[olug] OT wireless stuff

[Sam Tetherow]

Noel Leistad wrote:
> Shannon wrote:
>   
>> "but do any of you have experience with satelite broadband or long range
>> wireless access. I have a client in
>> Raymond, NE that is using DSL and has had all sorts of problems.
>>
>> Dan Staehr"
>>
>> satellite stuff that I have seen sucks and people I talk to get it. seems to
>> work good for a while and then it goes down hill from there till your about
>> at dial up.
>>
>> wireless stuff works good if you have line of site. I get service from a
>> wireless ISP. I think its slow for what you pay but it works good. its about
>> a 2 mile link. but I think they can get around 10 miles.
>>
>> I think some WISP's have no line of site stuff.
>>
>> I had my own wireless link for a while shooting about 2 miles but I think I
>> over sized the antenna and had problems with line of sight.
>>
>> may want to look into the cellular networks. I would go there before I would
>> look at satellite.
>>
>> Shannon
>>     
>
> I have had Wildblue's "starter" package for (huh?) nearly 2 years. I
> can't say that it has really slowed down. It IS LATENT; ping times north
> of 1300, but downloads can  reach 70-90KB. The occasional (2-4month
> uptime) power spanking cures most despicable d/l issues.
>
> Now before you hard-wired folks (cable/FIOS/even FAT DSL) jump on my
> stuff, my QWorst dial-up maxed out at 2.6KB on a GOOD DAY!!.
>
> I am suspicious that non-LOS (thinking OFDM technology) can reach 10
> miles. Our company has customers that have gone 9 mi, but SSFH, not
> OFDM. Still the product is much better RE latency. It's probably high
> priced, but the provider is NOT putting a $5-25 piece of equipment in
> your house, more on the order of $200-500. So if you're not banged a big
> equipment charge up front, it's gotta come from somewhere. (As fast as
> tech is changing, hoping for a 3yr life is optimistic)
>   
Line of site can reliably go 60 miles depending on equipment and 
topology.  I know people that run both 802.11b and 802.11a at 28 miles 
with multiple clients.  The 60 mile shot is a point to point backhaul link.

Non-LOS is a crap shoot.  900MHz will go through trees and handle 
fresnel encroachment quite well.  Some even claim that it will "roll" 
over hills but when it comes to non-LOS the only rule is hang the 
equipment and see what you got.  TVWS should open things up a bit in the 
nonLOS world but we are still looking at probably 12 months for 
equipment and more like 24 months to affordable equipment.

Depending on technology equipment on the customer side is on average 
about $200-$250.  AP side can run anywhere from $700 to $2500.  Pricing 
is generally higher for several reasons:
* Our bandwidth is generally more expensive and we have to haul it 
ourselves which means
   infrastructure costs for equipment and tower rent.
* Customer density makes it harder to get economies of scale.
* Overall bandwidth available to the customer is significantly less than 
cable/dsl/fiber.  We are
   getting more spectrum with TVWS but it is still down the road a bit.

WISPs are generally covering areas that are not covered by DSL or Cable 
for a reason, the density is not there to warrant rolling out a wired 
system. 

    Sam Tetherow
    Sandhills Wireless
> I've GOT a cellalar wireless card thru work, it's "snappy", but still
> seems to have session initialization issues(slow)	. The 5GB/mo traffic
> limit concerns me the most. I've been running vnstat on my work system
> since Aug08, 2 months under 6GB, the other 3 months ave out over 17GB.
> And I don't think I d/l NEAR what I used to d/l when I was younger.
>
> For what it's worth....
>