some issues. I haven't got the new tranzeo yet, but they look very good). You will probably want to use decent antennas on the systems, you might try hyperlink (www.hyperlink.com) but there are probably cheaper places on the net or ebay.
For our location trenching and running wire or fiber was cost prohibitive.. so I expect it will be for you also. Though fiber does wonders for bandwidth. If you can get the cooperation of your local phone company DSL might work for you (see ruby ranch), but have found at least locally that doesn't work. (old phone lines and uncooperative phone company).
For bandwidth I would highly recommend say something like packeteer, however if you are a true geek, I have found that a cheap linux system with ipchains (or iptables) is much more cost effective. There is more setup involved, but you also get more flexability. I use ipchains, NAT and TOS mangles to manange the bandwidth here and it is very effective.. though what is "fair" can be hard to say some days.. in this case e-mail, goes first, then http, then ftp and finally others.
Currently the neighbors are averaging around 100 B/s, peak at 128 Kb for a couple of minutes (since that is the limit they can get) and in total move about 98 Meg a month.. they are rural (and not slashdotters..) so they are pretty much e-mail and http. Generally they aren't running servers. A T-1 will work well to start (IMHO, contrary to others), but of course it will grow as you get more people on, and they start using more bandwidth. Remember (for some of you city folk).. they were on 21 Kb modems on a good day so this is much an improvement! Don't need to make a superhighway today when just a decent dirt road will work fine (and gets the job done faster and cheaper.)
Our Local Teleco (McLoudTeleco.com) recently implemented a nice "last mile" solution for our rural area... They installed a bunch of Paradyne "ReachDSL" DSlams... which require proprietary Paradyne DSL Modems. :(
Of course this would require the assistance of your Telco provider. Submit a Buisness Plan to them if they are a down to earth Teleco.. if they are a Megacorp, I doubt they'll work with you.
DSL is so much better for gaming than High Latency Satellite! (And Way better than Dial-up!)
Snippet from an Informative PDF:
"offering a minimum rate guarantee of 256K at a
distance of 18,000 feet (5.5 km), with typical performance
far exceeding this rate. In fact, astounding distances of up
to 60,000 feet (18 km) have been attained with ReachDSL
products - without the use of repeaters or amplifiers."
IIRC, iproute2 is able to selectively throttle connections based on username and other identifiying qualities (such as per IP address, etc.). I haven't looked at the package (no need as of yet), but I would imagine that this would be a good tool to use against kazaa servers, etc..
The best thing is, the luser eating all your bandwidth doesn't have to be told that you're cutting back on his speed --- you're the admin, you run your network the way you want, etc. --- and if you knock it down incrementally over the course of a few weeks, he probably won't realize what's happening ;-)
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
first for each smal area, order a point to point T-1. That costs only $2 (2 dollars) per month. (Check the FCC tariffs). Just be sure to tell youir telco that you want a FCC tariffed T-1. (The costs are actually 1 dollar per endpoint and xx dollars per CO mile. but so long as it's in the same CO the milage is 0 ZERO.) then you can either go wireless for the small areas or run calse to the homes.
It will be better in the long run to go for a wireless solution as the system will be more robust. Wires are great but for teleco's who have the staff to maintain it. There are some custom solutions that handle low population density telecon. Mostly designed for inaccessible rulral areas. One very viable option is to use corDECT -http://www.tenet.res.in/Products/tele_prod.html which is a project of some of the professors at the Indian Institute of technology. Its based on the the DECT standard of the ETSI and may provide real low cost low maintaince network for remote areas. Check out the TDM/TDMA solution. It may be suitable.
If you have any kind of hills at all wireless should be an option. Get a nice tall tower up on top of your local hill and put an omni antenna up there. Then, at each house, point a nice high gain antenna at the tower. That's the usual star design. If that doesn't cover it, you can bridge the network into multiple stars, create for example a backbone that jumps from the T1 to a tower then to other towers or well-located houses. It will be a LOT cheaper than running any kind of new cable given the distances you quoted. Wifi you can get the kit for each house as low as $200-$300 and put up a repeater with a couple of radios and antennas for $1000 or so.
The only mailing list that I know of dedicated to long-distance WiFi (802.11) links is wireless-longhaul. You can subscribe here. There's also a Wiki with plenty of links to projects that have successfully deployed long-distance wireless networks in all kinds of different places.
Don't go into proprietary wireless unless you absolutely have no other option. There's some interesting new technology that's already available e.g. from Alvarion, using OFDM you can make non-line of sight connections at microwave frequencies. Eventually there will be 802.16 standards for them but right now it's not ready yet. The proprietary solutions are many thousands of dollars for each box.
simon
home page
Assuming this is some sort of intentional community, do you really want something that will keep people holed up in their individual homes for more extended periods? Sounds like something that could break down the close-knittedness of the community.
Pick four or five community centers, or even just one, and put a few computers in there. Instant gathering place.
High-speed internet access in every home, you might as well be living in the suburbs. With goats.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
get a t1 from broadbandsolutions for 899 a month, then go here
http://www.championradio.com/towers.html
and get a 96' tower for under $3000
15dbi ommni antenna from here...
http://www.fab-corp.com/index.htm
and 24dbi parabolic fro the clients...(overkill for less then 1 mile range)
hook up whatever cheap ap you want..wap11 or a wapp54g? and then use the same in client modem
surely the trees arent too high for a 96' tower?