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Mobile Internet Down Under
Anonymous Coward writes "A truck, a sat dish and a sunburnt country. When you absolutely positively need to connect to the Internet, why not carry your own broadband connection with you? One Aussie guy and his wife are doing just that -- packed up the lot and have gone on the road, so far roughly 3000km. He says 'Of course nothing is simple. The salespeople were convinced that I couldn't line up the dish -- it took me about an hour to figure out and now roughly takes about ten minutes each time I set up. They told me that the wireless gear wouldn't talk to the modem, they told me that my Debian workstation wouldn't be supported, they told me that the BOC wouldn't talk to me, they told me that I needed training, they told me that it wasn't done and it wouldn't work, they told me that I'd void my warranty, they told me so many stories..'"
Can you ping me now?
Sounds like this guy dealt with the modern day saleman. When people don't know the answer to your questions, it is easier for them to say "can't be done" than "I don't know, let me see if someone else does". At least he had the initiative to figure it out himself, though.
Most ISPs (and I would imagine Satellite ISPs are no different) operate wholly on scripts. If you deviate from what is accepted on those scripts, you're not supported. In most cases, simply running anything other than Windows or (occasionally) Mac OS/Mac OS X is enough to lose your support.
I had an ISP once who wouldn't even help me out when the link went completely down and the DSL modem couldn't even sync... because I ran Linux. They begged and pleaded with me, "Do you have a Windows machine you can use?"...
Given that things like this are the norm, do you honestly expect some guy in a truck with a Debian box to get support?
Amazing accomplishment. If I were the person who pulled this off, I'd send a long letter to the CEO of my ISP, telling them what people can do with "unsupported" setups. Not like it'd make much of a difference. The only way ISPs can find enough "qualified" techs is if the only "qualification" is "can read from a script and follow simple orders".
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
... where can one get 2-way satellite internet connectivity in various parts of the world; how much does it cost [he had a ton of trouble with some of these options]; and where do you buy it?
When I was looking at the Debian sat-dish mini howto, they had some lists of satellites, but I found no way to actually buy in. Even emails went unanswered.
For me, it's the Baltic region (Lithuania). But it could be Rotterdam, or Liverpool, or anywhere I roam. So a list of the different options might be useful.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
We even have broadband, despite how expensive Mr Richard Alston might have thought it was.
Celebrating 30 years of Electricity
:)
:)
In some cases, it really is that bad. In others, especially out where he's going, it's a lot less than that. I remember living several places within 3 hours outside Perth in the mid 80s which didn't have mains electricity. Fun times
And we have almost universal phone service. In many remote areas, Telstra, while sucking in oh-so-many-ways, has very cool payphones that have solar panels on the roof and satcom gear hidden up there too. They're basically an entirely self-contained payphone. You put them down somewhere, point the antenna, and hey presto, phone service. Local call area is the size of Europe in some cases, but has only 20 other phones in it, etc.
Yep, We in Australia are totally awesome.
who needs a segway, when you have kangaroos.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
They told me that the wireless gear wouldn't talk to the modem, they told me that my Debian workstation wouldn't be supported, they told me that the BOC wouldn't talk to me, they told me that I needed training, they told me that it wasn't done and it wouldn't work, they told me that I'd void my warranty
Now really, what did you expect? Companies hate tinkerers. They don't like people who use their products in ways they were not intended for. They just want someone to buy their product and use it in the most boring way possible.
Hell, this morning I needed some one-pound coins to do my laundry but I was all out. So, I went to a vending machine and started dumping in my small change until I had one pound of credit and then hit the change return button. Bingo! A nice, shinny, one-pound coin. After about five min of this, the service guy for the machine came over and yelled at me to stop. "That's not what the machine is for." Well excuse me for doing something different.
Hmm... I think with some proper tools and software you should be able to auto-align the dish - I mean, Meade telescopes do it if you provide it with a proper reference point.
With a GPS, a level-sensor, some kind of direction sensor (since it's such a big antenna, differential GPS on two points might work out pretty good), and then some algorithm to "wiggle" the antenna toward the strong signal point once the aforementioned sensor array moved it to the general region, I think he should be able to park his van, unload the dish, and hit a "auto-search" and have internet connection in no time.
now, of course, to properly align a dish in the middle of nowhere under 10 minutes is no small feat, and maybe he is automating it all anyway... just random ramblings.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I can imagine the salesman giving him a blank look when he mentioned Debian. "Is that a Macintosh or something?" ;)
I don't know how powerful two-way telstra satellite is, but I know that satellite uplink stations are supposed to be taken very seriously. There are restrictions on power levels, aiming accuracy, signal polarisation, etc. It's my understanding that you only have to be out by 1 degree and you could really piss off some satellite company by interfering with their own uplinks.
Perhaps Telstra 2way is weak enough that no-one really cares...
He's been told a lot of things, but did anyone tell him that divorce is imminent?
They told me that the wireless gear wouldn't talk to the modem, that my wife wouldn't talk to me...
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Americans seem to forget we have sheep stations bigger than Texas in Australia.
We've got a couple of trailer setups that we use for high-speed video conferencing anywhere in Australia. They're a ruggedised "4wd" trailer with a 1.2m dish and a 12V inverter, hanging off the back of one of the 4wd's. Takes about 10 minutes to setup from parking to surfing anywhere you can see up and north.
"Yes, I made those changes. Let me reboot. [3 seconds] Nope, still broken. Yes it rebooted, I have a really fast computer. Okay, I'll hold for level 2."
Once you get past the drones at level one, you can get to the people who are allowed to tell you things like "the router serving your entire county is down" (this actually happened). I asked why the level one guys couldn't simply say "Nobody in San Diego has service" - the level two guy claimed that they not only weren't allowed to deviate from the script but in fact would be punished if they were caught! (Hence the term "drone" - if you weren't one before you started there, just wait a few months...)
Management likes shorter calls, poor techs like shorter calls. I like longer calls. The more I can stretch it out, the better. As it is, I'm so far above the highest metric for CPH that I get told to slow down. Their reasoning is that I'm going so fast I can't possibly be fixing their problem, even though I have almost 0 callbacks. I'm pretty sure that deep down they think I figured out a way to trick the ticketing system, especially since I get ob'd literally 1 in 3 calls I take. It's a pain in the ass, because the ob software slows my machine down to a crawl. Meanwhile, techs taking half as many calls as me get ob'd like 1 in 50 calls. Probably doesn't help that I've testified against them a few times in our union lawsuit...
Start off every call with "OK, go ahead and restart your computer." That's a great one, because if they're not talkative it's like a mini break. Reinstall TCP/IP every excuse you get, that's 2 reboots unless they only have one phone line. Oh, and when the call starts, just let 'em talk. They'll usually go for about two minutes, and only the last few sentences usually matter, so you can tune 'em out and just kind of skim what they're saying. And if they say that you're being rude, just tell them, "I'm not being rude, ma'am." They always believe it. I don't know why, but they do.
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
As the guy who is doing the travelling, I figured, what better time to do some karma-whoring than when the story is about you:-)
:-)
:-(
While it took us a long time to get it all working, the payoff in life-style change was well worth the effort. I just fielded a phone call from a guy in Sydney who couldn't believe that I really existed, that I was in Australia and that he could phone me.
Next I'll be famous
I've gotta admit that my web-site is pretty bare at the moment, you can slashdot it if you like, because it's safely on the wired end of the net - but there is only a placeholder because I keep being asked to explain what it is I did.
You'll notice from the photos that the dish sits on a pretty big frame. That takes about an hour to bolt together - if I do it on my own, all in all 18 bolts, then I get some beefy guys to help me lift the dish on, then plug in all the bits, power it up and on average 10 minutes later I connect - that is if Optus hasn't changed satellites or frequencies without sending me an update first
Over the solar-car challenge during October 18-28, we'll travel down the middle of Australia and the Sungroper team will help me setup the dish every night.
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me, or post here, onno at itmaze dot com dot au.
--
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BONGO!!
;-)
:)
The salesguy told me that it had no TCP/IP stack and they do not support TCP/IP over Bongo
Heh, but what do salespeople know?? Now I can bing from anywhere in the world!!
Case in point... me :) I'm a qualified tech on the front line, and I AM in the loony bin. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! !!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAW WWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!!!!
Buahahaha ahahhahahahah ahahahahhTBBBBBBPHHHHHHHH!
2 YEARS OF FRONT LINE TECH SUPPORT, BIATCHES!!! WAHOOOO!!!
I can write C++, recomplie a kernel, make up firewall rules and routing tables in my sleep, and I'm talking to people that don't know you have to push the little tab down to pull the phone cord out WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
*stares into space and drools*
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! I can't get a decent job without a college degreeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE!!! WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
*bounces off into the woods*
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
Optus requires that everytime I setup the dish a polarisation check is completed. They can only do that from the BOC. I basically setup the dish, use the polarisation map they provide, get online and send them an email.
:-)
:-)
So-far I've setup the dish eight times in vastly different locations and not had any polarisation errors.
The only thing they told me is not to put my head between the transmitter and the dish
They tell me that they'll send me an installer certificate, because I seem to know what I'm doing , but I'm not holding my breath
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I've had ISP tech support people develop that confused tone when I mentioned I was using Debian Linux ... so I just said "it's Red Hat" and you could almost hear the light come on over the phone. It doesn't happen so much now, though.
/var/log/syslog..."
;-)
Recently, I've had the pleasant experience of ISP techs asking what OS I was using, and when I responded with "the firewall/router is Debian, my desktop is Red Hat" they've (a) been pleased they're dealing with a user who knows what an OS is and (b) gone "aah.... good. OK, in
It's always nice to see that even in a job as bad as ISP tech support, some people are interested and know more than they absolutely have to. I tend to ask for particular techs now (the sort who when I say "my DSL modem just lost sync" don't respond with "OK, now click start->..."). Less frustration for me and them
You are basically correct. My dish is technically an uplink station, but I have no control over power. I can only control aim and polarisation.
Aim is achieved by using a set-top box in install mode, then I maximize the signal. Polarisation is read off a map and adjusted accordingly.
When I get online, I send an email to the BOC to get a cross-poll check done so I don't splat over other people's signal, but I've set it up seven times so far and have yet to get asked to change the polarisation.
The accuracy is waaay less than 1 degree. I could calculate it, but using a 16mm bolt, the difference between connection and not is 1/8 of a bolt-turn.
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I have an Aussie mate who was on a plane home last year, and sat next to a middle-aged American lady. She was talking about TV, and asked if they have cable in Australia. He said his family had just got their first TV, but that the guy next door was going to get one that showed things in colour instead of black and white.
He then asked the lady what a video was, and she went into a long detailed explanation of how you could set it to record a program when you were out, then come back and watch it later. Much to the amusement of the twenty or so Aussies who were in hearing range of her explanation.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I'm 35. I was born in a country town, and back then, our oven was a wood burner. Our heating was by a kerosene heater - I still remember it. Utilities and services that we take for granted in the city take a while to get out to the bush because rural Australia is mostly quite sparsely populated. A large proportion of our population lives in a small number of cities, and the rest of the country could be categorised as 'mostly empty'.
Telecommunication capabilities in the more remote regions are still considered to be below standard. This issue is one of the major sticking points in the Australian government's attempts to fully privatise our (effective monopoly) major telecommunications carrier, Telstra. There is a fear that a privatised Telstra would not see value in providing service to remote regions, and would not install lines or would let maintenance go, further isolating people.
Lie. That's what I always did with Qwest. Their support constraints were amazingly stupid, so I'd just lie about what I had. The OS wasn't a problem, actually, since I run 2000 and they do support that. However they did NOT support the fact that I had a network. Now this might seem reasonable until you realise that I had professional class service. I had my own subnet of 8 static IPs and an external router (provided by them). Now any reasonably intelligent person would assume that the purpose of all this is to have a network of computers. Seems to make little sense to plug the router into one system and assing all the IPs to it.
Well, they steadfastly maintained it wasn't supported and I'd need to plug the router right in to my computer. This was not only not really possible (router was ina different room) it was outright fucking stupid. Since I could access the router via telnet, which went over my internal network, I could verify that it was NOT the problem. Also, I could ask the router what was the problem, and it told me that I lacked a DSL dignal. This I tired to explain to them to no avail. So I began lying about not having a network. This never stuck any of them as odd.
Next we got to the router reconfiguration. Every time they wanted me to blow away my router's config and redo it from scratch. I again tried to explain that the config had not changed. It was working with the config on it, and then it stopped working. I hand't changed anything, I was the only one with the password, therefore hte config was NOT the problem. Also, again I tried to explain that the router was telling me what was the problem (I was getting no signal since the DSLAM was broke). Again, no avail, so I simply lied about keying in their config they read to me. I wasn't, of course, because it was not only a waste of time, it was the wrong config, it setup a router for NAT operation whereas I didn't do that.
After dealing with this, I skipped the arguing and went straight to the lying with subsequent steps. I was asked to do retarded things like install a TCP/IP for a dialup adapter (yes, really) and so on. I'd claim I did them, and then let them try the next thing. Eventually they expended their little script and I got escelated.
Now the real solution, if you can do it, is to get on an ISP not run by retards. I've been happy with Speakeasy. They are happy to treat me like I know what I'm talking about, and answer my questions in a straightforward way. I can call and ask for information or status and get it, without some argument. Also they seem to be competent and can troubleshoot in an intelligent way.
However, if your ISP is dumb, and most are, just lie about your setup. It'll save you a lot of time.
Direcway says, what, 10 times on their site that you cant use their dish for mobile internet? Then you pull up a business website and they sell a fully loaded mobile satellite internet truck... Its just that they dont want you to know that you really can use it anywhere and they just dont feel like offering it to home users or rv users or internet nuts.
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
You mention having to setup a mount and then lifting and carrying the dish to it. Why not put the mount on a trailer and set the trailer up with legs to steady it. You then attach the dish to the mount and add some sort of fairing or enclosure for wind and precipitation protection. To set up you park the trailer, drop the legs, level if necessary, remove the fairing and then start your alignment procedures. It eliminates the manhandling.