Cable Modem / Router / Wireless

[Jim]

Matt Graham wrote:
> On Tuesday 17 July 2007 13:53, after a long battle with technology, 
> Darrin Chandler wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 10:26:59AM -0700, Shawn Badger wrote:
>>> BTW, what / who is "PHB"?
>> Pointy-Headed Boss (Dilbert)
> 
> I thought it was "Pointy-Haired", since the cartoon character has pointy 
> hair.  At least that's the acronym expansion I've usually seen.
> 
>> The proper thing to do is find a company with services that match
>> your needs, rather than entering into an agreement you have no
>> intention of honoring.
> 
> The real problem is when no local ISP offers the services (or just the 
> lack of blocking/filtering) you need at a price you can afford.  Then 
> what do you do?  I haven't had to deal with this, but if you live out 
> in a tiny town, you might.  I've heard of people doing something called 
> a "member-owned cooperative" approach to getting bandwidth, but that 
> was in Alaska and the guy was kind of sketchy with details.
> 
> In a large metro area, it should be reasonably easy to buy some lit-up 
> fiber and some routers, but then you need people to keep that stuff 
> running.  And that costs money.  And you also need some way of 
> distributing that bandwidth to subscribers.  Buying access rights to 
> the copper the local evil phone monopoly has laid is one way.  A guy in 
> GLLUG had a plan to put up a tall tower and put many 802.11 antennas 
> and cantennas on it, providing reasonably fast service to many people 
> in the small town where he lived.  I don't know how that worked 
> out--probably not well, because of zoning boards and local politics.  
> I'm sure there are other ways of doing this.
> 

I read something a few years ago.  Some people in a rural area wanted 
broadband, but there was no broadband provider in their area.  They set 
up their own service.  One of the people in the area owned a business in 
a town a few miles away.  His company had broadband access, but mainly 
used it during the day.  Another member had some space in a barn on his 
property.  A wireless link was set up to connect the two locations. 
Servers, routers and such were set up in the barn.  The local phone 
company laid cables that had many unused pairs in them.  The co op used 
these to provide DSL service to their members.

-- 


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Sidney "Pa" Larkin

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