Company Uses Grain Elevators for Internet Access 187
hohosforbreakfast writes "Here's a different take on wireless networking...a company in West Des Moines, Iowa says it will use grain elevators to provide Net access in rural areas of Illinois and Iowa. The story is here in the Des Moines Register." Ah, flat country.
New mode of internet failure. (Score:5)
An entirely new mode of network failure has been invented!
Funny, it's been done already... (Score:3)
Now I just wish they'd put some damned grain elevators up in suburbant Detroit. I'm having a nightmare of a time getting a point-to-point wireless link to perform well over 4 miles of trees, houses and commercial buildings. Ever see how difficult it is to get the permits to build an 80' tower in suburbia. Friggin' nightmare, man.
Problem with water towers (Score:1)
Re:New mode of internet failure. (Score:1)
This grain elevator is truly large; it has to be...oh....30 stories; that's quite a rise above the completely flat land. It consists of about 10 huge cement cylinders; I just recall them being really freaking big (I was a little kid last time I was at the elevator).
I'm not sure about the details, but there's something about the way grain is stored; it releases a gas. Apparently one of these huge cylinders got too much gas in it, and with an earth-shaking (I'm not kidding, people for three miles around heard it) yellow-orange blast, the top blew completely off of the cylinder!
So much for dietary fiber, kids.
I used to say the Midwest had no redeeming characteristics, but if they can get broadband off grain elevators, more power to them.
They're not the first ISP to do it..... (Score:1)
you're actually quite correct... (Score:1)
Some of the best speakers come from the Midwest, because, although there's heavy Scandinavian and German background, there are a LOT of people out there with absolutely zero accent. Including myself.
People in the Midwest may tend to "drawl" their words, but there's no Southern accent, and I actually know a lot of Midwesterners who speak very quickly.
Ah well. We're talking about grain elevators and broadband, not deeply inherent lingual characteristics, so maybe I should just go back to South Dakota and get better connection speed than I have here...
Re:Speed???? (Score:1)
I think the article might have been right. It sounds crazy, but I've seen similar technology with my own eyes. (Not in Iowa though) A small company (com-pair.net [com-pair.net]) does a similar thing. They set up a couple access points and one main point on top of a mountain. Although I really wasn't paying to much attention, it was definately fast, and it seemed more like kilobytes to me than kilobits. That's what it says on the webpage [com-pair.net] too (about half-way down). Cool pics of the equipment on that page as well. They also have some pricing and info on what makes it tick here [com-pair.net].
As for weather effects that some people had concerns about in other posts, I think they had one problem when it got to hot, but they fixed that. It has to do with defraction, I think, but that's discussion for another article. You can get DSL in the area if you live in town, but most people don't. The phone lines are horrible, with a 24k carrier speed when I'm at home.
The only reason why I don't have this is cause I'm away at college, otherwise I'd settle the debate for sure. Looks like they changed their pricing plan so I could rent the equipment now. I'll have to look into it further next summer...
Wigs
--"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts." Cecil Adams
little bit o' math (Score:1)
Re:I find it hard to believe... (Score:2)
If they wanted to write a piece on, say, high bandwidth coming to rural American, I could accept that. But this is just obvious employment of technology, without any real direction...I wish they'd generate real content, rather than producing fluff like this.
Re:Kilobytes ... Kilobits (Score:1)
Accessing a network through a (grain) elevator (Score:1)
These opinions are my own and not necessarily
Re:Speed???? (Score:1)
Bold Statement (Score:1)
Re:Mixed feelings (Score:1)
Re:You have no idea... (Score:3)
Remember, the northern Great Plains has flat enough topology that the top of grain elevators have a long line of sight out into the country. That is sufficient for most communities to get connected to the Internet using a wireless connection.
Besides, farmers are surprisingly techno-savvy; they want direct access to the weather and agricultural price information to properly plan the year's operation on the farm. In fact, farmers are some of the biggest users of GPS satellites so they can precisely meter out the amount of fertilizer and pesticide/herbicide needed to properly maintain the farm; this has drastically reduced the fertilizer and agricultural chemical runoff that has caused water pollution problems in the past.
?Explosive - (Score:1)
Re:I find it hard to believe... (Score:1)
This is nerds coming up with innovative solutions to problems of technology-have-nots.
The other is just whining babies.
Re:You have no idea... (Score:1)
Well, that's changed now..
You can get 56k access from pretty much anywhere in the state of Iowa and most towns with 50K or greater populations offer both DSL and @Home, of course, in Iowa, that's not very many places.
Personally, I had cable access almost 2 years ago, and am now using DSL, and I live in a town of about 50K in Iowa.
Link to ISP (Score:3)
More info on their wireless pricing. [prairieinet.com]
Company Uses Grain Elevators for Internet Access (Score:2)
How is packet loss with a system like this?
Re:Speed???? (Score:1)
Regards,
Re:That's just cool. (Score:1)
Re:Is this really a profitable venture? (Score:1)
It says they spent $10 million AND a year.
So... is this profitable?
-sid
Re:You have no idea... (Score:1)
The ultra-privitization of the newer telephony tech really does leave a lot of rural folks in the lurch.
blessings,
Heh. (Score:2)
Admittedly, they define this as using "radio waves", which seems like a fairly fault tolerant medium (compared to, say, a beam of some sort), but they DO say it requires a clear line-of-sight. What's going to happen to your game of Q3A when a tornado decides to rip through the area? Even radio is subject to static, which could be pretty painful for an internet connection.
From what I've experienced, the plains states can suffer some pretty crappy weather. Be it rain, thunder, dust storms, blizzards, or tornados. One wonders about the quality of service these people will get; the news article doesn't really explain this much.
I'm just one to trust a wire safely buried under dirt more than radio waves being flung about.
Which brings up another point.. how easy is it for other people to pick up these signals? Channel scanners, start your engines.
Re:That's just cool. (Score:1)
but:
"We're all gonna be dirt in the ground..." -- Tom Waits, Dirt in the Ground
sorry.
Re:little bit o' math (Score:1)
One interesting thing about wireless is that when an area gets congested, you can split it like cell phones do. Just remove your Omni and put in three 120 degree Uni-Directionals and you have longer range and more bandwidth...
It's going to be an interesting future...
University students (Score:1)
Re:Not just flat country (Score:1)
Re:Whatever... (Score:1)
Re:Survival (Score:1)
Re:Whatever... (Score:2)
It looks like somebody hasn't seen enough IBM commercials.
---
Re:No thanks to NetINS.... (Score:1)
NetINS is owned by INS, which is owned by roughly 130 shareholders--who are most of the independents in Iowa. INS is also a 70% shareholder in the company which took over from GTE in Iowa (Iowa Telecom, IIRC). This means that--through their ownership of INS--these little Mom and Pops can exercise a lot of influence on what can and can't be done in telecom in much of Iowa--up to two thirds of the state, from what I hear. The only other big player here now is USWest/Qwest, which really doesn't want to leave the big cities--and are looking to get rid of some of their exchanges out in the boonies.
As for the shell server and personal web sites, I can only relate my experiences from 2.5 years prior. The shell server had things on it, but you weren't allowed hardly any space, and if you did try to do anything other than read mail or telnet out, your hands were slapped (and no, I'm not malicious. We're talking about sysadmin script development and testing, centralized storage of really important things--things I do on other ISP accounts with no hoopla at all). As for the web pages, I will grant you this. When I was with them, there were no personal web sites without paying extra $$'s (and the "Basic Showcase" does appear under "New"). I remember very well, because it really torqued me.
As for being rough, my experiences with NetINS have been nothing but wretched, and I've the opportunity to compare and contrast with ISPs outside the state of Iowa. Most of them would kick NetINS' butt. Rough maybe, but justified.
---------------------------------
Only in America will someone order a
Big Mac, large fries, and a Diet Coke.
No thanks to NetINS.... (Score:1)
Then there's the topic of their service, and price--premium cost for a paucity of services. Laughable shell server; no personal web pages, unless you paid extra. NetINS has never cared-- and still doesn't--for the individual/home user. Thank heavens USWorst came along with DSL.
And don't get me started about their business service.
Over all, I wish PrairieInet luck.
---------------------------------
Only in America will someone order a
Big Mac, large fries, and a Diet Coke.
You are wrong. (Score:1)
You wouldn't need a T1 for news. Outsourcing, with a small customer base of 4,000 Iowa farmers, is the way to go. Maybe a hundred or two hundred a month for the outsourcing and $2,500 for the T1s. maybe $30,000-$35,000.
$15,000 for office space a year? This is Iowa, dude. You could run this out of a $7,000-a-year office space and be in high cotton^H^H^H^H^Hcorn, as they say.
$50,000 a year where I live (San Antonio, TX) is pay for senior-level IT people. You can happily live on $35,000 a year here. In Iowa, I'm sure its even easier. You don't need that many tech people, either. My local ISP has at least 7-10x as many customers and does it with three tech guys. You could run this thing on $200,000 a year in salaries, including tech support.
I think they'll probably make it. The chances of a baby Bell bringing DSL to the thousands of tiny towns in Iowa are probably near nil.
Will they support LINUX? (Score:1)
Re:I find it hard to believe... (Score:1)
A Problem (Score:1)
Sorry, couldn't help myself...
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
Re:I'm from Iowa... (Score:1)
Though, I must agree entirely with my punk & ska friend. Iowa, we've got all sorts of wacky types.
Re:Is this really a profitable venture? (Score:1)
As an aside to the people who have been flaming the midwest. Let me say that we are not all farmers/hicks. I happen to be an industrial programmer for an international company living in Iowa. This change will give me remote access to my systems at work without driving 40 miles.
That's just cool. (Score:2)
Re:Beautiful symmetry... (Score:1)
We already have them: satellite linkups. And they might even become cost-effective within our lifetimes.
Re:You have no idea... (Score:1)
Oh great... (Score:2)
... now my pr0n will come out all grainy.
;-)
--Joe--
Redundant (-1) (Score:1)
You should know that your article has been slashdotted (mentioned on
http://www.slashdot.org). Congratulations.
In your article you said
"For $40 a month the residential service provides an "always-on"
connection at a speed of 128 kilobytes per second, which is comparable to
cable and digital subscriber line access available in larger cities. An
even faster speed of 256 kbps is offered for $65 a month."
Surely you meant 128 kilobits per second ( 8 bits per byte, so closer to
16 kilobytes per second). If 128 kilobyte per second wireless internet
access is available for $40 a month in Iowa I just might move there.
Have a great weekend,
Eden Brandeis
Moderators: Be kind, I haven't got much karma.
Re:very offtopic (Score:1)
*IF* you killed them you managed to "knock them out" for a full 15 minutes. You monster.
I'd say your virginity is intact.
-sid
How about a new abbreviation convention for this? (Score:1)
Kilobytes per second = K/sec Kilobits per second = kbps
Re:Not just flat country (Score:1)
Now,a T3 is about 30 times faster than a single T1. But, if I read correctly (elsewhere - not in the article), a T3 is only about $3K a month. A T1 is 1/3 of that. So for the cost of a third T1, couldn't he just get a T3?
It's a bit off-topic, I know, but I was a bit shocked to learn that a T3 is so "cheap" (ie - 30 times a T1, but costs only 3 times a T1). If I'm wrong, please correct me.
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
Re:Geeze, so out of touch. (Score:1)
-----------------------------
Re:You're missing my point (Score:2)
Well the way Slashdot pushed Katz's book which chose an anecdote insulting Idaho as a "hick" state, I'd have to agree with you.
Sorry if I jumped on you about using the word "hick", but there is this double standard around, of which you are apparently aware, regarding insults to rural people (redneck jokes, farmer's daughters jokes, etc.) which amounts to ethnic trashing -- and if you look at the academic achievment rankings, you'll notice there may be a reason for urban cultures to promote this sort of bias:
They're embarrassed at their own performance.
This is, I believe, sufficient cause alone to make this article of interest. I mean what will Katz write about when farmer's sons start becoming millionares by replacing the Chicago commodities exchange with their internet access via the local grain elevator transponders?
Probably something to do with how they're all afraid of showing themselves in person with the real men in the mosh pits of the Chicago exchange or some horseshit.
Excuse me Mr. Oldin' =) (Score:1)
I just evolved over time. People tend to do that =) By todays standards, 128Kbps is slow, but speed is relative to what you need accomplished.
Re:New mode of internet failure. (Score:1)
Re:I find it hard to believe... (Score:2)
A lot things aren't obvious to you.
For example, that there are enormous hidden taxes applied to any physical wiring due to right of ways that exceed even the FCC's red tape by a huge amount.
That the first Cray supercomputer was built on Seymour's farm using guys from rural Iowa and Wisconsin. [barnesandnoble.com]
That wireless will probably displace physical cable in urban areas once places like Iowa, Montana, Canada, China, Siberia, etc. make the advantages manifestly clear.
That the wireless revolution will relocate the infosphere to orbit. [geocities.com]
Or, finally, an example of something that clearly is not obvious to you is the ranking of states by academic achievement [alec.org].
1. Minnesota
2. Montana
3. Iowa
4. Wisconsin
5. New Hampshire
6. Oregon
7. Washington
8. Kansas
9. Nebraska
10. Alaska
11. Connecticut
12. Massachusetts
13. Maine
14. Vermont
15. Missouri
16. Colorado
17. Arizona
18. Utah
19. Virginia
20. North Dakota
21. Oklahoma
22. Wyoming
23. Illinois
24. New York
25. New Jersey
26. Maryland
27. Nevada
28. Rhode Island
29. Idaho
30. Ohio
31. Texas
32. Michigan
33. North Carolina
34. California
35. South Dakota
36. West Virginia
37. Kentucky
38. Delaware
39. Arkansas
40. Florida
41. Indiana
42. Alabama
43. New Mexico
44. Tennessee
45. Pennsylvania
46. Georgia
47. Hawaii
48. South Carolina
49. Louisiana
50. District of Columbia
51. Mississippi
Now, which state are you from? :-)
Re:Iowa? Flat? (Score:2)
Re:little bit o' math (Score:2)
Re:Internet a necessity? (Score:3)
Whatever... (Score:4)
"Many Iowa residents have been left behind by high-speed Internet providers simply because of where they live," said Pederson. "Without high-speed Internet access, we can't expect many of those communities to survive."
This is utter and total bullshit of the purest ray serene.
How often does the Internet get touted as the latest and greatest something that nobody can live without? How much of that is true? So it is difficult for rural town businesses to have web sites. Big deal. Does the local corner store have a web site? Not nearly enough people buy things from the Internet to classify Internet commerce as a necessity, like regular off-line, physical shopping.
Rural areas are, by definition, rural. Rural to implies being away from the general population, isolation, privacy. That's what you get, and you also get the downsides, like slow net access (if any). Live with it. Nobody's going to die because their Hotmail is too slow. For crying out loud.
--Markus
BlackholeTV [blackholetv.com] - TV that Swallows
Re:Iowa's not flat... (Score:2)
And yes, my grammar isn't perfect. So sue me. And while you are at it, you might try a little attitude adjustment.
Comment removed (Score:4)
Re:Beautiful symmetry... (Score:2)
Why is it that there are millions of whiners in this country that can't figure out that just because you could be connected doesn't mean you have to be connected? Technology can't take over your life unless you let it; and if you laet it, you DESERVE your fate.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:You have no idea... (Score:2)
Couldn't they also 'rent' space on the several TV/telephone microwave towers that dot the landscape? They are much taller than any grain elevator the the range would be much better(besides, there are a few rolling hills, the entire landscape isn't totally flat like eastern Arkansas or west Tennessee). Would the existing transmitters cause too much interference?
I hope this service expands into neighboring states to the west. My family would enjoy that. My sister has had wireless cable TV (not satellite) for well over a decade, so hopefully her cable TV provider might start offering internet access too.
Re:little bit o' math (Score:2)
Re:Elevator, Huh? (Score:2)
Do they even have colleges in Iowa?
Yes. I believe the University of Iowa and Iowa State are both Big-10 colleges and one of which (can't remember which one) had a very active Internet-based BBS over 10 years ago. That and Rutger's Quartz BBS were big time sinks for me then. =)
Also, if you would look at this [slashdot.org] post, you would see that the two states that beat Iowa are Minnesota and Montana. Education is still considered very important in those areas. Since many small rural communities don't have the ability to create the jobs needed for their children, unless one plans on taking over the family business, the only way to get a decent job is through education and moving away. Even then, I know several farmers that have Bachelor of Science degrees. These states also have the advantage of generally being very homogenous populations, so there's no incentive to water the school systems down for political-correctness' sake.
Re:Funny, it's been done already... (Score:2)
Make the tower a giant flagpole for a rainbow flag and accuse anyone who opposes it of homophobia. Bureaucrasts will usually run for cover when someone says that they're discriminating against some favored group
Internet in Rural Areas (Score:2)
Actually, Internet is quite useful (and quite popular) in rural areas. The reasons: updated commodity prices from Chicago Board of Trade, research into new farming techniques, buying selling equipment (kinda like classifieds, only cheaper), keeping up with children/relatives, - This list goes on and on . . .
The problem with dialup in rural areas is that the local telcos have not done a very good job catching up. My parents (on the farm) cannot get 56k(bits) from their dialup provider to save their lives. Their modem is a USR/3com 56k, and their provider (the telco) swears up and down that the pop they dial into is 56k-ready. After doing some research I discovered that, while all that may be true, if the phone switches between them and the pop are not new enough to handle 56k, then that speed isn't possible. In fact, my parents celebrate when they get 28.8k!!
I personally think that Prarie iNet will make a fortune. There are no other options for high-speed access in rural areas. I mean, my parents can't even get cable (although they do have DirectTV). In case you didn't figure that out - yes, I didn't grow up with cable. Heck, I didn't even have Fox . . .
- mikehRe:Is this really a profitable venture? (Score:2)
I find it hard to believe... (Score:2)
Re:Not bad! (Score:2)
Remember, these rural places don't HAVE the cable infrastructure. THere is no landline to be had... no cable, not enough phone circuits of enough quality to do DSL, and the distances are too big.
How on earth could putting up some towers (or using the roofs of grain elevators) be harder than getting right-of-way and burying cable all over the place?
Yes, it's potenitally profitable. (Score:5)
So... is this profitable?
4,000 customers * $40/month * 12 months/year = $1,900,000/year. And that's just the start.
$2,500 capital cost per customer is in the ballpark with the costs of rolling out DSL. Cost per customer will drop with time.
Unlike DSL in a city they don't have to tear up streets and string more wire all over the place, or test and upgrade existing wire. And they don't have to install a DSLAM in every two-bit switching center and wire up separate pairs for each customer to it.
Instead they have one, or a few, antenna sites, plus an antenna and a box at each customer's house, and only air in between. The customer covers the cost of their setup with an install fee. The base station and internet connection is already set up. (If they need several antenna sites they might radio-link them to each other, too, and only need a landline to one of 'em.)
The small number of antenna drivers also limits the amount of routing boxes they need. (They can probably drop it all into a single Redback box.) Ditto with limiting the number of backbone connections (maybe two, running by divergent routes). Piece of cake.
I won't predict whether THIS one will succeed. (Think how many cable companies went belly up in the early days.) But I can't see anything that would doom it.
Re:You have no idea... (Score:2)
By putting them on grain elevators, they already have access to a building with pretty high elevation that have line of sight far out into the countryside.
Re:Iowa? Flat? (Score:2)
Kansas. Eastern and southern Arkansas and west Tennessee are pretty flat too. South Dakota east of the Missouri river is about like most of Iowa. West of the river is more rolling prairie hills, badlands, and of course the Black Hills at the extreme western edge...the 'Wild West' part of the state.
Proposed solution (Score:2)
You're missing my point (Score:2)
There are hundreds and thousands of similar installation stories that could be posted here too, but that does not mean they all should be national, or even international, news.
As for your comment(s), I fail to see how they actually apply. I did not say, nor did I mean to imply, that these states are inferior. Though it is apparent that it is a touchy subject for you, I assumed that my putting "hick" in quotes would be sufficient....
I do, however, disagree with you in regards to wireless's future. It will certainly grow, but I'm convinced that most high bandwidth connections will remain in domain of wiring in urban and suburban areas.
Re:Heh. (Score:2)
Re:New mode of internet failure. (Score:3)
20:15We are experiencing routing problems. A technician is looking into the problem, we hope to have it fixed soon.
20:32Routing is fixed, we have applied a patch for our router.
20:46Routing is down again. An engineer is investigating.
20:48It appears a silo has exploded. Routing will be down for 48 hours. PS: We currently have a positon for a network technician. Aplications to root@hick.com. Danger pay a bonus.
Avoids NIMBY problems (Score:2)
Forget it. But... (Score:2)
Nope. Their resistance to ground is very small compared with the resistance of the track. Very lossy.
And a train is a rolling short. At best you'd get trains or data but not both at once. B-)
Besides, they ALREADY have LOTS of dark fibers buried alongside them. (Sprint developed from the Southern Pacific Railroad's own network, for starters.) Just rent a couple of 'em and run OC-192 (or whatever) to any convenient population center. That'll beat any concevable data rate you could get from the tracks.
Re:James T. Kirk now has internet access (Score:5)
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
You have no idea... (Score:4)
Not bad! (Score:2)
Re:You have no idea... (Score:2)
Whoa there horsie, we're not all in the sticks. I live in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and am typing this on my nice AT&T @Home cable modem. Cedar Falls Utilities offers their own service as well. You can get DSL in West Ames, and I know Des Moines has AT&T@Home as well.
My grandparents, in Ventura, Iowa, are limited to dial-up, and the best they can get, due to the phone line quality, is 26,400. Now that's painfully slow. They're only about 3 miles from the elevator though, so depending on range, this could work...
---
Speed???? (Score:2)
-Josh
Re:Elevator, Huh? (Score:2)
Close! Iowa State University, located in Ames, (my alma mater) is in the Big 12. The University of Iowa, located in Iowa City, is in the Big 10. The third state school is the University of Northern Iowa, where I work, is located in Cedar Falls, but I don't reccomend going there.
The BBS you speak of is the legendary ISCA. You can telnet to it at whip.isca.uiowa.edu
It used to be really popular, circa 1995, when there'd be 1500 people on at a time, and hundreds more waiting in the queue, but now it's usually around 300-500 at most.
Just consider us the Sili-corn Valley.
---
Not just flat country (Score:2)
You don't have to be in the rural midwest to have trouble getting broadband service. I'm right over the hill from the Santa Clara Valley. ("Silicon Valley" for you folks down in LA LA land.) DSL is theoretically available in my area, but in fact the copper's so antique that you can't get broadband unless you live right next door to the telco office.
Long-distance 802.11 wireless (Score:2)
Seems like Prairie iNet are using the 2.4 GHz band, which is generally unlicensed around the world - assuming they are using the same technology as Midcoast Wireless, a Maine ISP, which has a very useful FAQ [midcoast.net]
This is all based on IEEE 802.11 technology, which is normally used for wireless LANs with a range of a few hundred feet. The trick here seems to be using more power and directional antennae so that you can go up to 9 miles (or maybe much more).
One company making this sort of kit is Breezecom, who have an overview of wireless Internet access here [breezecom.com].
This technology, along with the competing licensed LMDS technology, may make mincemeat of DSL and Cable - it involves no rights of way hassles, no cable laying, and can give very low latency plus bandwidths in the 1-2Mbps range. Having used Wireless LANs at conferences and trade shows, I found the latency and bandwidth very similar to a T1 line.
For info on 802.11, see the Linux Wireless LAN FAQ [grmbl.be], which also has good links to generic WLAN info at the end. Although the technology for 802.11 long-distance (i.e. wireless local loop) is not identical, it should give you an idea of how things work.
For info on LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution System), see the Webopedia entry for LMDS [internet.com], which has links to related pages. One new European telco that is rolling out LMDS quite aggressively is FirstMark [firstmark.net] - they are also doing cool things with MPLS VPNs, which is how I know about them since my company just sold them the software to manage this
Low latency is important because it's a key determinant of web response time, particularly for sites with many small GIF buttons, and also because Internet routers tend to treat high-latency sessions less fairly, so they get even less bandwidth then they should. It's also essential to winning at Quake, which is clearly the critical driver here
This story matters more for the technology than for the particular ISP using it - it will affect most Slashdot readers in the next year or so, particularly those not covered by DSL or cable. In the UK, BT is being astonishingly slow at rolling out ADSL, and the cable companies have very little coverage, so wireless technology may be the only way to get broadband for many people...
Re:Some technology info from another company (Score:2)
I'm interested to see you are using ATM via the Newbridge kit - you might like to investigate MPLS, which is a way of combining ATM's fast forwarding mechanisms with IP's routing mechanisms. The result is that very large best effort networks and VPNs are very easy to set up - no need for a mesh of PVCs, you just plug them together and the routing sorts things out.
MPLS is not currently so strong on the traffic engineering side, i.e. setting up the equivalent of PVCs to steer traffic along less utilised paths, or for guaranteed QoS or fast failover paths, but Juniper and Cisco routers can already do traffic engineering and the standards are coming along.
More MPLS info is at http://www.mplsrc.com/
Some technology info from another company (Score:2)
This is all done using a combination of Cisco [cisco.com] routers/switches for layer 3 stuff, and Newbridge [newbridge.com] switches for the layer 2 stuff. We use 46020 to mange the layer 2 stuff, and HP openview for the layer 3.
All our customer sites have an antenna on the roof, which is connected to an NIU. The NIU handles all of the RF stuff. The NIU is connected to a Cisco 2924 by an OC-3. A port on the switch is connected to a Cicso 1605r in the users space by a 10mb connection. The users then come off that with their connection to whatever they need.
The transmitting stations (BTSs) are located on the top of medium sized buildings spread throughout our 5 markets (Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal). By the time we are done the expansion, we will have >60 BTS. Each of the BTSs can cover an area between 2 and 4.5 km out depending on the weather in the area. Vancouver, for example, has a lot of rain, but it's very small drops, and has a range for 4km. Toronto, however, has very heavy rain drops, and it's range is only 2.5km. (thats rain fade). Because of the frequency we use (28ghz), we are effected a lot more by weather than something like radio/etc.
The BTS's are connected via OC-3 links to our 'core' where the data is sent off to the internet or through the internal network as required. We are a startup, so there is still a lot of development in the network, but we are currently hosting over 150 customers.
The technology is also VERY line of sight - 1 or 2 degrees off is enough to drop the NIU off the network. Because of this, and a few other things, security is garunteed because as soon as line of sight is broken, which is needed to get the signal, the site drops and the bts stops sending anything other than a "ping" to try and connect. There is no way to 'snoop' because you have to have line of sight, as well as know a bunch of information about the network to break the (admitedly light) encryption.
If you are interested in more info, you can email me and I'll see what I can do. If you are interested in our service, visit the web site
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us.
Beautiful symmetry... (Score:5)
Lots.
This isn't the first radio ISP for rural areas, by a number of years. (One rural southern valley got wired this way using spread-spectrum quite a few years back, starting from a link from the town, with its phone center, to a college tens of miles up the valley.)
But it's nice to see it's catching on more generally.
This idea has a beautiful symmetry with DSL.
DSL is dandy for dense urban areas. It's distance limited and the costs rise with distance from the central sites, so you need a concentration of customers and infrastructure to be practical.
Line-of-sight radio is similarly dandy for rural areas. It's limited by obstructions rather than distance, but in the absense of urban obstructions the costs are approximately constant out to the horizon. That's quite a distance if the central site is elevated - either by a tall structure on flat land, or a tall peak where things are bumpier. So you can collect enough customers in a sparsely-populated area to support a POP. If your area starts to populate, drop power and add more antennas, until things are thick enough to switch to providing DSL.
(Now we just need solutions for people scattered in dense forest, deep mountaion valleys, spread WAY OUT on deserts, on small islands far from land, or moving about on the roads, skies, and high seas...)
Kilobytes ... Kilobits (Score:3)
On another note, I'm just wondering how much money there is to be made servicing rural areas. I don't mean to discriminate, but there can't possibly be hundreds of thousands of subscribers (that wouldn't be rural, huh Jim?). But they have interesting technology ideas for what's involved.
Two birds with one stone... (Score:3)
Rural America on the Net (Score:2)
I'm wondering if the technology allows for repeaters, essentially maintaining line of site through a third antenna. In Montana, where mountains can run down the middle of communities, the community antenna could be LOS with the mountain top which could then feed out to the rest of the community. If this is possible, what are the potential weather effects on one's internet connection.
Re:Iowa? Flat? (Score:2)
The parts of Kansas I've driven through had gentle rolling hills (either wheat or sunflowers as far as the eye could see) much like southern Iowa. Northern Iowa is much more flat than that. Kansas is close, but overall, I'd say that Iowa and Nebraska are more flat than Kansas. Just about every other state I can think of has exceptions with more terrain.
Re:Funny, it's been done already... (Score:2)
Re:Yes, it's potenitally profitable. (Score:5)
Let's assume several people/businesses get the more expensive packages and the server infrastructure are rolled into the $10 mil, AND they get all 4000 customers right away... shall we call it $2.5 million/year?
That means if they accrue NO extra monthly costs (bandwidth, hardware failure, tornado, wages) they can earn what they've spent in 4 years.
But, what do these guys want to make? $50K/year seems low for that kind of effort, but maybe not in Iowa.... but let's stick with that. That's probably $450K/year including taxes, SSI, insurance...etc etc.
Bandwidth for 4000 people at 128K... assuming no-one is downloading pr0n movies or their favorite warez & ISOs they would need about 2 T1s? If they offer their own news servers then add another T1. So... $40K/year?
Office space... $15K/year.
Staying up all night recovering from their first crash? Priceless.
So I've tallied about $500K each year. There's a lot I left out, too, still they could be completely in the black in 15 years. Will there be a need for them for 15 years?
I dunno, but I guess I can see the possibility of success, especially if they're the only game in town.
-sid
Re:You have no idea... (Score:2)
The size was important -- you needed enough businesses with data communications needs, but not enough that you get too much technological inertia. In other words, if all you have is a bar, gas station, country store, and feed & implement you don't have enough. If you have too many customers, it's cost prohobitive to implement new technology without quickly phasing out the old, and difficult to phase out the old with so many customers using it and not wanting to change (win 3.1 anyone?)
Even more important was being served by a small telephone coop that was responsive to customer needs and able to use technology to stimulate local businesses. Big telcos see high tech investments in rural areas as a money sinkhole because they can't see the forest for the trees. Smaller entities have less capital to be concerned with, lower labor costs and better understanding of the local markets.
Stimulating technology in rural areas was one of the interesting things; if I recall correctly a 2-drugstore operation (one in one town, one in the next town over) was totally linked with computerized inventory because the data services were so cheap. Something that in most towns would be done on pencil and paper.
Anyway, it can work the other way around.
Technology in Iowa (Score:2)
This is a pretty cool idea. I don't think a lot of people realize exactly how much technology goes into farming. Stop by a John Deere dealership and look at the tractors. I'm talking the nice big ones. You'll see everything from GPS units, Satellite hookups, and Weather computers. Some measure moisture and exactly how much seeds to plant, etc. I've been in one that gave the guy a view of his field from above so he knew exactly where to plant or what needs more water. 90% of the work is still done by hand, but at least it keeps the mistakes down and increases productivity.
As for Iowa being flat...I can tell you after having been a runner for 16 years in this state, it ain't flat:)
Re:Internet a necessity? (Score:2)
I don't know, if I go five or six minutes without access to pornography, I just about curl up and die.
The amusing thing though is that they think that because people don't get something they've been surviving without for aeons they, likewise, will curl up and die. It's an awfully arrogant attitude. However, it will be beneficial if I ever have the misfortune to be stuck out in the middle of the midwest, and need to check out bangedup.com [bangedup.com] or something.
Sometimes, you just have to get your fix.
Re:I find it hard to believe... (Score:2)
(just another highly edyoomikated Minnesotan (formerly from NJ)
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Re:You're missing my point (Score:2)
Elevator, Huh? (Score:2)