Rural Internet Access

[Steve_in_NC]

I know that many people who keep bees live in rural areas with no cable/DSL/wireless internet access.

Where I live, in Duplin County, NC the dial up connects about 19-20KBPS and is very slow but cost only $6.50/month. My house is wired with CAT-5 cable (both phone and ethernet). The limiting factor is NOT my house phone wiring. So, I have a 1-way satellite. I get downloads of about 75KBPS although most ads state 100-400 KBPS. My mother lives in town and has cable internet. Her download speeds are about 300 KBPS.

My satellite fee is about $42 per month for unlimited access. I see others advertising 100MB download limit at 400 KBPS for $30 + $0.17 per MB for the downloads over 100MB.
My signal strength is 74% in the Summer and 80% in the Winter (due to leaf drop from trees).

Does anyone have any experience with a cheaper/faster solution?

Steve

[Steve_in_NC]

UPDATE:
I just ran a bandwith tester from http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/bandwidth.asp

The results were 163 kilobits per second download speed.

Steve

[Sungold]

I must be lucky, I just ran the above download test and download speed was 5274 kbs. -cable modem-

[dcross]

368kbps, cable, bout $40 a month.

[Sharkey]

I have a rotten situation. I am STUCK with dial up. Cox Cable is not allowed on my side of the river. The cable company that serves my area is out of ALABAMA even though I live in Florida, and of course..... they do not offer internet services.

Another great function of the wonderful government regulation we have today.

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It's Not The Destination, It's The Journey. We Cannot Change The Wind, But We CAN Trim The Sails.

[Michael Bush]

Today is a good day. I have a 24K dialup connection. I tried the one way sattelite and when it did work, it wasn't too bad. But it often didn't work and finally it quit altogether. I spend four months trying to get them to shut it off and after weeks of being on hold finally found a human being to shut it off. I will not do business with them again.

I really wish I had an alternative, but in the country, I have none, so far. Maybe someday they will have DSL or ADSL or cable out here, but so far it hasn't happened.

[ox]

I have a steady 26.5 KPS baud rate. I'm accustomed to it. I would love broadband but so it goes for the trade offs of country living.

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the ~ox-{ at www.singingfalls.com (http://www.singingfalls.com)
If this message is edited it is because I have to correct my spelling again. 0_0

[loggermike]

26 Kb/s here too.20 bucks a month dial up.

[Steve_in_NC]

Loggermike,

Try 650dialup.com for $6.50 a month dialup. I used to use them before satellite and was satisfied.

I am satisfied with my current 1-way satellite, but am looking for a cheaper satellite company.

My current 1-way system was installed by me and the phone support is less than perfect. However, I have been able to make it work and to share it on my home network.

Steve

[loggermike]

Thanks,I checked it out but they dont have any local numbers for this area.DSL hasnt made it here yet.I'm not complaining-A little over 4 years ago I didnt even know what the internet was!

[This message has been edited by loggermike (edited September 25, 2004).]

[MountainCamp]

I have a 2-way satellite hook-up. Downloads tested at 633kb/s. Uploads are slower than downloads.

The service can be weather affected.

No cable, cable modem, DSL, or DSLN available here. I am the last person on the phone line services and my dial speeds were on a good day 1.6 - 2.3 kb/s and on very bad days 600 b/s.

The satellite service is not cheap @ $69.00/month, but I have no choice for work.

I would have big project downloads that would take 6 - 7 hours to download.

[chemistbert]

I use a dial up at home and get actual sustained speeds of about 2.5KBps. The stupid little thing microsoft has that say what you connection "speed" is, is wrong. If it says 54.5K you are still only getting about 3K SUSTAINED. Check it with a speed tester if you don't believe me. Also keep in mind that when you test you are only gettting the rate at that moment. I get burst rate of 13 or 14K somtimes, but that is hardly my real speed. Same applies to cable modems and DSL. Cable folks, try an upload of a few hundred Megs sometime. I think you will be dissapointed. 50K tops on most outgoing cable modems. DSL's are fequenty throttled also. Everyone should get REAL numbers before they decide what to do. Right now I am typing on my compaines T line. Honest to goodness 1.44M/sec confirmed and guaranteed. All I can say is that for POTS don't pay more than $10/month unless you have no choice. Mine costs 10 bucks and I get a modem on the other end. What more do I need.

[jfischer]

Don't try this at home, kids, but we have
"Fiber to The Farm", direct to the router
in the basement from the local telco (Verizon)
central office.
Its a T-3, 45 megabits per second.
There is also a fail-over spare, just in case.

You don't want to know what it costs, but
its worth it, as my little company manages
and monitors networks for ISPs and companies
with large internal networks.

Bandwidth? Heck, we'd have to run tcpblast
on at least a Sun Enterprise class server
to be able to approach the maximum burst rate
possible.

[Sharkey]

Well, let me make sure my point was made. It is not the fact that I live in the sticks and therefore CANNOT have access to the Internet via cable, it is the fact that the GOVERNMENT won't ALLOW them to cross the Yelloow river. Even though we have the same zip code and post office and telephone service, we can't have the same cable service. That is absurd.

I say let the market take care of itself. If I want cable internet service, I should be able to get it if someone is willing to sell it to me.

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It's Not The Destination, It's The Journey. We Cannot Change The Wind, But We CAN Trim The Sails.

[DanO]

That government you're talking about is your local town counsel. They took a payoff from the highest bidder to allow only 1 cable franchise to have exclusive access to the area. Hopefully the payoff went into the general fund to pay for things that the whole town can use like new fire stations or plush offices where you can visit your town counsel members.

I don't like the way cable franchises have been handled either but an unregulated land grab would be even worse. How many cable companies do you want digging through the right of ways on your property?

[Michael Bush]

>I don't like the way cable franchises have been handled either but an unregulated land grab would be even worse. How many cable companies do you want digging through the right of ways on your property?

Five or six would be better than none. None is how many I have now.

[jfischer]

> the GOVERNMENT won't ALLOW them to cross
> the Yelloow river. Even though we have
> the same zip code...

> I say let the market take care of itself.
> If I want cable internet service, I should
> be able to get it if someone is willing to
> sell it to me.

It can, and you can too.
Get a pair of these, and give one to a
friend who is within the cable system,
and also in line-of-sight with your place. http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/accessories/666e/

$50.00 retail, so you can't beat the price.
They work well. We have a similar scheme
connecting schools in Franklin County VA
with high-speed private links, and the only
problems were early on, due to poor alignment
on one antenna.

[DanO]

"$50.00 retail, so you can't beat the price."

I could beat it with FREE.

All you need is a surplus satellite TV dish and a cheap USB wireless adaptor. I grabbed a dish that a neighbor was discarding and got a free TN-200 adaptor (the $5 shipping was already covered because of another purchase I made at the same time). A couple of 6' USB extenders that I already had lying around complete the connection. The limiting factor with this setup is the short USB cable.

If you watch for deals you can pick up a wireless router for $10-$20 You need to find one that will work as a bridge. Don't bother with external antennas, cable and special connectors. Just mount the whole router at the focus of the dish (in a weatherproof enclosure of course). One dish with clear line of sight to the other access point could give you about a 1 mile range. Two dishes pointed at each other should be good for 5 to 10 miles. With real antenna feeds you could get much more. One test reached 3 Km with a dish only on the receiving end.

[JohnBeeMan]

My local cable company has a cable along the road in front of my property. However, since my home is 700 feet from the road they want $3500 installation fee. I am too far from phone exchange for DSL. I got/tried/canceled wireless (low signal strenght= low speeds but high price). I have considered two way satellite but my company's VPN access most likely will not work so I cannot justify the up front cost. And I only live 55 miles from downtown DC.

[This message has been edited by JohnBeeMan (edited September 28, 2004).]

[DanO]

Some of the 2-way satellite services offer what they claim is a smart VPN that solves the satellite delay problem. What they do is terminate the VPN tunnel at the satellite NOC and run the connection unencrypted over the satellite link. They claim this is safe because it takes special equipment to receive and decode the satellite signal. (never mind that it would only require a few minor hacks to convert the same equipment they provide you into an interceptor http://www.beesource.com/ubb/smile.gif )

As for running a 700 foot drop from the cable, to your house, the biggest problem is signal loss at the higher frequencies. I was able to dig up enough numbers to make an initial guess of what it will take.

The standard limit for the drop cable is something like 150ft using RG6 coax. This has a loss of about 14dB @ 900 MHz. Extending to 700ft the loss would be 65dB (resulting in essentially no usable signal). By upgrading the cable to RG11 the loss is brought down to 34dB. If you install a 20dB bidirectional inline amplifier in the middle of this run the loss is brought back down to 14dB. The cost is on the order of $300 for the coax and about $200 for the amplifier and power injector plus the labor to dig the trench and install everything. The 14dB loss is marginal so you might need to find an even better coax which will cost even more.

[dtwilliamson]

I live too far out. I can't get cable. I can get 26kbs on a great day. Gets frustrating for me. We have T-3 lines at work. Hard for me to go from that to my dial-up at home, so I rarely get on at home. Guess I'm spoiled. Not gonna pay for satellite either so I'll keep things just the way they are.

Dan

[danno1800]

Too far out for cable. Had to settle for ISDN from Verizon. $75/month

[This message has been edited by danno1800 (edited September 29, 2004).]

[JohnBeeMan]

How did you get the $70 ISDN rate from Verizon? I just talked to them today and they quoted me a $240 per month rate from unlimited ISDN residential service. They said the lower rates were for business accounts. I tried for over 2 hours to get the business department on the phone - finally they took info and said someone would call me - by Monday. They also said to switch to a business account I would need a business license - I am not selling that much honey.

[Lew Best]

Hi guys

Just curious if anyone has any "new updated info" or new advice on this topic. Hoping to get my "country place" soon; will lose my cable net connection when I move. :( Hope satellite system will be feasible; worth paying a few extra bux a month to get it if it works well (as in "noticeably better" than dial-up).

Thanks!

Lew

[Michael Bush]

I had no luck with the sattelite and the DirecPC was terrible to even get my service canceled let alone resolve my problems. I would NOT recommend them. Dialup is more reliable by a long shot. How fast is a connection that doesn't work at all?

[Lew Best]

Thanks Michael

Sure going to hurt losing broadband but worth it to get rid of "big brother the city" bugging me all the time over superfulous nonsense!

Lew

[Jim Fischer]

Pretty darn rural, Lew.
I agree with Michael. The commercial satellite
data offerings are terrible. I'd rather use
a satellite phone plugged into my Palm Pilot
(which works surprisingly well, moreso when
one is far far from any form of civilization).

You may want to check out multilink PPP,
better-known as "dial-up bonding" support from
a local, rural, locally-owned and run ISP.
(Forget about any of the big boys doing this.)

This allows one two establish two dial-up
connections over two phone lines, and
bundle them into a single logical channel.

It has been around since 1994
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1717.html
But the current RFC for "bonding" is RFC 1990
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1990.html

Be careful, though. Most implementations
are intended to support multiple users on
a LAN, and no single session gets more than
it would on a single-line "56Kbps" connection.
Make sure that you are getting something you
can actually >>use<<.

I've configured multilink ppp on Ascend Maxes,
Livingston Portmasters, and Cisco 52xx boxes,
but I've not seen this as a "must have" issue
ever since DSL and cablemodems started to
become more common. Perhaps it is still a
demand item in areas beyond the reach of
cable, ISDN, ADSL, and wireless.

[Lew Best]

Thanx Jim

You're talking way over my head; far above my technical understanding. I haven't checked on DSL but it may be a slight possibility as the place I'm hoping for is only 1.8 miles from the city limits.

Lew

[Steve_in_NC]

I still have my one-way satellite with Cape Lookout Internet Service www.clis.com. (http://www.clis.com.) They are a reseller of ISAT satellite service. This company (ISAT) went bankrupt and was purchased by Synergistic Communications.

Costs are:
Satellite Equipment: $150.00
Installation: $150.00
Monthly Service: $39.95

I did not originally purchase from them and installed the equipment myself. It has some technical issues and you should be a self-fixer and computer literate but it is working. I just ran the bandwidth tester again
http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/bandwidth.asp
and got a speed of 435 Kbps at 2:00 AM. It is NOT this fast during the day (150 Kbps) but much better that dialup.

There is no month to month committment which is nice. The rural electric cooperative here is investigating Wild Blue
www.wildblue.com (http://www.wildblue.com)
which has not yet been lauched. I hope that it is more seamless than the service that I have.

It is possible that the problems with the (ISAT)service have been associated with the bankruptcy issue. It was stable for a long time and then had some problems which required set up changes to keep going.

Now it seems to be working well again.

They have a reasonable use policy which takes into account the total megabyte download in the last 5 days. You are throttled down to 64 Kbps if you download 500 or more megabytes in a 5 day period. 64 Kbps is 3 times faster than the 20 Kbps connection I get with a modem.

[indypartridge]

My local electric co-op is running a pilot program offering "Broadband over Power Lines". http://www.sciremc.com/bpl_services.php
I'm not in the test area, but I have a friend who is. He says there's some glitches, but if they can get those worked out he'll be very happy. And,
at $29.95 a month, the price is certainly competitive.

[Lew Best]

Thanks guys

Went to the wildblue site & put in the zip code & it says expected service 2nd quarter of 2005. Maybe I won't lose my broadband (at least for very long). smile.gif

Lew

[Ross]

I now have wireless WAN from a local provider. It is about a 15 mile radius about the tower. This is not satelite and does not suffer from the transmission delays of satelite. Speeds are running 800KB download and 400-500 upload. It's $40 a month and I did pay an installation fee. So far it has been very good but not perfect. I live about a mile from my employer, a major defense contractor. Periodically, late at night I loose my signal. I'm pretty sure it's due to the testing of the systems we build. We test late at night for a reason.

[beegee]

In my area of Lenoir County(eastern NC)cable is not available. DSL from Sprint(the only provider)is not available. The only thing I can get is dial-up and it runs at 31.2 kbps to 48 kbps, mostly at 46.6. There is a company that will provide high-speed at $49.00 per month if you can get 50 people within a 3-mile radius to subscribe. they put a dish on a cell-phone tower and hard-wire the service to your house. I still haven't been able to recruit 50 people who want to pay $49.00/mo. I just changed dial-up ISP's today because of the inability of my former ISP to allow me to even dial in today. they were having some sort of problem which they could not identify. My frustration-level finally peaked....