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Looking for Fixed Wireless Internet Info?
tukkayoot asks: "I live in a rural area where cable and DSL aren't available. I want some form of broadband Internet access that doesn't require that I move. There is an ISP in my area that offers fixed wireless, but they make no effort to market it to residential users (even though they claim the service is available). Unfortunately, searching the Internet seems to yield more information about starting a WISP than what an ordinary Joe like me should be doing to educate myself about this service, as a customer. I don't have high confidence in the ISP to walk me through the entire process, so is there anybody out there that can direct me to a resource on consumer wireless related issues, like how I should go about receiving a signal when my house is surrounded by lots of fairly tall trees?"
...when my house is surrounded by fairly tall trees
Burninate.
Depends on where you live, but maybe satellite broadband is an option. It's only downstream, though, so you still need a modem (or ISDN) for uploads, page requests and so on. Setting it up is just like setting up any other satellite dish.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Both DirecTV and Earthlink as well as many others offer it.
Not quite as fast as DSL for downloads and maybe a bit pricier but isn't rural areas precisely what this type of service is aimed at?
My choices until last month were either sub-28.8 modem, 2 way satellite (slow at 128k, high pings), carrier pigeons, isdn or something called "switched 56". They were all either too expensive or unsuited for my needs (online gaming, large iso downloads of Slackware, etc.) so I stuck with my sub-28.8 modem. Then suddenly I was able to get DSL without moving. Seems some drunk guy hit the Big Box down the road that provided my phone line connection, and they replaced it with a DSL capable box.
Personally I'd call up the WISP that you mentioned, and see if you can get some test gear to be sure you will get a connection, etc. at your location. If it works, they will have a new customer. Good luck!
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
like how I should go about receiving a signal when my house is surrounded by lots of fairly tall trees?"
I'd guess you'd put up a huge antenna on top of your house, or on a big telephone pole or tower out in your yard.
Either cut down the trees directly in the signal's path, or put up a tower. A friend of mine had to put up a 40 ft. one just to boost his antenna over the trees in the ravine by his house.
And to those suggesting satellite broadband, the latency sucks. At least with fixed wireless, you can play games.
I have an 802.11b wireless link to my ISP that traverses 7 miles line of sight. Performance is pretty good with sub 10mS pings to the ISP router. The biggest problem is that there is only a T1 on the back side and it servers all of their customers in that town. I can tell when the kiddies get home from school ;-)
Things to consider:
As for my equipment, I have a 24dBi antenna with a 500mW amplifier mounted on the roof. This puts me at the legal limit for radiated power (unlicensed). Inside I have a Linux based CPE router. It uses an Orinoco wireless card. All of this with installation set me back about $1k a year or so ago. With this setup, I usually sync at 2Mbit to 5Mbit rates. Also, rain/fog seems to have no effect.
My primary use is VPN back to work. I primarily use VNC, PuTTY, and Mozilla IMAP; no games. Performance is pretty good, except when the T1 gets saturated. My goal is less than 50mS ping to my company's gateway; and I usually get this during off hours. Downloads range from 60KByte to 160KByte from kernel.org.
The more (real) help you can get from your ISP, the better off you will be. Also Seattle Wireless is a good place to start learning about wireless issues. Bottom line, it can be done fairly easily (if you have the right physical situation) and the performance is much better than the dialup you probably have now. And there are many more extreme working examples than mine.
Good luck!
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Locally, it is $70 per month, which is reasonable to me. The hold up for me has been the $700 install charge.
Find out from the WISP where their tower is in your area. If you can clearly see it, you will get a good signal. Dependent upon distance, of course. They SHOULD provide a free test from your house to verify that you will get a signal.
I don't have high confidence in the ISP to walk me through the entire process,....
This issue here is about paying for service. All of the costs are in initial equipment and set up which will likely run to several hundred dollars ($400-500). They don't want to expend effort to set someone up if they are going to move or discontinue service when the next cheaper solution arrives.
They don't market it because the initial costs are too high for Joe User to stomach, and they don't want to spend hours of unpaid time walking you through it, and fix it when you break it. There is no return on investment.
If you go to them and explain your willing to pay for all the upfront costs I'm sure they'd be more than willing to "help" you.
You may find the various columns that Robert Cringely has written about getting a wireless DSL link to his house useful, or at least entertaining. His constraints sound similar to the ones here: it seems he lives in a valley with no local DSL service, and the nearest wired neighborhood is over ten miles away.
His first solution was to climb up a tree with a telescope, figure out the addresses of any homes he could get a clear line of sight to, and then go knocking on doors with the proposition that "I will buy you a high speed internet connection if you let me stick a directional antenna on your roof so that I can share it. This seems to work pretty well for him.
His next attempt played off the same idea, but instead used a pair of bidirectional Pringles can yagi antennae strapped to the top of a tree on the top of a nearby mountain. One end of each antenna points at his house, while the other points at a free wireless zone in a nearby downtown area. This gets him a full 2mbps channel, and he suggests that 5mbps or 11mbps might be feasible, and the parts were built for only $100 at Home Depot. He sounds a little iffy on the ethics of this scheme though, and claims not to be using it as his main connection until that gets sorted out, but in any event the connection technique has been demonstrated.
Maybe something like this could work in your area, with one of these bidirectional yagis strapped to one of the tall trees around your house, and the other end pointing to an uplink somewhere on the horizon. Got a telescope?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Anybody know what the lowdown is on Full Rate Extended DSL? The PR sounds like it could get DSL out to those of us in the sticks without having to put up masts or invest $800 in proprietary gear (our current options).
Perhaps more imporantly, how do I get Verizon to put beta test it in my neighborhood?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I co-own a primarily wireless ISP. One of the main reason most WISP's mainly cater to business is the equipment cost. A "good" client install generally costs several hundred dollars, and most 'residential' customers are used to paying less than 100, or anything, for the modem and install, as is usually the case with cable and dsl.
:)
If you are behind a lot of thick trees, you will most definitely need your antenna to be above them. We have gotten by with strapping 20 foot of mast pipe to a chimney, or using existing towers. Sometimes you can get signal through the trees if they are fairly sparse, but your reliability will greatly diminish.
If you're within several miles of their tower and you can get a clear line of sight to them, and if they know what they are doing, you should have no problems whatsoever.
One thing to watch out for -- a lot of ISP's who offer wireless really don't know much about RH (the 'wireless' end of things). We have an RF engineer on staff, and without him we would be nowhere. I would ask some questions about how THEIR towers are setup. There are many important things that network guys with no RF experience do not take into account -- proper waterproofing, cable loss, amplification and preamplification, etc. Some WISP's will install high power amplifiers with lots of receive gain to extend their coverage area, but that extra receive gain can be a real pain by amplifying noise and reflections, so proper care and consideration needs to be factored in.
Even if you don't know what the answers should be, you can judge how knowledgeable they are about the RF design of their network and whether or not it is properly done by their answers just by how 'certain' they sound when they answer.
If you'd like more info, shoot me an e-mail. I'm fairly certain you are not in our coverage area, so this isn't a sales pitch.
-dot- net
I run a small WISP in Silver Springs, Nevada. Currently my setup for customers is as follows.
1. 16dBi Vagi
2. D-Link 810+ Ethernet Bridge
3. Weather Proof plastic box
4. 24" LMR patch cable
5. PoE injector
6. 30 to 50' of CAT5
I mount the Vagi and D-Link on the eve of the roof. I run ethernet cable to the computer. I run power over the ethernet to the D-Link.
I charge my customers about $180 for the setup. I can get about 5 miles no problem. Usually I'll go to the 19dBi for anything over 3 miles.
In the summer the signal strength's are lower. They are great in the winter. I have not had a problem with heat yet (108F). I did not have a problem with the D-Link's last year in the winter and it snowed a few times.
I have found that any sign of lightning, a few of the D-Link ethernet ports will burn out. The radio's still work, just the ethernet stops. So I would recommend grounding.
The above is not worth reading.
There are two real reasons that most wireless ISPs don't market to homes: cost and equipment. Most wireless equipment is more expensive and the monthly fee is usually about $100 a month, out of the range most people are willing to pay. The other problem is that wireless installs usually entail putting a tower or pole of some sort up. In my experience (I'm the sysadmin for an ISP that does a lot of wireless) as soon as people see the pole that has to be attached to their home they balk. Especially if there are trees around the home that have to be gotten over. If you talk to a sales person at the ISP and tell them that you are willing to pay and willing to have the pole installed, they shouldn't refuse you. That doesn't mean they won't refuse obviously but they would be stupid to pass up the business.
CAWNet
W ISPstartup.ppt
Also, here's a presentation from one of their meetings on starting a WISP for yourself or your neighborhood...
http://www.geekspeed.net/~beetle/download/cawnet/
Good luck!
Does anyone have a source for inexpensive free-standing towers?
*walks out to hotwire neighbor's truck*
I don't understand it. I see WISP's charging from $300-$1000 for the hardware to get setup. That's just ridiculous. I started my WISP on $3500 with good equipment. The CPE's only cost me $180 to build. I've seen some for $235 that are not too bad. Then I see WISP's charging $100's per month for connections. The lowest priced connections that I've seen are around $50 a month. I charge $25 a month for my connections. It only takes 32 customers to pay for my T1. I can put 80 customers per T1.
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