Slashdot Mirror
Dealing With Dialup
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like my parents may end up stuck having to use dialup to access the Internet from their cottage inside the Cape Cod National Seashore. Neither Comcast nor Verizon want to bother upgrading the hardware required to get them faster service. They could put a satellite dish on their roof, but it's a 300-year-old house and they feel a dish would be as prohibitively ugly as running dedicated lines would be prohibitively expensive. I've suggested they get familiar with a text-only email client; I also suggested they talk with their senators and local political reps. , Are there other ways they can increase the functionality despite the pitiful bandwidth? Any other good ideas? Any success stories you can share where people have finally got the bandwidth they crave?"
if email is the biggest issue, a pda that gets wireless intarwebs from cell towers could be the solution. i hears talk that their making ones that are actually faster than wired broadband.
We've had problems with our broadband being capped down to dial up speeds from time to time (Virgin sux), and I purchased one of those USB Modem sticks.
Speed isn't super fast, about 750MBS, but it does the job.
We're Mac users and have one in each room. We put the USB modem on an iMac, configure it to share its internet connection via airport, and we're happy.
A message from our sponsor
There are some companies offering (expensive) wireless broadband on 5 GHz. Maybe not on the tip of the Cape, though. When I checked, they were priced like T1s...prohibitively expensive.
I'm guessing they're not able to get DSL.
There's also the possibility of using WiFi access points and directional antennas to create a point-to-point link with someone who has broadband. I did this for my brother and it works well, just need that person willing to share their broadband connection.
or just place it under the roof. They sell purpose-made fiberglass roof tiles that will match the existing ones after a little creative weathering, and are microwave transparent.
Do not know the distance we are talking about, but sounds like there won't be anything prohibitive on line of sight.
:) Here's one: http://demi0urgos.livejournal.com/5924.html
Closest neighbour who can have a fast connection, arrange with them to setup a WiFi, but not with regular uni-directional antennae, use directional, big one.
More precise you can align the antennaes, the further you can reach with better bandwidth. To avoid the bad looks, you could hook it up in a tree too.
If you are DIY type, there's lots of DIY tutorials to make one yourself on the cheap, which is just as good or better than some which costs insane high bucks. Just google "DIY WiFi Directional Antenna"
Picture: http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=smalllabattstilt2nr.jpg
Used: Beer can, some copper wiring, and some household items.
You actually can get quite damn good distances with this kind of setup, alternatively, you guys might want to ask if you could use signal boosters to amplify the strength of signal, but beware, there's very good reasons why by default the output is weak, but that's mostly directed towards to areas where there is other users.
Also, get the best hardware you can find on sane prices, using some cheap D-Link crap or something like that, is plain shooting yourself on the foot, they don't even work for 10 feets, nevermind 10miles no matter what kind of antenna you use.
Also, by nature WiFi is not very reliable, but setup well, it should work fine most of the time.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
$60 gets you 5 GB (over 1 month) from Verizon. service is not unlimited.
Since I am a loser... I checked 90% of the cape cod national seashore is covered by sprint's "Sprint Mobile Broadband Network (avg 600 kbps - 1.4 mbps download, 350 kbps - 500 kbps upload)" with the highest quality signal.
And at 60 Dollars a month you have nothing to complain about.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
Go with the flow :-)
Use mobile websites where possible eg http://m.gmail.com./
Many websites still have have text pages - use them.
Ordinary email clients, such as Thunderbird work well at dialup speeds.
They are also free to contact their political representatives. I don't think anyone needs to protect the poor old telecoms from the oppression of providing universal broadband coverage. The telecoms are doing just fine and benefit much more from government assistance then they spend in compliance with their few remaining service obligations.
That said, Cape Cod is already whipping up solutions. Put the folks in contact with Open Cape, and they will probably be able to find a wifi provider that has or plans to provide service to their area. http://www.opencape.com/
Worse case scenario, they can buy a laptop and access broadband in the city. You don't HAVE to have broadband at home. It's ok to sit in a cafe once in a while, and you could call them instead of emailing.
I wouldn't know myself, but I understand that there are still some people actually communicating in analog. Sounds primitive, I know. I understand ROTFL is actually considered rude, but apparently LOL is still ok in person.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
I was surprised it took this many replies for someone to suggest Verizon or Sprint. I love my EVDO sprint connection, it works great - I even tethered my laptop to my Treo on a recent trip and it worked great going down the road (I was a passenger). We even shared my Internet connection and had two laptops (via crossover cable) connected. Assuming the EVDO svc is available, I think that would be the ideal solution. It is also something they could use while traveling or away from a landline HS connection.
Illiterate? Write for free help!
Mount the dish at ground level and put a fake rock over it. This has been a very common solution, and the rock-like covers are available from several sources for a few hundred dollars.
I use these for commuting, and even the Edge cards are faster than dialup (although there is a longer lag time, the actual speeds seem to be faster). We just upgraded to a 3G card through AT&T, and it is noticibly faster. It they have a desktop rather than a laptop, most of the major cellular providers do offer USB devices as well.
I will point out that you are looking at spending around $50-$60 a month for unlimited access for speeds that hover around 200k-300k a second. Its fine for using HTML e-mail, and most websites. Even using VPN, having Outlook sync up with my RSS Feeds, Exchange Server, and GMail account, only takes about 45 seconds over 3G (I have a LOT of RSS Feeds), and that is only when you first launch the program, of course once launched, it constantly checks mail, so its not that big of an issue.
I should point out that VPN over a cellular modem is flaky at best, and practically useless if you are moving in a vehicle.
If you use a wireless transmitter, like something from Tranzeo, and a yagi antennae, you can get up to 25 miles at high speed (1.5-3.5Mbps up to 54Mbps). This doesn't have to be set up on the house, you can put it on a 25' to 40' tower. Check out their website and see if they have a solution.
The OP indicates it is a summer home by use of the word "cottage". In the U.S. the term "cottage" is never used to refer to one's primary residence. And a "cottage" on Cape Cod is something which is only available to the obscenely wealthy.
The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal
Here's a summary of the relevant points:
Wouldn't you like your $2000 back?
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
People read "cottage on Cape Cod" and immediately assume the owners must be wealthy. That's actually unlikely to be true. In fact, the only private cottages inside the Cape Cod National Seashore are relics. The Park Service would just as soon they were destroyed, but they are grandfathered into the law when the land was designated as national parkland. They cannot be sold outside the family which owned them historically, only handed down through the generations. They are mostly tiny, weatherbeaten shacks, and they cannot be updated or expanded. Many were once the homes of poor artists, now used as vacation homes by their descendants. Cape Cod was not always a playground for the rich.