Community Sets Up Their Own DSL 261
Thrazzle Throne writes "The folks in rural Ruby Ranch got tired of lame dial-up server. They fought the phone company for use of their un-used lines and installed
their own Dsl service. Very cool read."
Reminds me of (Score:3, Interesting)
Why this is cool ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In their working against Qwest they had to settle a couple of issues. The include the forms and paperwork they used to make it happen and these can be used as a template.
What pushes this over the cool mode into the must read are the accompanying technical documents. They have network diagrams, monitoring statuses and more. It's amazing.
The best part of their site is a list of other communities have done the same thing.
The site is dynamite and is full of information! One of the best articles I have seen on Slashdot in a long time.
Home Built Fiber Network (Score:5, Interesting)
Why didn't they just roll out CAT5? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've said this many times before, why are people in this kind of situation rolling out DSL? Why not just lay down new copper in the form of CAT5?
It's dirt cheap. I've done it. Just look at these pics [he.net] of my neighborhood area network. Currently 10 neighbors share the cost of an internet connection. We also share stuff we've grabbed from kazza, we have a intranet that announces the happenings and events on our street. Very cool stuff. Basically each house has a switch, and we daisy chain houses so we don't run into the 600' Ethernet limit.
I can give a rat's ass about the AUP of my ISP because the question of packet ownership has to be asked. At what point do I own that packet? When I request a document from the web? When it hits my router? When it is on my copper?
People can do this themselves, it's not hard. In a rural area you just replace the AC transformer brick on the switch with a battery/solar panel combo every 600', or you could something that has a bit more distance to it like token ring. Yeah maybe this all sounds silly, but we're doing it out here in silicon valley and it's been working for the last year.
--toq
Why not Wireless? (Score:2, Interesting)
--Azaroth
Re:Why didn't they just roll out CAT5? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is wonderful! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Coloradoans, unite! (Score:5, Interesting)
The moral is that even if YOU can't get DSL, but if someone CLOSE to you can, that's good enough and with a little talking to your neighbors you can be online at high speeds too.
Re:Link to another Ruby Ranch article (Score:1, Interesting)
Broadband as a town utility! (Score:2, Interesting)
http://web.rochelle.net/~city/
I guess I'm a knucklehead, the html formatting doesn't seem to be working when I preview. Ah well, you get the link anyway.
Something similar, and older (Score:3, Interesting)
Its basically a co-op out in rural wyoming that provides internet access, support, and other stuff to members of the community. Pretty interesting, really. Check out their FAQ [lariat.org], or their Clone Us page [lariat.org] which has information on how to create your own local community network.
And they impose restrictive TOS on their own users (Score:1, Interesting)