Community Sets Up Their Own DSL

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

[Strog]

There was a small town out in the panhandle of Nebraska that decided they needed good internet to keep all the young people from moving away. They setup DSLAMs out in the country to within a couple miles of every house in the county. They didn't have to fight phone company but they did have to run a lot of fiber.

Why this is cool ...

[pgrote]

This *is* cool because it's geeky, but what makes it even cooler is that the people behind the scenes walk you through what they did to make it happen.

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

[bahtama]

I also remember reading about these folks [acc.umu.se] who made their own neighborhood 100 Mbps fiber network. The screenshot of the FTP download speed is just plain silly. The creator of the page even mentions "and 25-40 Mbps is possible most of the time - that means it is their single hard disk limiting the speed!". :)

Why didn't they just roll out CAT5?

[t0qer]

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?

[azaroth42]

And why couldn't they do a wireless network? It didn't seem like the houses were too far apart that they couldn't have a directional antenna to beam from one place to the next. Sounds a lot cheaper than the trouble they had to go through.

--Azaroth

Re:Why didn't they just roll out CAT5?

[gmhowell]

You may want to invest in a bit of conduit. The insulation on that CAT 5 ain't gonna last forever. Also squirrels, mice, etc.

This is wonderful!

[uncoveror]

A co-op for DSL! I love it. This reminds me of the Community Antenna Television co-ops that created cable TV. Too bad corporations turned that into a money grab scam. I used to get my electricity from a co-op before I moved, and service was cheaper and more reliable than from those crooks at Cinergy. If the co-op turned a profit, I got a profit sharing check at the end of the year. Someone has proven that neccesity is the mother of invention, not just the potential to get filthy rich. I wish all utilities were available from co-ops and not corporate robber barons who gouge me.

Re:Coloradoans, unite!

[Mr. Sketch]

There actually is something people can do when they don't get DSL, but it's available so close, like a few block away: it's called 802.11b. I was unable to get DSL, but my neighbor who is right across the street was able to get it, so I setup two LinkSys wireless access points (WAP11) at USD$150 a piece, and they paid the upfront costs of the DSL modem and installation (which came out to about the same as the two APs) and we're splitting the monthly costs. Qwest could be making twice as much in this case, but they don't, and they have no plans to offer DSL service to my house anytime soon, so oh well. There are others in the neighborhood who can't get it, so I'm thinking of potentially offering the service to them, for a small monthly fee (maybe $20) because we'd probably have to increase the bandwidth for our service, otherwise I'd probably do it for free.

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

[lscotte]

Hey, how come that space keeps getting inserted in there? Odd...

Broadband as a town utility!

[mansa]

I worked on a project as a consultant a number of years ago... a town decided to wire itself. It was city government sponsored, and they had their own T-1, and were wiring homes with ethernet. Since then it appears that they've really expanded! I wish I could live there. :)Check it out!

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

[jimmu]

Is Lariat [lariat.org].

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

[Anonymous Coward]

They will not permit any of their user/members to run any kind of server at home. Not even a "vanity" domain which generates little or no traffic.