Recommendations for broadband ISP

[Christopher Cprek]

Challenge: Not Insight (soon to be Time Warner) or AT&T

Looks like I'm going to be moving soonish and I'm curious what options
are out there and what folks would recommend. I don't have or want
cable TV or satellite. I don't have or want a landline connection
either really.

I'm assuming any independent ISPs would be DSL, but I'm not sure if
'dry' DSL is still an option. I worked for a Telco in the early 2000s
that provided dry DSL to customers in Eastern KY, but I'm not sure if
this was a PSC anomaly.

I'm going to be in southern area of the Highlands, if it's a
consideration for wireless ranges.

Recommendations?

Chris

[Ben Hibben]

I really like Iglou, though I have to pay for a phone line I don't otherwise use (it's not even hooked to a  phone) because headless DSL isn't allowed in the city unless you choose AT&T.  Stupid monopolies.  But on the positive side they're local, friendly, and give you a dedicated IP and don't care what you run on your end (servers, services, etc.).  I've been with them for many years now.

Blenster

[Christopher Cprek]

Yeah Iglou was the first thing to come to mind. Too bad about needing the AT&T.

Any other contenders?

Thanks Ben!

Chris

[Brad Luyster]

BluegrassNet offers commercial WISP solutions.  Pricey, though.  Since they're local, you might be able to work something out. 

[DE 'Tad' Heckaman III]

I'm not exactly sure where the 'Highlands' is located... Is Google accurate? http://goo.gl/NBwep

You could check Bluegrass.net and see if you are in their coverage area:

http://www.bluegrass.net/wireless-internet 

They also offer DSL, probably with the same capabilities as Iglou. 

--
Tad Heckaman

[Christopher Cprek]

The new place backs up to Seneca Park, to zone in a little more.

I'll definitely check out bluegrass.net, they've been immensely
generous to LVL1! Didn't know they had DSL offerings.

Chris

[Christopher Cprek]

Yeah Tad, it is not in the official Highlands as described. More
Highlands-Douglas, Seneca Gardens area.

I think everything around there gets lumped in as "Highlands".

Chris

[Pat McCarthy]

... Is Google accurate?

 

Entered “Highlands”…. got

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?sll=57.299822,-4.32312&sspn=0.961532,1.766052

 

Ummm…. Yes and no……

 

 

Patrick McCarthy

 

T 502.476.9878

C 502.939.1756

pmcc...@humana.com

The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed
and may contain CONFIDENTIAL material. If you receive this material/information in error,
please contact the sender and delete or destroy the material/information.

[Christopher Cprek]

No I'm not going to be that kind of Highlander.

Chris

[Ben Hibben]

He can't be, anyway; there can be only one and that spot's filled.  Hell of an entrance exam to get the spot, too...

Blenster

[DE 'Tad' Heckaman III]

this guy?

 

:)

--
Tad Heckaman

[Brian Wagner]

I know you aren't to keen on insight, but I have their 30M download 10M upload service.  They even have a 50M service.  DSL and at&t uverse does not even come close.  It is all about speed for me.  I used to have a naked dsl from speakeasy.net  They were pretty good.

[Brian Wagner]

Oh and I do not have cable tv, just cable internet

[2600]

Standard Insight 10M at home has been good. Never try any "exotic" port numbers for torrents or such on that one. I have heard that they may block some ports, just haven't had it happen to me. 

Iglou has been rock-solid for me most of the last 20 years at work. Any DSL service will only obtain "provisioning" from the local LEC if you subscribe to AT&T for a POTS line. The cost of the landline plus DSL service will probably be more than in internet-only cable hookup. And about six time slower on average.  Iglou has never harassed me about oddball port usage. 

73

[Jason Dodd]

What's this land line stuff? I thought naked dsl was available most
everywhere now? Are you saying it's not available here?

[crei...@sdf.lonestar.org]

Considering that I'm a ham, and so many others on this list as well, there
is no reason that we couldn't replicate this project...

http://hsmm-mesh.org/

[Christopher Cprek]

That's a cool project Creighton. James and I were discussing something
like this. It's worth some more investigation.

Jason, from what I understand there's no way to get DSL without paying
for POTS from AT&T. Someone more informed could correct me though.

Thanks everyone for the info and laughs. I'm going to weigh my options.

Chris

[DE 'Tad' Heckaman III]

Some of Ubiquiti Networks equipment can be set to 'compliance mode', which lets you to directly set the frequency of the radio, allowing you to move the equipment to a ham-only frequency. 

http://www.ubnt.com/ 

I've seen this compliance mode on a NanoStation M2. I'd love to grab a few of these units (perhaps the Nanobridge M or Bullet M2s/2.4ghz yagis) and try to setup some long range links... maximum power, on ham frequencies, and set the channel width to 5 or 10mhz, and see how far we can get it to work. 

The only trick would be to get one or both ends as high up as possible.

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 2:40 PM, <crei...@sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:

--
Tad Heckaman

[crei...@sdf.lonestar.org]

> That's a cool project Creighton. James and I were discussing something
> like this. It's worth some more investigation.
>
> Jason, from what I understand there's no way to get DSL without paying
> for POTS from AT&T. Someone more informed could correct me though.
>
> Thanks everyone for the info and laughs. I'm going to weigh my options.
>

I called mega today, and naked dsl is available, but simply isn't cheap
enough to matter. $70 per month is the starting price for any practical
data rates (785Kbps up/3meg down) and for another $10 to $15 one could get
a WiMax account with Bluegrassnet, providing that you have a roof with a
clear line of sight you can mount the gear to.

Creighton

[Brad Luyster]

Let us know what you decide.  

[crei...@sdf.lonestar.org]

> Let us know what you decide.
>
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 2:54 PM, Christopher Cprek
> <paxti...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> That's a cool project Creighton. James and I were discussing something
>> like this. It's worth some more investigation.
>>
>> Jason, from what I understand there's no way to get DSL without paying
>> for POTS from AT&T. Someone more informed could correct me though.
>>
>> Thanks everyone for the info and laughs. I'm going to weigh my options.
>>

Perhaps LVL1 could apply to the FCC for a club license, and any member in
good standing (paying member, which presently excludes myself) that can
get a clear line of sight could use the 'compliance' mode channels that we
agreed upon as well. I like the idea of dropping down into the ham only
sector of the spectrum and cutting the signal width down to a quarter
channel (5mhz wide) while jacking up transmission peak power up closer to
the ham legal max. Probably users would have to get their own ham license
to join the network, but that's not so hard to do anymore and we would
literally have our own 'wimax' data net, able to use it in the car.

Disadvantages include...

encryption of traffic *may* not be legal. Encrypted ham transmissions
that cross international borders are *never* legal due to international
treaties, but that's not an issue for us. Encryption is sometimes allowed
if encryption is a byproduct of the medium, and not something under
control of the operator/user. For example, https surfing is verboten,
because http is just as effective and is not encrypted; but playing an
online video game that uses encryption for it's own internal operations
(which cannot be turned off by the player) is likely good to go.

Business transactions over a ham band is verboten. This means no ordering
pizza over the mesh from papajohns.com, no shopping at Amazon, no bidding
on Ebay, etc.

[Brad Luyster]

We have a club call, N1LVL.  Joe and I intend to put antennas on the roof at the next opportunity.  Additional help may hasten this opportunity.

[crei...@sdf.lonestar.org]

> We have a club call, N1LVL. Joe and I intend to put antennas on the roof
> at the next opportunity. Additional help may hasten this opportunity.
>

Ha!

I'm off work presently due to a hernia surgery. So I'm available to help,
but I'm not able to lift more than 8 pounds, and ladder climbing is out of
the question. I know my way around openwrt and somewhat around dd-wrt, so
depending upon the hardware and software we decide upon, I'm willing to
contribute as far as I am able until I return to work.

Creighton

[crei...@sdf.lonestar.org]

Now that I think about it, though, if we have our own club callsign, then
there is nothing stopping us from using another ham band with better
propogation characteristics, particularly if we are going to be buying new
gear from a commercial vendor such as Ubiquity. 70 centimeters would be
best, but there doesn't seem to be a 5 mhz wide section in the band plan
acceptable for digital communications, unless we took over the Amatur TV
channel around 441 mhz. 33 centimeters has a digital band only 3mhz wide
centered on 916.5 Mhz, with another ATV band just below that. We could
center right on 915 Mhz, nobody really uses ATV anymore anyway. 23
centimeters has a fine area in a digital communcations band centered at
1253 Mhz that would also give us 2.5 mhz of room on each side of the band
for overspray. It's less than ideal, but certainly better than anywhere
near 2.5 Ghz. Using a lower frequency with better propogagtion
characteristics, high grade gear for the fixed stations, and higher
peak-envelope power, we could reasonablely mesh the entire county with
only a few well chosen antenna sites. If it's also a real emergency
network for local use, we could literally get free sighting of a node upon
city buildings. We would have to use a filter (dansguardian?) to prevent
users from casually or automaticly contacting business sites (amazon,ebay)
or known porn sights through the Internet gateway. The resultant mesh
wouldn't be up to streaming video, but if the nodes all use Qualitiy of
Service rules to favor Voip, a few end-user2node2node2end-user
conversations could be managed at the same time.

Creighton

[crei...@sdf.lonestar.org]

>> We have a club call, N1LVL. Joe and I intend to put antennas on the
>> roof
>> at the next opportunity. Additional help may hasten this opportunity.
>>
>

http://www.xagyl.com/store_us/product.php?productid=31&cat=0&bestseller=Y

If we want to build a hinternet mesh, this is the ideal gear to start
with, but it's not cheap nor does it leave room for much hacking.

Creighton