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The Internet Wireless Networking Hardware

Looking for Fixed Wireless Internet Info? 30

Posted by Cliff from the dslreports-for-the-airwaves dept.
tukkayoot asks: "I live in a rural area where cable and DSL aren't available. I want some form of broadband Internet access that doesn't require that I move. There is an ISP in my area that offers fixed wireless, but they make no effort to market it to residential users (even though they claim the service is available). Unfortunately, searching the Internet seems to yield more information about starting a WISP than what an ordinary Joe like me should be doing to educate myself about this service, as a customer. I don't have high confidence in the ISP to walk me through the entire process, so is there anybody out there that can direct me to a resource on consumer wireless related issues, like how I should go about receiving a signal when my house is surrounded by lots of fairly tall trees?"
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Looking for Fixed Wireless Internet Info? More

Looking for Fixed Wireless Internet Info?

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  • Suggestion (Score:1, Insightful)

    by jwbing ( 447164 )
    ...when my house is surrounded by fairly tall trees

    Burninate.
  • Depends on where you live, but maybe satellite broadband [google.de] is an option. It's only downstream, though, so you still need a modem (or ISDN) for uploads, page requests and so on. Setting it up is just like setting up any other satellite dish.

    • Re:Satellite Broadband? (Score:2, Informative)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      You can get two-way satellite that doesn't require a land line for upload.

      I have Starband, it's about $800 startup fee, then $60 or so a month. Ping is a minimum of 600ms, so gaming is out of the question.

      It's mostly only good for downloading files and browsing the web.
  • Why not use satellite broadband?

    Both DirecTV and Earthlink as well as many others offer it.
    Not quite as fast as DSL for downloads and maybe a bit pricier but isn't rural areas precisely what this type of service is aimed at?

    /Claus

    • Answer - it sucks...

      My parents have DirecWay.... It is difficult to configure multiple computers and unreliable in the extreme. You also have lots of obnoxious restrictions and speed caps, which is outrageous considering the costs involved.

      You'd be better off with ISDN, although it is also extremely expensive.
      • Not sure why you think it's difficult to configure multiple computers. My parents just got DirecPC or whatever it is. Took about 3 minutes to get the internet connection shared... After spending four hours cleaning Bonzi Buddy and other shite off both my mom's computer and my brother's.

        But yeah, the download caps are absurd.
  • My choices until last month were either sub-28.8 modem, 2 way satellite (slow at 128k, high pings), carrier pigeons, isdn or something called "switched 56". They were all either too expensive or unsuited for my needs (online gaming, large iso downloads of Slackware, etc.) so I stuck with my sub-28.8 modem. Then suddenly I was able to get DSL without moving. Seems some drunk guy hit the Big Box down the road that provided my phone line connection, and they replaced it with a DSL capable box.

    Personally I'
  • like how I should go about receiving a signal when my house is surrounded by lots of fairly tall trees?"

    I'd guess you'd put up a huge antenna on top of your house, or on a big telephone pole or tower out in your yard.
  • Either cut down the trees directly in the signal's path, or put up a tower. A friend of mine had to put up a 40 ft. one just to boost his antenna over the trees in the ravine by his house.

    And to those suggesting satellite broadband, the latency sucks. At least with fixed wireless, you can play games.

  • been there, done that (Score:4, Informative)

    by condition-label-red ( 657497 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @09:42AM (#7269915) Homepage

    I have an 802.11b wireless link to my ISP that traverses 7 miles line of sight. Performance is pretty good with sub 10mS pings to the ISP router. The biggest problem is that there is only a T1 on the back side and it servers all of their customers in that town. I can tell when the kiddies get home from school ;-)

    Things to consider:

    1. you must have good line of sight between both ends of the link
    2. even minimal trees will block the signal if they are located within the fresnel zone on either end (try google and Fresnel Zone Calculator [firstmilewireless.com]) I had to get out the ol' chain saw.
    3. downlink performance is pretty easy to get, but uplink requires better effective power. Downloads will suffer due to uplink ACK bottleneck. Also, any interactive sessions will drag.

    As for my equipment, I have a 24dBi antenna with a 500mW amplifier mounted on the roof. This puts me at the legal limit for radiated power (unlicensed). Inside I have a Linux based CPE router [teletronics.com]. It uses an Orinoco wireless card. All of this with installation set me back about $1k a year or so ago. With this setup, I usually sync at 2Mbit to 5Mbit rates. Also, rain/fog seems to have no effect.

    My primary use is VPN back to work. I primarily use VNC, PuTTY, and Mozilla IMAP; no games. Performance is pretty good, except when the T1 gets saturated. My goal is less than 50mS ping to my company's gateway; and I usually get this during off hours. Downloads range from 60KByte to 160KByte from kernel.org.

    The more (real) help you can get from your ISP, the better off you will be. Also Seattle Wireless [seattlewireless.net] is a good place to start learning about wireless issues. Bottom line, it can be done fairly easily (if you have the right physical situation) and the performance is much better than the dialup you probably have now. And there are many more extreme working examples than mine.

    Good luck!

    • Thanks for the information. One question, what is the difference between the "line of sight path distance" and the "distance from the beginning of the path to the point in question?" They sound the same to me, but I know I'm misunderstanding something.
    • And try to get your surroundig neighbours to install nodes. Wireless is right now very often a community effort. In the area where I live Wifi is seen as the best way to connect users in rural areas to the ISPs in the cities.
      Find some people on the line-of-sight to the nearest person who can get ADSL. Then join the connection with your neighbors, even if they are miles apart. This way you can share costs and knowledge.

      (again:) www.wirelessleiden.nl/indexuk.html [slashdot.org] is an example of what I mean. Right now they

  • I am in the exact same situation. Not close enough for DSL and no cable.

    Locally, it is $70 per month, which is reasonable to me. The hold up for me has been the $700 install charge.

    Find out from the WISP where their tower is in your area. If you can clearly see it, you will get a good signal. Dependent upon distance, of course. They SHOULD provide a free test from your house to verify that you will get a signal.

  • You may find the various [pbs.org] columns [pbs.org] that Robert Cringely has written about getting a wireless DSL link to his house useful, or at least entertaining. His constraints sound similar to the ones here: it seems he lives in a valley with no local DSL service, and the nearest wired neighborhood is over ten miles away.

    His first solution was to climb up a tree with a telescope, figure out the addresses of any homes he could get a clear line of sight to, and then go knocking on doors with the proposition that "I will

  • Anybody know what the lowdown is on Full Rate Extended DSL [convergedigest.com]? The PR sounds like it could get DSL out to those of us in the sticks without having to put up masts or invest $800 in proprietary gear (our current options).
    Perhaps more imporantly, how do I get Verizon to put beta test it in my neighborhood?

  • Have you called them? (Score:3, Informative)

    by wizman ( 116087 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @12:23PM (#7271780)
    I co-own a primarily wireless ISP. One of the main reason most WISP's mainly cater to business is the equipment cost. A "good" client install generally costs several hundred dollars, and most 'residential' customers are used to paying less than 100, or anything, for the modem and install, as is usually the case with cable and dsl.

    If you are behind a lot of thick trees, you will most definitely need your antenna to be above them. We have gotten by with strapping 20 foot of mast pipe to a chimney, or using existing towers. Sometimes you can get signal through the trees if they are fairly sparse, but your reliability will greatly diminish.

    If you're within several miles of their tower and you can get a clear line of sight to them, and if they know what they are doing, you should have no problems whatsoever.

    One thing to watch out for -- a lot of ISP's who offer wireless really don't know much about RH (the 'wireless' end of things). We have an RF engineer on staff, and without him we would be nowhere. I would ask some questions about how THEIR towers are setup. There are many important things that network guys with no RF experience do not take into account -- proper waterproofing, cable loss, amplification and preamplification, etc. Some WISP's will install high power amplifiers with lots of receive gain to extend their coverage area, but that extra receive gain can be a real pain by amplifying noise and reflections, so proper care and consideration needs to be factored in.

    Even if you don't know what the answers should be, you can judge how knowledgeable they are about the RF design of their network and whether or not it is properly done by their answers just by how 'certain' they sound when they answer.

    If you'd like more info, shoot me an e-mail. I'm fairly certain you are not in our coverage area, so this isn't a sales pitch. :)

    -dot- net
    • Thanks.

      I've called them, but the answers I got from them at the time weren't too encouraging. I told them where I lived, and so I was told that I'd have to erect a tower to shoot over the trees. I asked about how much that would cost, and the answer I got back sounded as if the responsibility of erecting a tower would be left to me, and that doing everything "new" would probably cost upwards of $1,000, but that it might be possible doing it with other stuff for less. Well, that had me feeling pretty da

      • The install cost sounds about right if a tower needs to be erected.

        You'd be surprised how far bandwidth can go. Most of our customers get 384k packages, many shared with quite a few machines. Our largest customer has over 130 machines sharing a 512k wireless Internet connection with no issues.

        Now if you have 3 power users that chug at the p2p networks 24/7, then 256k will not go very far, especially on your outbound.
        • There are some fancy forumlas to help calculate how much bandwidth you need and how utilized it will be. I don't remember all the details it included: number of users and at what time during the day, how much each user uses the network and when they are using the network heavily, how long.

          Maybe some net searching will help you find the formula, I'm too busy working right now :-)
  • I run a small WISP in Silver Springs, Nevada. Currently my setup for customers is as follows.

    1. 16dBi Vagi
    2. D-Link 810+ Ethernet Bridge
    3. Weather Proof plastic box
    4. 24" LMR patch cable
    5. PoE injector
    6. 30 to 50' of CAT5

    I mount the Vagi and D-Link on the eve of the roof. I run ethernet cable to the computer. I run power over the ethernet to the D-Link.

    I charge my customers about $180 for the setup. I can get about 5 miles no problem. Usually I'll go to the 19dBi for anything over 3 miles.

    In the su
  • There are two real reasons that most wireless ISPs don't market to homes: cost and equipment. Most wireless equipment is more expensive and the monthly fee is usually about $100 a month, out of the range most people are willing to pay. The other problem is that wireless installs usually entail putting a tower or pole of some sort up. In my experience (I'm the sysadmin for an ISP that does a lot of wireless) as soon as people see the pole that has to be attached to their home they balk. Especially if there a
  • Does anyone have a source for inexpensive free-standing towers?
  • I don't understand it. I see WISP's charging from $300-$1000 for the hardware to get setup. That's just ridiculous. I started my WISP on $3500 with good equipment. The CPE's only cost me $180 to build. I've seen some for $235 that are not too bad. Then I see WISP's charging $100's per month for connections. The lowest priced connections that I've seen are around $50 a month. I charge $25 a month for my connections. It only takes 32 customers to pay for my T1. I can put 80 customers per T1.

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