How a Group of Rural Washington Neighbors Created Their Own Internet Service (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes with a story that might warm the hearts of anyone just outside the service area of a decent internet provider: Faced with a local ISP that couldn't provide modern broadband, Orcas Island residents designed their own network and built it themselves. The nonprofit Doe Bay Internet Users Association (DBIUA), founded by [friends Chris Brems and Chris Sutton], and a few friends, now provide Internet service to a portion of the island. It's a wireless network with radios installed on trees and houses in the Doe Bay portion of Orcas Island. Those radios get signals from radios on top of a water tower, which in turn receive a signal from a microwave tower across the water in Mount Vernon, Washington.

Comments

Re:Lightning?

[wbr1]

I have seen lightning travel through 200ft+ of rg6 coag, much of it buried. Al the way up to the house where it had a ground tap, saving the house. The cable had blown itslef out of the ground, 6 inches deep, making the dirt into glass. Without proper supression/grounding the current will find its way down ethernet and FUCK SHIT UP.