I'm in a rural area of northern central Ohio. Cable stops about 3 miles south, and we're more than twice the maximum distance away from the telco equipment to get DSL.
But... Verizon offers EVDO coverage in the area!! The tower is at a park about 3 miles south of me. I'm using a Rev.0 card (Rev.A is the newer round of cards), so my latency is a little high. I usually see ~300ms or so on ping times. Download speed averages around 1mbit (.8 - 1.2). The upload speed is only 100k/s or so, but thats normal with EVDO.
The plan I have with Verizon is $59.99/month. The only problem with Verizon is that they have been known to cut customers off for using too much bandwidth (5GB+/month). I've gone over the limit once or twice, but not regularly. I haven't received "the letter" yet, so I'm continuing to be careful and enjoying my only reasonable option for broadband.
One trick that I found: I adjusted the TCP receive window to compensate a bit for the higher latency. I'm not having any problems with dropped packets, as my signal strength is great. I simply changed the setting to allow more data to be transfered before having to acknowledge (and pay the penalty with the high latency).
If you want to put the PCMCIA card in a desktop PC (as I have), PCI-PCMCIA cards are easy enough find. I'm using one made by SIIG, and it works fine. Was pretty cheap too.
You can get good external antennas and amplifiers if you need. Check out wilsonelectronics.com if you are interested in that sort of thing.
I have it mounted on a thick dowel rod that is in a patio umbrella base behind my desk. The dowel is cut so that the tip of the antenna is almost touching the ceiling. It works great for me.
They also sell directional antennas that could be mounted on a mast of some sort outdoors if you need to get better line of sight with the tower.
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I'll second this opinion.
/month). I've gone over the limit once or twice, but not regularly. I haven't received "the letter" yet, so I'm continuing to be careful and enjoying my only reasonable option for broadband.
I'm in a rural area of northern central Ohio. Cable stops about 3 miles south, and we're more than twice the maximum distance away from the telco equipment to get DSL.
But... Verizon offers EVDO coverage in the area!! The tower is at a park about 3 miles south of me. I'm using a Rev.0 card (Rev.A is the newer round of cards), so my latency is a little high. I usually see ~300ms or so on ping times. Download speed averages around 1mbit (.8 - 1.2). The upload speed is only 100k/s or so, but thats normal with EVDO.
The plan I have with Verizon is $59.99/month. The only problem with Verizon is that they have been known to cut customers off for using too much bandwidth (5GB+
One trick that I found: I adjusted the TCP receive window to compensate a bit for the higher latency. I'm not having any problems with dropped packets, as my signal strength is great. I simply changed the setting to allow more data to be transfered before having to acknowledge (and pay the penalty with the high latency).
If you want to put the PCMCIA card in a desktop PC (as I have), PCI-PCMCIA cards are easy enough find. I'm using one made by SIIG, and it works fine. Was pretty cheap too.
You can get good external antennas and amplifiers if you need. Check out wilsonelectronics.com if you are interested in that sort of thing.
I use this antenna (without an amplifier):
http://wilsonelectronics.com/ViewProductB.php?ID=1
I have it mounted on a thick dowel rod that is in a patio umbrella base behind my desk. The dowel is cut so that the tip of the antenna is almost touching the ceiling. It works great for me.
They also sell directional antennas that could be mounted on a mast of some sort outdoors if you need to get better line of sight with the tower.
-SF