The Best Way to Bring BB to a rural area?

Gandalf23

What is the best way to get BB providers to provide service in a fairly rural area?

(I dont want to get satellite... too much of a ripoff).

Someone also mentioned in work recently that the Government are willing to give grants to setup BB inrural areas... is this true and if so, how do I go about this?

Any opinions/advice welcomed.

JimmyL

Try http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/Communications/Group+Broadband+Scheme

Some schemes are up (Kilkenny, Tipperary and Carlow with http://www.premierbroadband.net)

bushy...

Where are located btw?
Have a look here to see what you can be done when everyone does their bit http://www.irishwan.com it now goes from Mayo to Waterford
Its not so difficult anymore to setup ,you can now buy affordable purpose made gear instead of using PCs and old MMDS antennas like before.
The advantage to building it yourself is that you will know how to look after it and grow it in the future,and costs will be much lower,if you get in somebody to set it up you could end up paying e80+VAT (westnet) per month for a 1meg connection.
Stick a post on irishwan forums and we'll help you out as much as possible,without getting stuck in gbs hell

oscarBravo

bushy... wrote:

Have a look here to see what you can be done when everyone does their bit http://www.irishwan.com it now goes from Mayo to Waterford

When did IrishWAN become a broadband provider? I thought it was a hobbyist network, with Internet access as a possibly-available afterthought.

Where's the WAN in Mayo? I'm not familiar with it.

bushy wrote:

The advantage to building it yourself is that you will know how to look after it and grow it in the future,and costs will be much lower

...until something happens to your equipment, and you have to (a) pay for replacement gear yourself, and (b) fix it yourself.

bushy wrote:

if you get in somebody to set it up you could end up paying e80+VAT (westnet) per month for a 1meg connection.

How much is a 1meg connection from IrishWAN? What's the performance like for VoIP? Gaming? VPN?

bushy wrote:

Stick a post on irishwan forums and we'll help you out as much as possible,without getting stuck in gbs hell

You've obviously had extensive experience with GBS. Maybe you should share those experiences.

Axl

Irishwan do sell connectivity - ive seen some of their invoices.

Gandalf23

Bushy, I'm moving to Narraghmore in Kildare... rural area between Kilcullen and Athy.

Please tell me more about how IrishWAN can give me broadband.

oscarBravo wrote:

You've obviously had extensive experience with GBS. Maybe you should share those experiences.

I would be very very interested in finding out more about IrishWAN.

Anyone know anything?

Xennon

Gandalf, call in to us here www.irishwan.com or www.irishwan.com/forum
you can find us on irc.irishwan.com:6667
have a look at the website and see if its for you. We build our own homemade wans, we can show you how. Its not rocket science but does take a bit of learning. If we can we'll help. Theres no reason at all why you cant get the BB in a local town that has the service and fire it out to your locality. It would take some work and learning, but at least then its yours.
Other options are the GBS schemes, and commercial providers etc. Im sure ya can find info on them here.

Dave_W

bushy...

Apologies to OscarB ....Irishwan only goes as far as Tuam,not really the point though,it wouldn't be of much use to the OP as it's a hobbyist network and not geared up to be a broadband provider.

You need to get a group together,look into GBS schemes,grants and so on .........

( http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Group+Broadband+Scheme/ )

then weigh up whether you want do this yourselves,just get the gear installed and be shown how to use/fix it or hand it all over to a company and just be end users.


A presentation of what was done in a rural area of Denmark
http://www.platform.dk/mikrotik/mikrotik_in_rural_areas_files/v3_document.htm


A few links to keep you busy and give you an idea of gear/prices ....

http://www.wi-pipe.net/ Irish distributor of antennas and gear,good,quick and cheap

http://www.mikrotik.com/3projects.html .....been at radio links for 9 years
They do routing software/routerboards/radiocards etc

---

http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap.htm ....manufacturer of similar boards,don't sell to the public anymore afaik ,available through resellers

http://www.pcengines.ch/case2c.htm enclosure for above,i've used a few of these take all the unnecessary hassle out of installs

http://www.pcengines.ch/cm9.htm ...example of one type of radiocard used

http://www.pcengines.ch/pignf.htm .. one type of 'pigtail' ,they are used to convert/join between antenna sized connectors and radio card

http://www.pacwireless.com/products/RT24-14.shtml ....Rootennas (antennas with a pouch at the back for the electronics, ok for client @ shorter distances)

---

http://www.antennas.com/products.php very good panel antennas,some others tend to split open after a while

http://www.fab-corp.com , are in US though (+customs duty)

Bren

DemonOfTheFall

Nice set of resources bushy. That wi-pipe crowd are very reasonable.

watty

Irish WAN doesn't have the bandwidth to support more than a couple of users even if it did connect to Internet.

BT may enter Wireless market.

Digweb Metro.

Wimax in future.

Unfortunately a lot of Rural suppliers and schemes are little more than WiFi connected to a shared Satellite Ground station.

bushy...

You're spot on,Irishwan doesn't have enough bandwidth like i said ,and a few rural suppliers idea of a solution really is a shared satellite link :rolleyes:

But if you're out in a rural area , no BB,not enough people interested to attract Digiweb/IBB etc , what can you do ?

eg..... you could get a link going back to BBland (say ~30meg) with gear from above suppliers,not mega but better than nothing, maybe do it x 2 for more speed/backup
maybe run a proxy/dns at the local end too.

All depends on the number of people really ... ideal situation is if there is BB in a nearby town/village etc and need to connect people who are out just a little too far

http://www.aerial.net .......forgot this one last time

bigQ

Allot of rural national schools seem to have satellite broadband. Would it be possible to use these as hubs for small group broadband schemes? I'm sure there are drawbacks technically and politically but not sure what they are?

oscarBravo

bigQ wrote:

Allot of rural national schools seem to have satellite broadband. Would it be possible to use these as hubs for small group broadband schemes? I'm sure there are drawbacks technically and politically but not sure what they are?

1. Satellite != broadband
2. There's a "chinese wall" between the school and group broadband schemes. The broadband for schools program can't be used to provide broadband to the surrounding area, and a group scheme in the area can't provide broadband to the local school.

Joined-up thinking at its finest.

Pappacharlie

Might I recommend a new Broadband service provider in your area. WestNet are a fantastic new exciting company who are opening up rural remote areas in Mayo to the Broadband revolution. Might make it to KNOCKMORE some day!!!:)

bushy...

Pinky : " Gee, Brain what do you want to do tonight?"
Brain : "The same thing we do every night Pinky. Try to take over the world!"

godfrey

only for IrishWAN, I would have burned my PC. the copper where I live (Meelick, 6km from Limerick) is so shot I was getting 1.6KB/s on dialup.

€ircon have no intention of getting the finger out in my area (not a suspicion, a fact confirmed by a €ircon engineer mate of mine). and the state of the lines probably make it pointless without a major upgrade of lines.

due to terrain, Digiweb is also unavailable (engineers came out & laughed).

IBB in Limerick may or may not work here, but I doubt it (distance & terrain), and my friends who use IBB say their service is very unreliable, with high contention ratios also.

so, all in all, its been a great service for me. the network expands and most importantly, it changes, in response to user needs. there is continuous development going on, and a great bunch of lads who are willing to help the less experienced users, like me.

oh yeah, and my download speeds are typically in the range of 180KB/s

I hope this message gives encouragement to anyone thinking of setting up a wireless WAN.

godfrey