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Australia's Great Linux-Based Satellite Network
yBshy4 writes "This article may interest the Slashdot folk. LinuxWorld Australia is reporting on Australia's largest satellite network, covering some 800,000 square kilometres, or most of the state of New South Wales, has gone live. The network consists of 75 Linux-based satellite routers that provide Wi-Fi (802.11b) connectivity to country towns that are unable to get DSL. The routers are engineered by Ursys and run Debian providing gateway services such as DNS and mail. According to the article, Ursys chose Debian 'because of its packaging support, which facilitates the ability to push updates to the routers remotely.' Ursys tried to use Windows but it was 'too unstable.' Hopefully this is an important step to providing better Internet access to regional areas across Australia. Anyone know of similar Internet access projects around the world?"
"$3500 per month for 1GB per month"
Now surely that's in Australian currency, but that still sounds expensive to me.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Wake me up when Linux is running on the satellites
This is not my opinion. Actually, it's not even an opinion. And I'm nowhere to be seen near it
"Ursys tried to use Windows but it was 'too unstable.'"
Good thing, that would have been one big ass Clippy to deal with.
Slashdot sucks
For sure, outback australia has some real problems getting internet access. Everyone has moaned to Telstra for ages about this, so it's good to see soemthing get done about it.
Australia likes the idea of wireless.... or at least we don't want to have to look at masses of wires all over our skyline.
There was a broadband cable rollout some years back, and a lot of residents complained that the extra overhead cable would wreck their view and lower their houses values due to the nasty look of an extra cable floating above them. Several local councils petitioned to have the cables dug underground, but after a feasibility test was done, putting the cables underground was found to be too expensive.... so the phone company did nothing in those areas. Now the local governments that protested the cable roll-out are all stuck using dial-up modems.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I have heard of this also happening in parts of South America and, I think, Africa. But this leads to another question.
Is this sort of access going to be used in the US? I live in a rural area, and I cannot live on a farm and have DSL or cable. The only access I could use outside of town is DirectTV's access, which is very expensive. I even live in a populated area compared to Alaska, Wyoming, or Montana for example. Anyone know of a similar idea being done in the states? I for one would move and sign up.
As far as this being used in South America, I find it ironic they have wi-fi access but lack much more important technologies, such as better roads or medicine. Of course, the information and education provided by such access may lead to better conditions. This is a huge experiment in putting the cart before the horse.
As an IT consultant (and formerly an ISP guy) I am doing the end-customer support and installations for one of these POP's on the VIC/NSW border.
The Ursys guys run their own internal APT repository that all the BusiBox's update from (Yes, the BusiBox's are just normal rackmount PC's), allowing then to easy automate updates.
Their "web interface" is just a custom version of webmin.
I have no idea what the $3500/month for 1GB is about. I dont deal with the billing side at all.
But the service appears to work well. I am looking forward to see how much range we can get out here with the 802.11b gear, as ADSL is unlikely to come to most of these towns for many years.
"It's the smell! If there is such a thing." Agent Smith - The Matrix
Here in the states, every telecom subscriber is required to pay into the Universal Access Fund, which provided subsidies for those living outside of an economically viable service area to receive POTS.
This seems like a perfect application of said UAF funds...,
.35c/MB seems to be Telstra's default cost for data. This figure includes both transport of the data, as well as providing the data; some satellite network providers will give much cheaper transfer rates but you need to somehow supply the data to their uplink for them, meaning you need to pay extra for an internet link. (assuming you want the remote sites to have internet access)
The company I work for, SSI Micro, has provided full-mesh frame relay and Internet services over satellite throughout northern Canada, well into the high arctic, since early 2000. We continue to expand the number of communities we service across the north all the time. The Outback almost sounds like a walk in the park by comparison - assuming you don't mind snakes. We also recently deployed a six site satellite network in Zambia to provide Internet services to an international development organisation there. Certainly each of these remote regions provide their own set of challenges.
In addition to dial-up, we have always used wireless technologies as a last mile solution. We used 802.11 for many years in those applications, and continue to do so. Currently we are also working with Inukshuk to roll out MCS wireless services, as mentioned in an earlier Slashdot story, and it is simply an amazing technology. The broadband picture keeps getting better and better up here all the time.
Satellite is definitely here to stay. It is going to be a long time before every nook and cranny of this world is wired, and frankly, I hope it never is.
A company proposed an 802.11a wireless broadband network sharing a 2Mb leased line for our '6 village' area on the South Coast of the UK. We're not a million miles from civilisation (nearest big town is about 6 miles), but we're 'rural' and so our phone exchanges were not likely to be broadband enabled for a short while.
Monthly charges were about the same as POTS-based broadband, plus the client kit costs, but I felt that since there were quite a few small businesses in the area POTS broadband would happen eventually and so I stuck to my single channel ISDN.
At a kick-off meeting for the network, I raised concerns about the likelihood of POTS-based broadband coming to the area and diluting the wireless user base (it needed to maintain a certain number of subscribers to pay for the kit maintenance costs, power and also keep up the rental on the leased line), but was dismissed by those excited (IMHO) by the technology aspects of the system and perhaps the thrill of having a funny-shaped antenna on their roof!
Guess what, the company providing the infrastructure went bust before the roll-out was complete. I understand some of the kit may have been taken by creditors and so the system's now not intact and no buyer for the network installation could be found because many of those approached (about 10) realised that there was a local phone exchange likely to be broadband enabled 'sometime'. The final (post-going-bust) nail in the coffin was that broadband came to the area in December 2003 (2 months after the wireless provider went bust) via the local phone exchange.
The Australian solution looks like the right thing for the right demographics, the solution proposed in our area seemed to be pandering to the impatient and the technophiles, and not well thought out business-wise.
AT&ROFLMAO
For what its worth, http://www.latis.net.au uses around 200 linux based satellite routers to cover an area of some 1,349,130 sq km (520,902 sq miles) or so to provide internet services to primary and secondary schools across the Northern Territory in Australia...
For comparisons sake, the American state of Texas covers about 267,277 sq. miles (about 692,244 sq km)
Slashdot post review:
[*] mentions australia
[*] bashes windows
[*] praises linux
[*] mentions debian
[*] misleading headline (only the router runs linux)
[*] mentions wireless internet
[*] spell checked
Nice work, Tim!
A free and uncontrolled Internet could be very valuable under those conditions, and if the routers where hard to find, it could be a very powerful democratizing force.