For us what made the Coop possible was not so much money as the availability of volunteers with sufficient technical and legal experience. I would say that any community, low-income or not, that had such volunteers available could make a go of it.
Our patent law firm (www.patents.com) buys the connectivity from the upstream provider. Our patent law firm also hosts the rric.net web site. We then provide connectivity to the Coop for the DSLAM and we bill through to the Coop its share of the traffic cost. So the two previous slashdottings were paid for by our patent law firm, and today's slashdotting is being paid for by our patent law firm. The Coop won't have to pay for it.
As you will have picked up from the FAQs, our patent law firm is providing lots of things to the Coop free of charge. Access to the T1, the microwave system, tech support, legal support, and other things.
A chief advantage for us is that we needed to put our DSLAM in a barn that was owned by the neighborhood. Being a nonprofit coop was important to the neighborhood in giving us permission to use the barn.
As you may see in our FAQ, we do most of our monitoring with MRTG. See http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&e ntry=78084296 by the way.
Thank for the pointers to the other products.
We use MRTG on a per-port basis on the DSLAM. This is aggregate data -- nothing about MRTG records will indicate the IP addresses involved.
I am not aware of any requirement from the federal government that we should store any data. Can you elaborate on this requirement?
The first thing to know is that our subscribers who are likely to have higher traffic levels are using their connections for VPN and Netmeeting uses. Caching is no help with those uses.
Second, I don't think caching works except if one user happens to visit the *exact same* web site within a few hours that a previous user did. If the web site has changed during that time (as it would for many news sites such as the New York Times or news.com) the cache doesn't help much if at all.
We have a mere dozen users and I don't know that they very often visit the same sites as each other.
As may be seen from our web page, there are no "traditional ISPs" serving our area. No cable, no DSL.
The chief advantage that our model offers is that the subscriber gets to have a fast, always-on Internet connection.
Oh, and we offer a connection that lacks the cost and latency of satellite.
Well, we did expect it. We have been slashdotted twice in recent months and are quite accustomed to the traffic. As you can see at http://www.patents.com/mrtg/dillon3.html we are running at about one-third of a T1's worth of traffic.
For our Coop we have lightning protection at each end of each loop. At the DSLAM end we are using 16-volt solid-state fused protectors (described on our web site in the FAQ section). At each home we have the protectors provided by Qwest -- gas-discharge devices that trigger at 150 volts or so. Plus the cable is buried at all points (other than pedestals and end points) so lightning is less of a risk than it would be for above-ground cable.
What I said was:
"If you throw a dart at a map of the US, in general where it lands will be a place that has neither cable modem Internet access nor DSL."
I was misquoted.
Why didn't we "just lay down new copper"? It's a Frequently Asked Question and the answer has been on our web site for several weeks at http://www.rric.net/faq/nobury.htm .
Our homes are pretty far apart, not adjacent as in your neighborhood. This makes laying new copper a bigger issue than it was for you.
The ethernet distance is 300 feet, not 600.
Daisy-chaining works well only if everybody is home all the time, so that when a link goes out, you can get into that particular house to get it working again. Our people aren't home all the time.
The wire you are using does not have UV coatings, so it will get brittle and crumble, by the way.
Your question about why we didn't use satellite service is answered on our web site. See "Why don't you simply use a broadband satellite connection?" at http://www.rric.net/faq/nosatellite.htm .
This is a Frequently Asked Question, and thus several weeks ago we posted a page which answers it. http://www.rric.net/faq/nosatellite.htm .
It is inconceivable that a business satellite connection could be cheaper than our present frame relay T1 connection. And so what if we had hooked up a satellite connection for the backbone link -- we would still have needed a way to get the connection to everybody's house.
What a pity that you could not quote the paragraph that you were talking about. Here's what our web page (http://www.rric.net/faq/speeds.htm) really says:
"We will not, however, permit servers, at least not at first. We need to accumulate some experience with actual traffic levels and with our charges billed to us by our upstream provider. Any server that were to generate appreciable traffic would need to be paid for at a higher rate than the rate paid by other subscribers who merely
check email and visit web sites."
The point is to provide always-on service (which we will be doing) that is a lot faster than the 26K modem connections we get now (which we will also be doing).
As I believe I already explained, we will need to wait until we have had a few months of actual service before we can raise the speed limits. We are a nonprofit group working on a limited budget.
"the most important to the success of any system is an efficient billing system (and staff.) in a small scenario, this will be very costly but i do suggest outsourcing these billing requirements to companies."
We're a bunch of volunteers and can't afford to pay somebody to do billing.
Part of what we will do to try to reduce the burden is billing every three months, in advance. So there are 4N checks to deposit per year instead of 12N.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it surely involved an enormous amount of donated time. It is very gratifying to see the functioning service.
Our tech support is done by volunteers. That is sometimes a problem.
For us what made the Coop possible was not so much money as the availability of volunteers with sufficient technical and legal experience. I would say that any community, low-income or not, that had such volunteers available could make a go of it.
Two neighborhoods in our county are now working on setting up their own DSL coops, rather like ours. Our work was what got them thinking about it.
Our patent law firm (www.patents.com) buys the connectivity from the upstream provider. Our patent law firm also hosts the rric.net web site. We then provide connectivity to the Coop for the DSLAM and we bill through to the Coop its share of the traffic cost. So the two previous slashdottings were paid for by our patent law firm, and today's slashdotting is being paid for by our patent law firm. The Coop won't have to pay for it. As you will have picked up from the FAQs, our patent law firm is providing lots of things to the Coop free of charge. Access to the T1, the microwave system, tech support, legal support, and other things.
A chief advantage for us is that we needed to put our DSLAM in a barn that was owned by the neighborhood. Being a nonprofit coop was important to the neighborhood in giving us permission to use the barn.
As you may see in our FAQ, we do most of our monitoring with MRTG. See http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&e ntry=78084296 by the way.
Thank for the pointers to the other products.
In our neighborhood, your 56K modem would only get you 26K. (See the FAQ.)
It's in a metal cabinet. So far that has been enough. See http://www.rric.net/barn/ for a photo of the cabinet.
We use MRTG on a per-port basis on the DSLAM. This is aggregate data -- nothing about MRTG records will indicate the IP addresses involved. I am not aware of any requirement from the federal government that we should store any data. Can you elaborate on this requirement?
As described on our web site, we obtained our launch money in the form of loans from subscribers. There were no grants.
The first thing to know is that our subscribers who are likely to have higher traffic levels are using their connections for VPN and Netmeeting uses. Caching is no help with those uses. Second, I don't think caching works except if one user happens to visit the *exact same* web site within a few hours that a previous user did. If the web site has changed during that time (as it would for many news sites such as the New York Times or news.com) the cache doesn't help much if at all. We have a mere dozen users and I don't know that they very often visit the same sites as each other.
As may be seen from our web page, there are no "traditional ISPs" serving our area. No cable, no DSL. The chief advantage that our model offers is that the subscriber gets to have a fast, always-on Internet connection. Oh, and we offer a connection that lacks the cost and latency of satellite.
Well, we did expect it. We have been slashdotted twice in recent months and are quite accustomed to the traffic. As you can see at http://www.patents.com/mrtg/dillon3.html we are running at about one-third of a T1's worth of traffic.
For our Coop we have lightning protection at each end of each loop. At the DSLAM end we are using 16-volt solid-state fused protectors (described on our web site in the FAQ section). At each home we have the protectors provided by Qwest -- gas-discharge devices that trigger at 150 volts or so. Plus the cable is buried at all points (other than pedestals and end points) so lightning is less of a risk than it would be for above-ground cable.
Uh, it's Ruby Ranch. Not Ridge.
What I said was: "If you throw a dart at a map of the US, in general where it lands will be a place that has neither cable modem Internet access nor DSL." I was misquoted.
Why didn't we "just lay down new copper"? It's a Frequently Asked Question and the answer has been on our web site for several weeks at http://www.rric.net/faq/nobury.htm . Our homes are pretty far apart, not adjacent as in your neighborhood. This makes laying new copper a bigger issue than it was for you. The ethernet distance is 300 feet, not 600. Daisy-chaining works well only if everybody is home all the time, so that when a link goes out, you can get into that particular house to get it working again. Our people aren't home all the time. The wire you are using does not have UV coatings, so it will get brittle and crumble, by the way.
Your question about why we didn't use satellite service is answered on our web site. See "Why don't you simply use a broadband satellite connection?" at http://www.rric.net/faq/nosatellite.htm .
This is a Frequently Asked Question, and thus several weeks ago we posted a page which answers it. http://www.rric.net/faq/nosatellite.htm . It is inconceivable that a business satellite connection could be cheaper than our present frame relay T1 connection. And so what if we had hooked up a satellite connection for the backbone link -- we would still have needed a way to get the connection to everybody's house.
Our web page (http://www.rric.net/) says: "The Coop has launched service." It has said that for three weeks now.
What a pity that you could not quote the paragraph that you were talking about. Here's what our web page (http://www.rric.net/faq/speeds.htm) really says: "We will not, however, permit servers, at least not at first. We need to accumulate some experience with actual traffic levels and with our charges billed to us by our upstream provider. Any server that were to generate appreciable traffic would need to be paid for at a higher rate than the rate paid by other subscribers who merely check email and visit web sites."
The point is to provide always-on service (which we will be doing) that is a lot faster than the 26K modem connections we get now (which we will also be doing). As I believe I already explained, we will need to wait until we have had a few months of actual service before we can raise the speed limits. We are a nonprofit group working on a limited budget.
"the most important to the success of any system is an efficient billing system (and staff.) in a small scenario, this will be very costly but i do suggest outsourcing these billing requirements to companies." We're a bunch of volunteers and can't afford to pay somebody to do billing. Part of what we will do to try to reduce the burden is billing every three months, in advance. So there are 4N checks to deposit per year instead of 12N.
Yup, RFC 1591 lives, though only in the memories of a few people, I guess. When we were founded, RRIC.COM was taken. :)