Is a community wireless solution an option for your area or are you too spread out?
Do you remember the Star Trek episode where they found silicon based beings and the doctor treated an injured one by filling it with Polyfilla?
.andy
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Interesting idea and I hope that they are successful.
This is like the Starbucks idea in the U.S. The only thing was that they found that people hung around for too long without drinking enough latte.
I quite often use the Telia Homerun service on business trips in Scandinavia. They have hotspots in places like the airports, major hotels and certain parts of major cities. You can have an ongoing subscription, but you can also buy 24hr scratch cards for about £10 which have a password. It's then possible to have access in any hot spot location during that time without paying again. Compared with being gouged by hotels for phone charges for modem access, it's a good deal.
A lot of hotels in Germany are implementing similar systems and there are a few starting to appear here as well.
.andy
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It's worth looking at but to do well needs a fair bit of capital, for the net connection, local servers acces points and any backbone links required to cover outlying areas. This capital can probably be found from the relevant Area Development Agency, Rural EDZ, County Council, education and other funding bodies. Getting and making the thing sustainable is the hard bit.
Says him from the Broadband Capital of England, Alston Moor, about as remote as you can get in England. Penetration of wireless broadband to homes is about 25%, the national average (where broadband is avialable) is around 4%.
You wouldn't have to, you'd just need to talk to it nicely and it would produce a suitable means if hanging the picture for you.
Have you done that on point to point links?
I'm always amazed by what the Nowegians manage with wireless technology in difficult situations like this. It costs, but it can be done.
Part of the problem in the UK is that BT grossly overmarketed "broadband" in terms of high capability and low price and then realised that they couldn't deliver.
As a result, people have come to expect service at a price below what is required to pay for the infrastructure and sustain a business.
.andy
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Hello James
One of many I've checked out, but sadly none are anywhere near me. (10M S of Exeter)
Yeah, that's not a bad idea at all. TBH I'm not fussed how I get a better connection, as long as it's fat and has low latency. :)
Hello Andy
It's possible, I am only a mile or so away from a village, although local geography means it isn't line-of-sight. Not sure how fussy that bit is, or whether I could get away with running some coax half a mile to the top of the hill without anyone noticing. :)
I am LOS to a pretty major aerial system (Haldon, S of Exeter) though, which handles much of the microwave traffic in the area. Be nice if I could get something from there, but they probably wouldn't appreciate me climbing it at night with a pringles can and silver foil. :(
! Nope, that one must've missed me by!
Not quite sure what you mean. There is a backbone structure, ie. PtP links, connecting a number of access points. The access points would be PtMP in this context. The length of the PtP links varies from less than 500m to over 16km, some of the PtMP links are well over 2km.
Off the shelf kit though nothing "special", choose your (external) antenna to make up the loss on the link due to distance. Some are little flat patches, others are 24" dishes. Does need to be line of sight.
That's what I was getting at.
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Not at 2.4GHz.
Is there perhaps somebody at a suitable point who could host an access point that would be LoS to you and the village?
No, and you'd need to be careful not to stand in front of any of the waveguides. :-)
.andy
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I am not inventing reasons :-)
(1) I have my (IT illiterate) next door neighbour on my WLAN so I can maintain his system for him and download Windows and virus updates without spending hours tying up his phone line. (2) I am considering adding the folks across the road for similar reasons. (3) I like to be able to take the portable into the garden now and then to work. (4) At the moment I have no power (or anything else, really) in the new office/bedroom and I am temporarily running my LAN from the loft, where I have my ADSL line, ADSL modem/router. and WiFi AP all sitting up there powered by an extension lead. I have three PCs running in house of the WLAN and switching from wired to wireless took minutes. (5) I have no desire to wire the whole house (with consequent mess and disruption) to provide access for occasional PCs (such as returning offspring). For Internet surfing and email, wireless fits the bill admirably.
So there are 5 seperate instances where wirelss is superior to wired because I don't need high bandwidth and I don't have to run wires.
For any heavy/complex/high bandwidth activities wired is the way to go. However it is extremely blinkered, even illogical, to state that something is "always better"; this implies that there is no situation whatsoever where a wireless link is better than a wired link. So patently illogical that it had all the hallmarks of a Troll :-)
Cheers Dave R
P.S. (6) I also like to surf with my PDA when in bed or in other locations without a wired link :-) Perhaps I should start an "I love WiFi" thread ?
That doesn't make it superior - only more convenient. And I'd point out that my response was in connection with the average house - not the whole street.
I stand by what I said. Wireless links may be more convenient, but they are never better.
I think you need to give some reasons, not just assertions, g is cheap enough, and provides plenty of bandwidth (yes its shared between machines, but for domestic use it's very rarely saturated, and most people use hubs not switches so that's the same.)
Jim.
Hello Dave
This is devolving into semantics, but "better" is not a particularly specific word. What's better for you clearly isn't better for David.
"Convenient" can be included in a definition of "better", imo.
I agree. However, PERHAPS a wireless link might be better down the garden, if only to save having to bury the cable in a trench...
I can see they have their uses, but since you'll be presumably cabling up other things in the house at the same time I can't see the point.
Again, I agree. I cabled network, power, telephone, TV, burglar alarm, antenna rotator and smoke alarms all at the same time...
I have CAT5 all over the house and a lot of outlets. However, I also have a wireless installation because it is useful with portable devices like notebooks and PDAs so that they can be used in arbitrary places without needing to plug them in.
.andy
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Hello Dave
I was reminded of this thread today when my phone line went down. BT, after playing the "no answer, hold, hold, get disconnected, get lied to, get disconnected and then hold again for three hours" game with the teletubbies tell me it'll be at least four days before an engineer is sent to deal. This has happened six times over the past three years.
Never had a single outage on my mobile in that time (apart from no signal in some valleys, which considering where I live is to be expected).
Stretching the point perhaps, but at least the air never seems to break.
This probably won't reach you until the 26th though...
I'd assume if anyone installs their own cable LAN, they'll be capable of fixing any faults that may arise (unlikely) and not have to rely on an engineer.
However, should a wireless network fail I'd guess it *would* be a job for an engineer - or more likely your credit card.
And what is the voice quality like on your mobile compared to the BT line? Oh and of course you get can get a "56k" data connection on our mobile as well...
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