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How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service
- irixusr 11y agoOnce they pay off their loan, they could end up with the cheapest and faster internet services in the area. The irony.
- fraserharris 11y agoWell, a business would take the free cash flow and invest in expansion. Then again, a business would be paying the island's network operator and there would likely be no free cash flow.
- irixusr 11y agoI think what may happen is a big operator will invest a lot of money to make service there incredibly cheap and fast, killing the service. As a lesson to all you out there who'd dare challenge a communication company.
- acd 11y agoHere is one equipment from Ubiquity that you can use to built speedy point to point connection. 1.2Gbps on 100km link. https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/ https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/
- vezycash 11y agoThanks. I always assumed one could only get such distance with WIMAX
- noselasd 11y agoOr with a number of proprietary technologies(of which the airFibre is just one of many) - backhaul using point to point radios is used a lot in telcos and there's numerous (expensive) products available.
- lordnacho 11y agoHow do you aim it at the other end? It's 100km away?
- amazon_not 11y agoGPS.
- emilw 11y agoFor whoever downvoted the GPS answer, RTM. Please do, it's highly informative and very cool technical and educational material. If you refuse, please insert the F into the appropriate abbreviation and start this paragraph from the beginning.
- jonpaine 11y agoPlease make sure your loops converge. I read and modified this paragraph 3,984 times and then crashed.
- dingaling 11y agoNot sufficient. Civilian NavStar/ GPS has a 95th percentile accuracy of 7.5 metres and a best-case of around 2 metres. That's more than enough to miss by several dozen dish diameters at 100km.
- KaiserPro 11y agoat 100km it doesn't matter. Even with a beam divergences of 0.5 degrees 7 meters is literally a piss in the ocean: Look at the polar pattern here: http://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/airmaxyagi/airMAX_900MHz_YAGI_Antenna.pdf http://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/airmaxyagi/airMAX_900MHz_YAGI_... more importantly you have to fine tune the alignment anyway.
- amazon_not 11y agoMain alignment with GPS and then finetune to get maximum performance. At 100km the main signal lobe is quite large, so being off by a few dozen dish diameters isn't large enough of an error to not to be able to get started.
- Scoundreller 11y agoUp to 1.2gbps and up to a 100km link. I don't think you can get both.
- jlgaddis 11y agoI'm guessing you haven't actually used one of these units? You'll be lucky to get half of either of those values. FWIW, note that, unlike the majority of the network equipment industry, $UBNT's throughput numbers are aggregate values (i.e. equal to transmit + receive). 1.2 Gbps in $UBNT-speak, for example, means 600 Mbps transmit and 600 Mbps receive -- whereas an 1 Gbps NIC can transmit 1 Gbps and receive 1 Gbps simultaneously (yet we don't call them 2 Gbps NICs).
- oakwhiz 11y agoIn practice it's more like 10 to 20 km for max throughput.
- tkubacki 11y agoIs that guy using ubuntu on his laptop ?
- LeonM 11y agoIt does look like a unity interface, so yes I think so. But why would this surprise you? The guy is a software engineer after all...
- JetSpiegel 11y agoI'd expect Arch...
- mrbill 11y agoWhy? Lots of us "techies" don't like Arch.
- jaflo 11y agoThis is really cool. Honestly I'm surprised they still get 20Mbps after the data goes through multiple relays and a microwave connection. Are microwave links in widespread use for internet communication?
- JupiterMoon 11y agoYes.
- Marazan 11y agoDon't confuse high bandwidth for low ping. There are many high bandwidth high latency services - like satellite uplinks.
- mikeyouse 11y agoThere's a whole group of companies called "Wireless ISPs" [1] that make extensive use of microwave products from companies like Ubiqti and Mimosa. Depending on the backhaul, you can get gigabit speeds over unlicensed microwave spectrum in many locations. There's a WISP in San Francisco called Monkey Brains that is a really good alternative to Comcast if you have the space for a microwave antenna on your house. [2] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_provider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_prov... [2] - https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html
- GeneralMayhem 11y agoIn SF, I'd also recommend Webpass [1], which uses point-to-point microwave to get to apartment buildings and then piggybacks on phone data lines within the building. They're cheap (by American standards - $500/yr), fast (from 100/100 to 500/500 depending on the building, usually 5ms ping), and have great service (no installation fee, tech was on time to the minute and extremely knowledgeable). [1] https://www.webpass.net https://www.webpass.net
- pronoiac 11y agoHuh, I thought Webpass was about fiber to a hub for the building.
- privong 11y ago> The rural Orcas Island has a lot of hills and obstacles that could disrupt the wireless signals, and it would have been "prohibitively expensive" for DBIUA to install its own towers. As such, many of the radios had to be installed in trees. Presumably there will be movement of antennae as trees grow. One could monitor the alignment by periodically checking the signal strength between links. I wonder how often things will need to be realigned because the "tower" on which the radios sit changes with time.
- cortesoft 11y agoDepends on now close to the top of the tree the antennae is placed. Trees grow from the top, so anything below that won't move as the tree grows.
- WhyDoPeople 11y agoTrees also grow around the trunk and branches, thickening. Ever heard of counting the rings on a tree to tell its age?
- Swannie 11y agoAs the tree grows, the weight distribution changes, and things move. Trees grow from the leaves. Leaves are not just at "the top".
- rasz_pl 11y agoeven highly directional antennas arent, its usually >7 degrees
- p1mrx 11y agoNow that ARIN's run dry, it's gotten more difficult to start a proper ISP. Does their network support IPv6?
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> Now that ARIN's run dry, it's gotten more difficult to start a proper ISP. Only if you want static IPv4 addresses. And even then, they aren't impossible to come by.
- p1mrx 11y agoDynamic addressing only helps if the maximum number of simultaneous users is significantly less than the total number of subscribers. When you're connecting houses, that's generally not the case.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoYou don't need to hand out routable IPs at all. NAT should support roughly 64k simultaneous connections (not users) per IP.
- p1mrx 11y agoThe Web is not the Internet. If customers have no means to receive unsolicited packets, then you're not really an Internet service provider.
- lordnacho 11y agoThis is pretty awesome, but I wonder if it could have been done had there not been a network guy in the group? I've done a lot of network code/config over the years, and I wouldn't say it was particularly easy. The guy seems to say it was easy. Unbelievably fiddly is more like it. Just the nature of it makes it annoying: before you have a connection through, you have a chain of links that doesn't work. You have to fix every single link before Eureka.
- kuschku 11y agoIn my city, actually 2 different ISPs were started by a bunch of hackers trying to provider better internet for their own peers. It seems to be at least not impossible to do so.
- amazon_not 11y agoBuilding and running an ISP is the easy part. Being allowed to do so (regulation/facilities access) and making money are the hard parts.
- kuschku 11y agoWell, at least in Germany that is a lot easier – big ISPs have to rent you their lines at just above cost if the lines are older than 2 years. Which led to people often having dozens or more ISPs to choose from.
- exar0815 11y agoGood one. If you are lucky enough to be in a city. The majority of the cabling and infrasturcure was built by the Deutsche Post, when it was still government-owned. Now nearly all of that belongs to the Telekom, which have a massive tmonopoly, even though they have to rent their cabling too other companys for a low price. Problem is, there are very low infrastructure costs for everyone at the moment, leading to a very very fierce price battle at the internet market, which leaves no money for improvements of the infrastructure. In short, in Germany many people skipped from Modem/ISDN to LTE because they had no other choice for 15 years than to stay with Dial up connections.
- awqrre 11y agoI would like to be able to share my home network with my car within a 15+ km radius of my home... Maybe using a servo-controlled directional antenna on my car that would always point to my home using some sensors, or an unidirectional would be even better but I don't know if that is possible using open-spectrums.
- motoboi 11y agoConsidering the investment you'll need to make in antenas, equipments and such, unless you live in a poor coverage area, you'll be better with a 4G.
- allpratik 11y agoThis is really cool!! I always wish to setup such network amongst peers and get everybody connected with good b/w, especially in India. This kinda stuff can create marvels in emerging economies whose existing infrastructure is heavily loaded.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> “We monitor all the connections and if someone is using a lot of bandwidth for a long period of time, we talk to them and figure out what they are doing,” Sutton said. “Often times it's people watching Netflix and then falling asleep and then it keep auto-playing things all night long.” This is the kind of statement that makes me long for a faceless, impersonal ISP. As much as I'm impressed by a neighborhood banding together and coming up with a solution, the idea of a neighbor trying to "figure out" usage or "talk to" customers about it is horrifying. Hopefully they have a mechanism in place to allow everyone to burst to available bandwidth, but to throttle people to a sustainable proportion otherwise. Such a mechanism seems both necessary and sufficient, and given the professional equipment they're using, it seems quite likely to be available. When Comcast sends bandwidth usage nastygrams, people get up in arms about it; we talk about "network neutrality", and that ISPs should remain "dumb pipes". While the ability to introspect traffic at all is a bug that needs fixing in client and server software, to combat surveillance, at least with an ISP I'm reasonably confident that only 1) a trusted subset of ISP staff and 2) the government (hopefully with a warrant) have access. By contrast, would you want your neighborhood association looking at your ISP logs? Or anyone you know personally? And making it their business how much bandwidth you use and for what purpose? (On a separate note, I wonder how much Netflix's and YouTube's CDN boxes cost, given that Netflix and YouTube tend to subsidize them.)
- pasbesoin 11y agoIt makes me wish that Netflix, et al. provided a bit more in the way of configuration/control options. In this case, the ability to turn auto-play off. One checkbox, with a bit of code behind it. Realize that not everyone is in the same boat, connection-wise. And with data caps continuing to loom, some would like a simple setting to help guard against accidentally running over. Also, believe it or not, some of us like the credits. And with outfits like Marvel stuffing teasers and jokes in after they've run, that interest may be increasing.
- thedufer 11y agoTo be fair, "Netflix played all night" is not actually a thing that happens, as far as I can tell. When autoplaying, they pause every few episodes in case you're not watching. I'm sure they don't want to pay bandwidth/licensing for shows playing to an empty room.
- esaym 11y agoHope it works out well for them. I had a horrid time with a local wireless provider in my area. It was based on the motorola canopy (now cambium networks) configuration. They had main antennas on every single water tower in probably a 20-30 mile radius. I live on the edge of the county and there is not much out here. The water tower antenna that I was pointed to was probably servicing a ton of people. When I first got set up, I was told I would get 8mbs down and 2mbs up for $70 a month. It was unlimited, unmonitored, and a "straight static IP into the internet". For the first 3 months, it was great. I got 8mbs and pings were 80ms. However after those first 3 months things, started to slow down. My antenna was in front of a tree and since it was now spring, the tree was covered in thick leaves. I thought that was the reason for my slow down and I didn't complain. Once winter came again, and all the leaves fell off, there was no difference. My speed was 8mbs, then it was 7mbs, and now it was hanging around 6mbs and I could no longer use my VOIP office phone. I could hear fine, but no one would hear me. And also during the evenings, things were getting worse, with speeds dipping down in the the 4mbs range, even netflix was starting to slow way down. Another year goes by and I am looking at a max speed of 5mbs, but normally it dips down to 1mbs. Another year goes by, and it was even worse, but now pings are up to 100-200 range. I then noticed after these three years, ATT u-verse DSL was available. I managed to get the business class 6mbs for $50 a month (but I get 7mbs down). I've never been so happy.... In hindsight, I probably should have complained to the customer support, but I really had no faith in them, it felt too much like an over subscription issue and I was afraid that their "fix" would be to just install a 50 foot pool in my yard to put their antenna on which I didn't want. Other than that, I have always wanted to build my own ISP. But now I don't know if I would do it wireless or not (but that is pretty much the only way...)
- wtracy 11y agoCenturyLink has gone so far as to tell customers who cancel their DSL service that they will not be able to start it up again, Brems said. That seems awfully abusive.
- dotunderscore 11y agoI don't think they're trying to be abusive on purpose. It seems like they're running out of capacity and desire to serve the island.
- necessity 11y agoThe costumer doesn't want them because the service constantly fails and they don't want the customer because he constantly complains. What's abusive about that? A perfectly healthy non-relation. The only abusive thing would be gov. getting in the way of it and forcing them to accept the customers or the costumers to accept the ISP.
- raddad 11y agoCenturyLink sucks in general. Poor service and poorer customer service. That company is a joke. Seems their whole purpose is to drive people with wired phone service to other companies using wireless.
- SturgeonsLaw 11y agoAll the more reason to pull the rug out from under the legacy operators
- KeytarHero 11y agoI guess the residents of the San Juan Islands must be quite a different demographic from the Canadian islands just across the border. This would never happen on one of the Canadian Gulf Islands, because too many residents are worried about the "wireless radiation" causing headaches or cancer. (This is also where 1 in 6 residents refused a smart power meter [1], mostly out of supposed safety concerns.) [1] "Gulf Islanders 15 times more likely to oppose BC Hydro smart meters than Vancouverites" http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Gulf+Islanders+times+more+likely+oppose+Hydro+smart+meters+than+Vancouverites/8780345/story.html http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Gulf+Islanders+times+...
- jrapdx3 11y agoBeautiful place, I was there last summer. AFAIK suspicions about wireless radiation having adverse health effects have not been substantiated. The subject comes up in places distant from BC. Considering the upcoming election year, here in Portland we usually have a few "fringe" candidates for local office asserting WiFi in public schools is "damaging" children, causing them to misbehave, etc. Obviously most of the population is unconcerned about such risk. I suppose if it turned out that wireless signals really do cause some obscure deleterious effects, the "tinfoil hat" crowd will say they told us so. I'd go with the odds that's even less likely than winning the Megabucks lottery 3 times in a row.
- KeytarHero 11y agoYeah, the only "proof" that people tend to cite is that the WHO has classified EM radiation in a class that basically means "we have no idea if it causes cancer or not, but it might", along with just about everything [1]. I lived in Victoria for a few years. My landlords there had refused a smart meter - yet they had WiFi, and both had cell phones. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinogens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinog...
- Kliment 11y agoRegardless of unfounded concerns, I've refused a smart meter where I live for two reasons - one, they're extremely expensive, there's a large yearly fee equivalent to 20% of my power costs, even though they don't have to send a tech out to read the meter. Two, I don't want to share data about my power usage with my utility. I'm happy to have the data, and I do log power usage locally myself to a very high precision, but I don't trust the utility to keep that data safe - my power usage data is a VERY good predictor of whether I'm home or not, which is data very useful to burglars.
- zz1 11y agoThey should register here: http://db.ffdn.org/ http://db.ffdn.org/ !
- uberneo 11y agolooks good but i believe they can take more learnings from http://battlemesh.org/ http://battlemesh.org/ for creating these kind of adhoc networks
- throwawy_wifi9 11y agoFYI: most businesses in the tourist areas of Bali, Indonesia rely on wireless Internet by a small comapny owned by the Mega Internet cafe. The national telco, Telkom, offers Speedy DSL, but it's not speedy or reliable, and Biznet offers FTTH only to dense commercial areas. (which is still more than Silicon Valley has!) I had a tour of Mega a decade ago, and they have a tower pointed at Singapore. At the time they were using Linux LEAF distro for mgmt. and Soekris boards, but likely that has changed. Torrential rains do affect reception, but that also affects the Speedy landlines. Also, outside North America, GSM rules. Which means you can go to the Borneo jungle and get 5 bars, which often doesn't happen in say, Sunnyvale. And 5 bars means adequate EGPRS data communications - everywhere.
- laurentoget 11y agoI wonder how they set this up w.r.t regulations. I was under the impression the process to setup an ISP involved a mountain of red tape. Did they get away with it because they are a non profit?
- jauer 11y agoThere's very little red tape involved in starting as ISP in the US. The red tape starts up to 6 months in when you hit the bi-yearly FCC Form 477 filing, though I'd say the majority of (w)ISPs are flying under the radar by simply never filing. If you even think about offering voice services (even VoIP), then you get buried in paperwork.
- SolarNet 11y agoThose laws vary by locality (e.g. it's typically a per state thing). I do believe Washington is pretty non-regulatory when it comes to ISPs.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pontifk8r 11y agoIs 3.65 GHz (mentioned in the article as a way to get away from crowded 2.4 GHz) allowed for unlicensed use in the US now?
- Chris2048 11y agoI see the a headline “It wasn't that hard”, Then immediately below a picture with the caption "Sutton holds a drone he used to analyze potential radio location"...