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?"

Comments

pda?

[Pvt. Cthulhu]

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.

Re:pda?

[zoney_ie]

I don't know what it is like in the US, but here in Ireland we have 3G services, that the government even include in statistics as "broadband" connections. However, they do not actually provide good speeds in practice for most, as the service does not handle increased users well - the cell bandwidth gets divided out between the users and so just 20 or so means worse than dial-up speed and useless QoS. At the worst times it can be faster to switch to GPRS (2.5G)

Maybe Edge or whatever is used in the US is better, although I believe the top theoretical speeds are lower even if they do deliver better speed in practice.

----

As regards the OP question of how to cope with dial-up, I highly recommend NoScript for Firefox. Greatly reduces the load time for webpages (at least in my experience of seeing it on a browser using dual-channel ISDN). It by default blocks the worst web content - flash and javascript (e.g. loading graphics and animations from 3rd party ad servers). Simpler and more useful than Adblock, also fairer for website owners as you are not blocking ads specifically - just not handling certain types of content. You can easily whitelist javascript for domains for which it is essential.

For email, set up your email client (it doesn't need to be text only) to leave the emails on the email server - you can choose which ones to open up and download, and delete junk without downloading.

For downloading, it is useful to use a download client that can pause and resume downloads, or handle interruptions.

Two-way satellite works great except for the latency. You could always have the dish on the ground out in the garden if the house or shrubs etc. don't shadow the signal. Two-way sat has the advantage of being "always on" and you don't have the time-based billing of dial-up, also usable for downloading large amounts of data.

Re:pda?

[electrictroy]

(1) Get a satellite dish. "It's ugly" is an invalid excuse, especially since the dish could be mounted in the backyard where no one can see it. Maybe fill it with water to make an attractive birdbath (I'm joking). But seriously a dish in your yard looks better than some of the things I've seen sitting in people's lawns!

(2) Get Netscape ISP. It uses text & image compression to increase effective speeds upto 1000 kbit/s. While traveling I can load pages almost as fast with Netscape Dialup as with my home DSL.

(3) Another option is to select "don't load images" in Firefox or Internet Exploder.

As you can see from my signature, using dialup is not a tragedy. All of us had dialup from circa 1980 to 2000 and we survived. Your parents can too.

Re:pda?

[cayenne8]

"Times changes. Bandwidth inflation is a serious problem. Web pages don't clock in at under 10k anymore."

I agree. In the article, it kind of joked about getting used to a 'text email' client. Why is this a joke? Email is SUPPOSED to be text only, and somehow along the way, we've bastardized it into all kinds of HTML, with images, fugly wallpaper, etc...

Geez...it is now taking a couple of 'K' to send a simple 2 line email these days.

I try to keep all my email clients set to text only...both for receiving and sending. Last time I was forced to use Outlook...I couldn't easily get it set to do text only both ways...

Why isn't this set by default?

Wireless broadband

[Peter Simpson]

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.

Re:Potentially crazy suggestion:

[Brandano]

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.

Re:what about EVDO?

[aywwts4]

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.

Re:Why is "turn to government" the first solution?

[patrixmyth]

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.

Re:Potentially crazy suggestion:

[cdrudge]

they're living in an area where there's likely to be local ordinances against blatantly jarring or modern features on houses.

Such ordinances are illegal if they are only in place for aesthetic reasons. Local government or homeowner associations can't restrict placement if it's exclusive use property, doesn't present a safety concern, and doesn't alter the historic value of the property. The last one might be an issue here but I would be very surprised if it did. The only other exception is that if two locations are suitable to receive the signal, one of which is less obtrusive then the other, it can be required to use the less obtrusive location IF it's placement does not increase the cost of installation. So in other words, if the middle of the front yard or the middle of the back yard behind the house are the only two locations, then the backyard could be required to be used so it's out of sight from the front of the house. However I don't know how many people really wouldn't go with the less obtrusive, cheaper option anyways so it's almost a moot point anyways.

fake rock

[TheSHAD0W]

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.

Broadband Wireless Card

[gravis777]

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.

Re:Look on the brightside

[jafuser]

I agree, the government shouldn't force anyone to pay for it. But we already did pay for it:

The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal

Here's a summary of the relevant points:

The fiber optic infrastructure you paid for was never delivered.

Starting in the early 1990's, with a push from the Clinton-Gore Administration's "Information Superhighway", every Bell company - SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest - made commitments to rewire America, state by state. Fiber optic wires would replace the 100-year old copper wiring. The push caused techno-frenzy of major proportions. By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions, (to and from the customer) could handle over 500 channels of high quality video and be deployed in rural, urban and suburban areas equally. And these networks were open to ALL competition.

In order to pay for these upgrades, in state after state, the public service commissions and state legislatures acquiesced to the Bells' promises by removing the constraints on the Bells' profits as well as gave other financial perks. They were able to print money - billions of dollars per state - all collected in the form of higher phone rates and tax perks. (Note: each state is different.)

* ADSL is not what was promised and paid for. It goes over the old copper wiring, can't achieve the speed, has problems in rural areas and is mostly one-way.

* The public subsidies for infrastructure were pocketed. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.

* The World is Laughing at US. Korea and Japan have 100 Mbps services as standard, and America could have been Number One had the phone companies actually delivered. Instead, we are 16th in broadband and falling in technology dominance.

* Harm to the economy. Five trillion dollars was lost because new technologies and services that America would have developed, happened in Korea. Municipalities around America are waking up to the fact that the phone companies failed to deliver and are now doing Wifi and fiber-based work-arounds.

* The promised networks couldn't be built in 1993 and state laws were changed based on "deceptive speech". The technology today still has problems delivering 500 channels.

* The phone companies pulled a bait and switch. In order to offer DSL over copper, it was not necessary to have state regulation changed. Their plan was to get rid of regulations and enter long distance.

* The Bell mergers resulted in the death of the state plans for fiber optic broadband. Over 26 states had fiber optic projects closed when the mergers of SBC and Verizon were completed. That affected almost 80% of all phone customers in the US.

Wouldn't you like your $2000 back?

Re:Look on the brightside

[toocooleds]

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.