> “We monitor all the connections and if someone is using a lot of bandwidth for a long period of time, we talk to them and figure out what they are doing,” Sutton said. “Often times it's people watching Netflix and then falling asleep and then it keep auto-playing things all night long.”<p>This is the kind of statement that makes me long for a faceless, impersonal ISP. As much as I'm impressed by a neighborhood banding together and coming up with a solution, the idea of a neighbor trying to "figure out" usage or "talk to" customers about it is horrifying.<p>Hopefully they have a mechanism in place to allow everyone to burst to available bandwidth, but to throttle people to a sustainable proportion otherwise. Such a mechanism seems both necessary and sufficient, and given the professional equipment they're using, it seems quite likely to be available.<p>When Comcast sends bandwidth usage nastygrams, people get up in arms about it; we talk about "network neutrality", and that ISPs should remain "dumb pipes".<p>While the ability to introspect traffic at all is a bug that needs fixing in client and server software, to combat surveillance, at least with an ISP I'm reasonably confident that only 1) a trusted subset of ISP staff and 2) the government (hopefully with a warrant) have access.<p>By contrast, would you want your neighborhood association looking at your ISP logs? Or <i>anyone</i> you know personally? And making it their business how much bandwidth you use and for what purpose?<p>(On a separate note, I wonder how much Netflix's and YouTube's CDN boxes cost, given that Netflix and YouTube tend to subsidize them.)
FYI: most businesses in the tourist areas of Bali, Indonesia rely on wireless Internet by a small comapny owned by the Mega Internet cafe.<p>The national telco, Telkom, offers Speedy DSL, but it's not speedy or reliable, and Biznet offers FTTH only to dense commercial areas. (which is still more than Silicon Valley has!)<p>I had a tour of Mega a decade ago, and they have a tower pointed at Singapore. At the time they were using Linux LEAF distro for mgmt. and Soekris boards, but likely that has changed. Torrential rains do affect reception, but that also affects the Speedy landlines.<p>Also, outside North America, GSM rules. Which means you can go to the Borneo jungle and get 5 bars, which often doesn't happen in say, Sunnyvale. And 5 bars means adequate EGPRS data communications - everywhere.
I guess the residents of the San Juan Islands must be quite a different demographic from the Canadian islands just across the border. This would never happen on one of the Canadian Gulf Islands, because too many residents are worried about the "wireless radiation" causing headaches or cancer. (This is also where 1 in 6 residents refused a smart power meter [1], mostly out of supposed safety concerns.)<p>[1] "Gulf Islanders 15 times more likely to oppose BC Hydro smart meters than Vancouverites" <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Gulf+Islanders+times+more+likely+oppose+Hydro+smart+meters+than+Vancouverites/8780345/story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Gulf+Islanders+times+...</a>
Here is one equipment from Ubiquity that you can use to built speedy point to point connection. 1.2Gbps on 100km link.<p><a href="https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/</a>
This is pretty awesome, but I wonder if it could have been done had there not been a network guy in the group? I've done a lot of network code/config over the years, and I wouldn't say it was particularly easy. The guy seems to say it was easy.<p>Unbelievably fiddly is more like it. Just the nature of it makes it annoying: before you have a connection through, you have a chain of links that doesn't work. You have to fix every single link before Eureka.
> The rural Orcas Island has a lot of hills and obstacles that could disrupt the wireless signals, and it would have been "prohibitively expensive" for DBIUA to install its own towers. As such, many of the radios had to be installed in trees.<p>Presumably there will be movement of antennae as trees grow. One could monitor the alignment by periodically checking the signal strength between links. I wonder how often things will need to be realigned because the "tower" on which the radios sit changes with time.
This is really cool!! I always wish to setup such network amongst peers and get everybody connected with good b/w, especially in India.
This kinda stuff can create marvels in emerging economies whose existing infrastructure is heavily loaded.
This is really cool. Honestly I'm surprised they still get 20Mbps after the data goes through multiple relays and a microwave connection. Are microwave links in widespread use for internet communication?
I would like to be able to share my home network with my car within a 15+ km radius of my home... Maybe using a servo-controlled directional antenna on my car that would always point to my home using some sensors, or an unidirectional would be even better but I don't know if that is possible using open-spectrums.
Hope it works out well for them. I had a horrid time with a local wireless provider in my area. It was based on the motorola canopy (now cambium networks) configuration. They had main antennas on every single water tower in probably a 20-30 mile radius. I live on the edge of the county and there is not much out here. The water tower antenna that I was pointed to was probably servicing a ton of people.<p>When I first got set up, I was told I would get 8mbs down and 2mbs up for $70 a month. It was unlimited, unmonitored, and a "straight static IP into the internet". For the first 3 months, it was great. I got 8mbs and pings were 80ms. However after those first 3 months things, started to slow down. My antenna was in front of a tree and since it was now spring, the tree was covered in thick leaves. I thought that was the reason for my slow down and I didn't complain. Once winter came again, and all the leaves fell off, there was no difference. My speed was 8mbs, then it was 7mbs, and now it was hanging around 6mbs and I could no longer use my VOIP office phone. I could hear fine, but no one would hear me. And also during the evenings, things were getting worse, with speeds dipping down in the the 4mbs range, even netflix was starting to slow way down. Another year goes by and I am looking at a max speed of 5mbs, but normally it dips down to 1mbs. Another year goes by, and it was even worse, but now pings are up to 100-200 range.<p>I then noticed after these three years, ATT u-verse DSL was available. I managed to get the business class 6mbs for $50 a month (but I get 7mbs down). I've never been so happy....<p>In hindsight, I probably should have complained to the customer support, but I really had no faith in them, it felt too much like an over subscription issue and I was afraid that their "fix" would be to just install a 50 foot pool in my yard to put their antenna on which I didn't want.<p>Other than that, I have always wanted to build my own ISP. But now I don't know if I would do it wireless or not (but that is pretty much the only way...)
<i>CenturyLink has gone so far as to tell customers who cancel their DSL service that they will not be able to start it up again, Brems said.</i><p>That seems awfully abusive.
I wonder how they set this up w.r.t regulations. I was under the impression the process to setup an ISP involved a mountain of red tape. Did they get away with it because they are a non profit?
I see the a headline “It wasn't that hard”, Then immediately below a picture with the caption "Sutton holds a drone he used to analyze potential radio location"...
looks good but i believe they can take more learnings from <a href="http://battlemesh.org/" rel="nofollow">http://battlemesh.org/</a> for creating these kind of adhoc networks