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Always-On Internet For Cheapskates?
chuck writes "I like my broadband Internet access because of its always-on nature, but my usage doesn't really justify paying $40-$50 each month for hundreds of kb/s when all I really do is read and write email sporadically, light web browsing and IM. Are there any options for cheapskates like me to pay less for lower bandwidth (modem speeds would be fine) but still have an always-on connection for cheaper than cable or DSL? I have a $5/mo ISP that I use when I'm out and about, and my 2.5G wireless phone can give me internet access on a shoestring (with free evenings and weekends) but neither of those has that always-on quality. Any ideas?"
Piggyback on your neighbor's unsecured WAP. :-)
Or atleast co-oping with some neighbors to save money.
feel like you're always on by having your computer connect as you enter the room ;)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Make sure everybody calls your cell and use your land line for internet. I did that for about two years before DSL was available in my area.
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Except that a 2nd phone line+dialup costs the same as broadband, so you might as well get the broadband.
my usage doesn't really justify paying $40-$50 each month for hundreds of kb/s
Cancel your cable TV subscription and get BitTorrent. Your broadband cost will suddenly be justified.
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I've never had my DSL/Cable connection go out on . . .
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
Unfortunately, most "unlimited" dial-up plans are actually hour-limited. If you read the TOU carefully, they'll tell you what "unlimited" means, but it's typically a high (but not impossible) number of hours per month. If you pass that limit, you'll either get blocked for the rest of the month, or charged a very large amount, depending on the ISP. Not every ISP will catch you, and those that do won't catch you every time, but if you keep a dial-up connection up 24/7 for months on end, any ISP you use will notice sooner or later and take some action.
The best thing to do is ask when you sign up for the ISP. They may have a more expensive dial-up plan that allows you to stay up 24/7/365. It might cost you $30/mo rather than $10/mo, but that's still cheaper than $50/mo broadband.
But then you're sucking up the cost of the phone line PLUS the dial up account. That would cost at least as much as cheap DSL.
some of them have slower connections that you can get for less money(though they don't like to advertise them). For example, the cable at home I can get for $25, or you can get a faster connection for about $40, of course YMMV
Monstar L
BellSouth offers DSL Lite; a 256/128 dsl circuit for $24.95 per month. Perhaps your local DSL provider offers something similar.
Or, download NetStumbler and sniff out an open WAP in your neighborhood and leech bandwidth. There are about 5 I can reach from my house.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Find a neighbor who's got wireless and offer to pay half the cost. My landlord got wireless a few months ago. I was still on dialup at home at the time, but I had wireless in my laptop for hitting the hotspots. He told me to go ahead and use his connection, since he's paying for it anyway. (I did offer to cover half of the cost, but he simply repeated that he's paying for it anyway, so he didn't care.)
You could try a single ISDN(56k), though it might be more expensive than broadband anyway.
Your only other option is a dial up connection. If you want it to be dedicated however, you'll need a dedicated phone line. That will run ~ $16 - $25 Dollars US add in $5 mo. for your dial-up provider. Worst case you are at $30 best case $21.
The trick is to use a dial on demand linux box. You can have a script that will automatically dial into your provider. When you get kicked, it calls back. Couple this with an ethernet card and you'll have a gateway, and even a hardware firewall to protect you from all the evils that would have their way with your box. You can also use this machine for common services such as a caching DNS server which will speed up page load times over dial-up and as a mail gateway which also speed up perceived mail send times.
I am From Romania :( and we have 2 choises dial-up at 16.4kb/s at 8 euro/month or cable at 256kb/s 2Gb(9$), 4Gb(15$), 8Gb(20$), 16Gb(29$). And of course fiber (2Mb/s) at more than 1000$/month
Think like a hacker, act like a hacker, but never become a hacker !
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Ask ISP's around if they still do ISDN. Granted, it's 128K, but since most everyone's broadband, the price should be cheap now. Plus, you don't need to light both B channels all the time. Keeping the D channel lighted at 9600 bps for small stuff will keep you online all the time anyway for monitoring (like POP or long, slow downloads), and for harder stuff (regular downloads, surfing, etc) you can light the B's up.
--
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$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Okay, let's consider alternatives to always-on.
Autodial gets you a good portion of the way there. A good autodialer should take only a couple of seconds, in other words, not much longer than you need to focus on the screen anyway.
A cronjob can fetch your email periodically, so you can glance at your screen and see that you have mail. And you don't care if there's a few seconds delay on your outbound mail; let your MTA deal with that.
As for webbrowsing... hmmmm, that's a bit tougher.... Okay, here's one. Put in a proxy. If the net connection is up, then it just works transparently. (And by the way, Squid really does seem to speed up my web fetch times, even from the same computer!) If the connection is down, it brings it up, sure, but what to do in the meantime? Well, if you're visiting /., then it says "Nothing to see here, move along". If you're not, then it redirects to the same URL with a typo (so you'll assume you screwed up), and then displays a parking page. Okay, that sounds pretty authentic.
IM? Piece of cake: grab an IRC server and a bunch of Eliza-bots.
Okay, you're all set! Always-on experience, on a dialup budget!
Can anyone speak to using "Amateur Radio" equipment to do this? I think the only ongoing costs would be power -- up-front costs include equipment and licensing, but I think you could get there (modem speed always-on) for under $100 on a budget, and possibly closer to megabit for 1k USD. I also hear that a) you can get into big trouble if your unlicnsed, and b) can lose your license and/or get into bigger trouble if you abuse your licensed privileges. IIRC there are no-code packet license now, which means you don't *have* to learn morse code to pass. This also uses some already-established [public?] radio infrastructure, namely repeaters, if I've made any sense of the subject at all... IANAH (hammer). Am I way off here, folks?
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Be happy with what you have. I just moved to Lebanon, waited 6 months for a "high speed" connection. That's 30KB/s downloads and 12KB/s upload for a whopping $120USD/mo. I'd take your connection and prices anyday. Funny thing is, this is $200USD/mo. cheaper than the dialup since you pay/min. here. haha...
A computer is only as smart as the person sitting infront of it.
From having had numerous friends and family members bemoan that "I just don't use the Internet that much!" as justification for not getting DSL/cable, in 100% of the cases, they've all had worlds open up when they saw how painless things became once their access was so dramatically faster. (Waiting several seconds for a single page like Yahoo! to download gets tedious quickly.)
Their faster access meant more Internet usage (now they're paying bills online, banking, and shopping for instance), which in turn meant they "needed" the higher speed conenction.
Very quickly, they realize how much more than just faster speed, the faster speed meant.
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"Mo-dem speeds"? Wassat?
light DSL is usually maximally 128Kbits down, but it's ( a very gimped, usually for people that barely qualify for ) DSL.
they usually charge around 15-20ish dollards a month for that kind of DSL access up here in montreal, canada, and it would solve the always-on, cheaper for bling problem you're having.
As for me, nothing will make me part from my fixed ip 3meg adsl line for 60 canadian a month.
Peace and happyness to you, by LullySing
Speakeasy.net will allow you to sublet your DSL connection (not sure of any other providers that officially support this). You might look into just making back some of your cost by subleting out connections to a few neighbors over wireless. Offer a wireless connection and maybe a few other services and price according to how many subscribers you have (maybe divide the cost of the connection evenly?)
I have a friend who does this, and has had some pretty good luck. Biggest thing to watch out for if you do that is to have some sort of document outlining what exactly you offer (especially that you have no uptime garuntee, and what, if any, tech support you offer, and when).
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This isn't really the solution but it's the on we used 10 years ago to send email. Wow.. Things have really changed in the past 10 years.
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This is not a plug. I'm just a happy consumer, er, I mean, customer ;-)
Exactly. I was on "Unlimited" access with DelaNET. After being online for a bit, I started getting e-mails, something to the effect of:
"By unlimited, we do not mean unlimited. You are using your connection without limit, which is not the meaning of unlimited. You can't possibly use your connection 24/7. What you're doing falls under the category of business connectivity, and if you keep staying online, your rates will shoot up into the hundreds of dollars per month." (from joybenz@delanet.com)
I'm not kidding.
I wrote a script to stop pppd at 2AM and restart it at 6AM. No more annoying emails!
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I am network admin in one of the larger volunteer networks in the area (Copenhagen, Denmark). We get internet for ~$8.7 a month (50 DKr). We share a 45 mbit line between 2400 apartments, of which 1400 have internet service. Commercial ISP's have about the same bandwidth for that amount of users, perhaps even less.
The cheapest DSL is still 3 times more expensive and I frequently download stuff at 20 mbit. We also provide TV and POTS, equally cheap. Switches in the basements, copper to the apartments, fibre between switches and buildings. Been a huge work, but quite fun and worth it.
You can get started with lot less, just share an single DSL between 10-20 apartments. Here such networks are all the rage, popping up everywhere anytime.
I use Cox Communications Basic service for broadband over cable. They don't list it on their site but you can call and ask for it. It's $25 a month and 256Kbps downstream & something like 64Kbps upstream.
I think your going about this the wrong way. While you might not NEED the speed of high speed Internet, you admit you want the convenience of always on service.
I would urge you to look in a different direction. Instead of dropping the HSI, (high speed Internet), I'd drop my analog telephone service and switch to a VoIP provider. Depending on the optional services and amount of long distance, you could save $40 or much more each month by using an unlimited VoIP package from Vonage, VoicePulse, AT&T, etc versus traditional telco rates. Since you also have a cellphone that apparently works at your home, there's really no downside to this scenario.
If you are dead set about nixing your HSI, your best option is to find an agreeable, nearby neighbor to share their HSI account. But if you do this, definately use wireless -- not copper -- to connect to his/her service. Differences in ground potential between houses can destroy equipment, cause a shock or even be a fire hazard.
You could use something like a Multitech RouteFinder RF500, or any other router that provides a serial port to use an external modem for ISP dial-up. This would give you an always-on dial-up connection. However, since a bare POTS line for your always-on Internet is around $22/mo, plus a bare-bones, unlimited dial-up ISP is another $10/mo, when you add in taxes and fees, you're maybe going to save $5 - 15 per month: not worth it in my view.
ISDN, at least in the USA, is probably not an attractive option, since most telco's charge per minute of use per B channel, plus the ISP's usually charge a higher rate for access. Where the telco does offer unlimited data service it's at a considerably higher rate than $50/mo. So you'll pay more for slower speed via ISDN.
I know several people who have "cut the cord" to the phone company and rely solely on VoIP over the Cable Internet and cellphone for voice calls. They save an average of $30/mo and are quite satisfied with the quality and reliability.--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
I'm not sure where you live and who your baby bell is but....my DSL ISP, BellSouth, offers what they call DSL Lite, which is always on but has much lower bandwith for less cost, $24.95 a month.
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http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/index
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If you want cheap broadband, move to Saskatchewan. I get 1.5 Mb up, 300 Kb down ADSL for $25 Canadian/month, and you can get 64 kb download speed package (extra-light) for like $12/month. You just have to deal with the shatty weather.......... Older Price List for Sasktel
Pull my dongle!
It's possible/probable that Vonage doesn't have enough frequency band to support a modem.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Offer to secure your neighbor's wireless network for him if he'll let you piggyback, since your bandwidth needs are minimal.
When I was on Mindspring before Earthlink swallowed them, I had my linux server dialed into Mindspring 24/7, when the call was dropped, pppd would autorespawn and redial out. After a while, I would receive emails saying that it's against TOS to run an FTP server etc... which I wasn't doing, I just wanted the always-on type of connection. Mindspring's setup forced the modem to redial every 24 hours, but I was never denied service or charged for fully using the connection. They'd always quote me as using 43,200 minutes or more for that month, basically the numbers said that I split my time between being connected and dialing the modem.
However, the minutes aren't exactly accurate because if I was disconnected and redialed, their servers wouldn't update themselves that I disconnected, so for a short time, it would look like I was logged in twice simultaneously. This wasn't a problem until Earthlink screwed everything up, causing busy signals, and crap. After Earthlink came along, I got charged for simultaneous logins. I called the people and asked "wtf?" and they parroted the problem and TOS. I asked them what phone numbers were used on my account to call in and they said "they are all phone number whatever". I blew their mind and asked "How could my modem be connected to two other modems at the same time?". Either the person on the telephone understood and credited me the charge on the next bill or silence fell over the phone.
I'm surprised no one's linked to Paul Boutin's How To Steal Wi-Fi (and how to keep the neighbors from stealing yours)
[o]_O
Why not get VOIP and get rid of your phone instead, you'll save enough money on phone bills to justify the broadband connection. Also host your own site if you have one, seems better to find a good use for the bandwidth you have, rther than to get rid if it altogether. M
Here in New Zealand we have to modulate our own data transfer by beating drums down the phone line, and Telecom New Zealand still charges us a hefty surcharge for the privilege.
Seriously, acceptable quality dial-up Internet for $US10 sounds luxurious to me, while $US25 for 256K with a limit above 3GB sounds like science fiction.
Telecom New Zealand sucks arse.
If you're reading this, and you work for Telecom New Zealand, SHAME ON YOU.
DISCLAIMER: First off, know that I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever played one on or off of TV. This comment is not legal advice or legal analysis, despite any evidence to the contrary, and any reliance you take on it is evidence of your own stupidity, and you assume the risk inherent in so doing.
But something I've heard about from law school professors (don't ask what I was doing in a law school classroom, I'm not a lawyer, remember?) is that we have a doctrine of adverse possession and its related cousin, prescriptive easement. Adverse possession lets you take ownership of land if you've been trespassing on it for 20 years if you have used it as if you were the legitimate owner for all that time. Prescriptive easements don't require exclusivity or possession - you just have to use property for a long time and then you get to keep using it in the same way forever. Also, the statutory period is often lower for prescriptive easements, like 5 or 10 years.
Enter the digital age. If you use your neighbor's wireless for 5 years straight, you could convince a (very gullible) court to grant you an easement that ensures your neighbor never gets rid of his wireless connection or tries to lock you out of it. And that burden would probably run with his apartment or home, so no future tenant or owner could lock you out of his wireless or cancel his Internet connection.
Yes, the non-lawyer in me definitely thinks this is a good idea.
For $29 dollars you can get 128k DSl from sympatico, without needing an extra phone line. Your paying $50 for dial up. Hmmm.
That' what my parents have, and it just what this guy wants. He needs to research local options.
I bought DSL for some friends as a present for a year for $25 per month from Sonic.net. From what my friends have told me they have been very happy with the service. If you look somewhere like DSLReports.com you might find that DSL in your area costs less than you think.
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