Slashdot Mirror
Wheat Field Wi-Fi
An anonymous reader writes "The world's largest wireless network is not the proposed network in Philadelphia. It's in Walla Wall, Washington. Built by the Columbia Rural Electric Association, the network covers an area larger than the state Rhode Island. The network is already operational in the rural Washington State farming community of Walla Walla."
The cost of the service ranges from $39.95 per month for 256 kilobits per second to $259.95 per month for 1.5 megabits per second, speeds that are five times to 30 times faster than dial-up connections. Husted, who plans to start marketing the service this month, expects 200 more customers by the end of the year.
Are they charging so much money because of lack of a userbase (100 people or so) or because of the amount of land covered? Chaska, MN has wireless coverage bursting to 3mbs bi-directional for $15.99 (residential) or $24.95 (commercial). I don't exactly see how $39.95 a month for 256k is all that fantastic. At that point you might be better off just staying with a $9.95 cheapo-ISP. YMMV I suppose.
Exactly how can the Chaska service provide such cheap service? I am trying to calculate the costs necessary to do a WISP and I simply can't see how that would work unless it is rediculously oversold, as in the 3mbps is the entire internet connection. Chaska also only covers subdivisions.
I'd say the $40 service for 256k is still a good price because the area probably doesn't get 28k modem service.
It's good to see the Vivato phased array packet steering technology get a serious deployment. I've been pushing some smaller metro areas around the PNW to look at deploying that but the wireless mesh technology has been easier to justify since it is more incremental with fewer single points of failure. I'm glad the guys out east took the plunge so the rest of us can learn if this is really going to be as much of a revolution as it potentially could be.
Seastead this.
I haven't seen a T1 cost less than $400 in my area, typical prices often go to $600. But you could split the bill between two businesses and only pay $200 each of two businesses, assuming you can set up a stable link
In my past experience working for an ISP in rural SD, most customers do get at least 28.8. Getting more than 28.8 becomes difficult but often a good modem will get you higher speeds on a crappy phone line. Personally I had a line with some static and went from around 32 to 53.3 just from buying a really good US Robotics external modem. I am talking about actually telneting into the portmaster at the ISP and checking the connection speed. We always recommended customers do this, and it often worked ery well.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Rhode Island: 1,045 square miles
Is saying "big as Rhode Island" supposed to be more impressive than 1000 square miles or so? 33.3 miles by 33.3 miles?
Pretty big, but not so thrilling if you use numbers rather than impressive sounding fake measurements. Especially over mostly flat land.
A "library of congress" isn't as big as you think it is, either. Impress me with measurements in terabytes and petabytes, not "library of congresses".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
What's the latency like on a mesh like this?
Satellite isn't that expensive, but the latency is awful, making it useless for online gaming, etc.
Also, what kind of usage policies are in place? I'd imagine since everyone has to "share", I'd eat up my share of the pie pretty quickly.
In a neighbourhood like mine, where Comcast has a bit of a struggle providing enough bandwidth on the cable to keep us all online, how well would a wireless mesh like this work?
In a 1000 square mile area where I live, I could easily see 1000 people online at once, dragging everyone down to sub-dialup speeds.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Because satellite service sucks ass.
Especially in an area as overcast and rainy as Washington state.
Even when you are connected, the latency is god-awful as all your packets go to space and back.
Then after two days of light web browsing and reading email, they decide arbitrarily that you've abused the system, and FAP you down to speeds much slower than dial-up.
I looked into satellite when I was land-locked on an island and had no other broadband options. I had a really hard time finding anyone with anything good to say about it (DirecPC at the time).
Don't know about the newer services, StarBand, etc. But I haven't heard any rave reviews on that front either.
Besides, if you wanted to game online, satellite wont work. 40 bucks a month to a gamer is nothing.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Here's a small example of how the internet has changed farming:
In southern Ontario, where I'm from, a whole lot of ginseng farms started springing up all over. There's a growing demand for it in North America, and a huge demand in asia.
Typically, a farmer would harvest his crop, sell it all to a distributor for a fixed price, who would then take it from there. Everyone get's 10 cents a kilogram, or whatever.
Now, I happened to be friends with a farmer who switched to growing ginseng. And he told me what makes it so lucrative. The crop itself isn't worth a whole hell of a lot, and it's somewhat harder to grow. To just sell it bulk, it's not very attractive.
But, what he told me is, every harvest, he and whoever he can get, sit around picking through the ginseng roots looking for ones that "look like stuff".
If you find a root that looks like an animal in the Chinese zodiac, that little root can be worth HUGE ASS BUCKS to little chinese apothecarys.
What the internet does is connect him, the farmer, to the chinese guy who wants to buy a ginseng root imbued with the magical powers of the Rabbit.
He showed me a lumpy looking root which if you squinted, you could kind of see a pig in it. He told me he'd just sold it on ebay for $5,000. He told me of a friend got 20 grand for a big one that looked "like a dragon".
It's like finding a four leaf clover, except you can actually trade it to a leprechaun for a pot o' gold.
This is all on top of the regular profit for the crop, which would just barely keep the farm going year to year.
The internet really makes this type of thing possible. There's no way this could be done before.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This is merely just an ISP that is delivering broadband wirelessly. Pretty cool though, that they can cover such a large area that normally would be hard pressed to get a reliable 56k connection (our plants out in the wheats there have no end of dial-up trouble).
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
...because its big and flat--a great obstruction-free place to put up a big tall transmitter. Wheat fields--those next to railway tracks in particular--tend to be home to grain elevators, or the larger, modern grain terminal equivalents. These structures are very tall and are an ideal mounting point for transmitters.
Community Networks is a company in Alberta, Canada that runs a broadband ISP for rural residents near the city of Calgary called EFirehose (I do not work for them but my parents still reside on the farm and are happy customers that switched from Telus due to foot-dragging in providing more than marginally acceptable telephone service, much less the DSL service they promised would come some day--but that's another story).
I am not sure about the exact area of coverage, but based upon the list of rural communities they serve I KNOW it is also significantly bigger in area than the Philadelphia proposal. Community Networks also provides wireless broadband to some rural schools using highly directional antennae. For example, I believe the school in Bassano is served by a signal beamed from 100s of kms away in Calgary.
I'm not sure exactly where the claim of worlds largest hotspot came from in regards to Philly, but perhaps it has to do with population since the larger areas covered by wireless in Washingston State and Alberta serve rural areas. Also, the Alberta service is a private venture and is not wide-open to public use. However it is fairly cheap--about CA$40 or US$30 per month for 1 to 2.5 megabit connectivity, and for more money you can get business service, including 5 megabit connectivity and static, public IP addresses--great for rural facilities that wish to maintain their own setup for email servers, VPN gateways to main offices in the city, etc.
"Outskirts"? What about the other 4500 farmers out there that aren't within a mile of WW city limits? Communities like Touchet, Lowden, Prescott, Wallula and the isolated ranches in between? Those towns are still without the luxury of cable tv, let alone broadband internet
Remember, its called GNU/Linux, but pronounced "Linux".
I live near Seattle. As it happens, I just visited Walla Walla for the first time in my life. I wanted to get onion rings. I went to the local brew pub, and asked if they used Walla Walla onions in their rings; the server told me that they buy their onion rings pre-made, in frozen boxes, and that they are not in fact made from Walla Walla onions. "I don't think any place in town serves Walla Walla onion rings," she told me. "Well, probably during Onion Festival."
I told her that I would have to wait until I got home to get some Walla Walla onion rings, then; a local burger chain (called Kidd Valley) sells Walla Walla onion rings.
In summary: if you want to try Walla Walla onion rings, don't go to Walla Walla.