Sharing BB

Gone West

Our town is getting its exchange enabled next week(whatever that really means)
and I was looking at the price/features of DSL, and I was not that impressed. I can see myself downloading mabye 30 gigs per month, and Im not willing to pay E100 PM. some of my friends locally are in the same boat, so we started discussing building a small 802.11x to share a high-end dsl package. If everybody pays 10-20 PM, we could afford 4mit unlimited cap(or so) as its better value than their basic home package.

My query is this: Will Eircom (UTv, ESAT, etc) let us share this B/B? Will they know if we are sharing it? What can/will they do?

*pologies if this is a little long-winded.

**EDIT: the town is moate

Webmonkey

I don't think there is anything wrong with sharing broadband but re-selling it is another story. If you go ahead with it where will your basestation be (AP located) , will everyone have a Line-Of-Sight to this location (This is vital, if you don't have LOS forget about it)
How far are ye from eachother.

Gone West

I am fairly handy with wireless nets, so building it should not be a problem. The AP will be in the town centre, with a 1.5M cable connecting it to a high gain omni. Others will point directional antenae at the omni. Most people have LOS. Distances are only 100m-600m from the AP.

Has anybody actually done this? Any thoughts?

Webmonkey

I have a 2 mile one running at the moment. What Radio equipment you using?
Is the town centre high from your friends and you as High Gain means a really small vertical beamwidth so be sure you are buying the right antenna. As well as that if theres nobody behind the town centre, consider a sector antenna rather than an omni to reduce noise.
If you are within 2KM i would advise going with a normal antenna rather than highgain. High gain should be for long distances. If people are within 2km of a high gain its going to be hard to get everyone in the 8 - 12degree vert. beamwidth. Hell it could even be less so check the vertical beamwidth. Especially as its an omni and if people are behind you, you will not be able to tilt it much because if you tilt it down in front the back will rise high and you may lose people behind. Just some advice.

Regards,
Donal

Gone West

I'm hearing you webmonkey. When I say high gain, I really mean "slightly high gain"! Yeah I will consider the V beamwidth. I have some topo software that might help me out there. I am basically in the middle, so a sector is out of the question. (Unless I got 2 mabye).

On another note: does anybody know what companies sell backhaul in Ireland?

Webmonkey

No probs Fuzzylog. Good luck with it anyways. Hope someone can help you out with Backhauls but they will be very expensive.

Gone West

yeah I am thinking now that backhaul isnt the way to go. I suppose I'll just have to emigrate to sweeden.

Vikings

Send me a postcard .... at 10mb/s.

Blaster99

There are a few IrishWAN's who use the top end Eircom ADSL package and share it out across the network. Seems to work except that the lack of upload speed is a problem. If somebody uploads a lot it will kill the download performance in a big way.

And if you look at the pricing it makes no sense to pay four times as much to get 4Mbps when everyone can just get a 2Mbps link for €40 or whatever they cost. If you're thinking that the 2Mbps ones are capped, well, if there are few heavy downloaders sharing a 4Mbps line you're not gonna have much in terms of performance in any event. And so far those caps haven't been enforced.

Webmonkey

http://www.netsource.ie/
4mbit line. Uncapped

Gone West

IncredibleBulk: Ill send you a postcard at 100mbit

Webmonkey: Yep, It looks like its going to be netsource that I go with.

Blaster: some of these folks are going to be outside the 2km(or whatever) limit of ADSL, also I know personally everyone that would be connecting to this, and they all know to keep heavy downloads to night time. The ridiculous upload speed is a very valid point though, Ill have to think hard about that.

---

until 2 weeks ago, I was living in phoenix, AZ, USA where 5.5 mbit cable was the bog standard, for $25 per month with absolutely no cap. (I downed 350 gig per month when I was there on average). Its a nice kick in the B**ls to see what Eircon have to offer for E38 per month.

Peanut

If you're only going to be sharing it with up to 10 people let's say then the 256k upload should be fine, although it helps to try to prioritise upload traffic based on port num/application.

Webmonkey

With a bit of bandwidth shaping you should be ok but you will need good router equipment for this. If you want, i can let you know of my router configuration built from independent component.

snappieT

Not so sure how happy €incon will be about this. They'll end up making less money, and god knows that can't happen.

Giblet

This is very dodgy ground...

Moriarty

Sharing the cost of a dsl line is perfectly fine, the providers have said that to a number of irishwan groups. On the other hand, reselling (ie. making a profit) a dsl line is against their T&Cs. Of course they can't tell the difference, but that's how it stands.

Webmonkey

Netsource don't care what you do either even if you do resell as far as i know.

Giblet

I'm sure that if you did it, netsource probably wouldn't know or care, but that doesn't mean that they won't one day decide to act upon it. As Moriarty has said, and as I've seen, people do share BB connections on IrishWAN and sharing the cost of that is generally ok. Who knows the implications of say, charging 20 people 10 euro each to join your network? The provider might find out and be very pissed off that their potential market is being cut by someone sharing their product. I'd also be worried about the QoS you could provide!

Gone West

Moriarity has basically answered it. I have no intention of making profit from this.(not even to cover the hardware costs) It would be just me sharing the b/b and the cost with 5-10 friends. the QoS would be ok, and they would not expect 24/7/365 uptime for a hundred and fifty quid a year. They all currently have dialup as backup anyways.

does unlimited down/up really mean that? I mean if my account collectively down's 200gig per month(worst case scenario) would my ISP start giving me grief?

As someone said: Eircom/etc will be annoyed that they're losing out on revenue. My answer is this

If I upgraded to Broadband, it would actually cost me less per month to use the internet than it does now (dialup- I use about 2 hours per day). So by offering dsl, eircom are losing income and incurring expensive costs unbundling the loop. Most people who upgrade to DSL, AFAICS actually save money,
thus depriving Eircom of revenue.

EDIT** Why arent netsource more popular/mainstream? They offer the cheapest/best value DSL around, am I missing something?

Giblet: If I only charge everyone just enough to cover the broadband, is this still dodgy? Or do you mean dodgy, as in against-the-charter dodgy?

Giblet

I think what you are doing is great, but dodgy as in, I don't know exactly how your provider would react.

snappieT

Fair play if you get it working, but just think...

48:1 contention, 20 people sharing each of the connections, and you suddenly have 960:1 - thats a potential speed of 2bits/sec

Also, there is no such thing as no cap. Its always "within reason". While one person might stretch this "reason", a load of you on one line... I just can't see it working out in reality as it appears on paper.

Giblet

It wouldn't be 960:1, it would be 58:1

He isn't buying up 48 connections

flamegrill

Netsource are popular for a few reasons.

1) They dropped a lot of home customers or forced them onto 1-2mbps packages because they were leeching.

2) they won't sign you up unless you are a registered business or are a sole trader with proof of trading.

Now there are tonnes of ways around this, but mainly people are not bothered.

Paul

gurramok

FuzzyLogic wrote:

EDIT** Why arent netsource more popular/mainstream? They offer the cheapest/best value DSL around, am I missing something?

How are Netsource cheapest ?

I'm on NS and I dont get it!
They are a reseller of Eircoms services for the same price!

Gone West

ok gurramok. repeat after me.

"Eircom overcharge us by about 20 euros per month, whilst other resellers of eircoms products only overcharge us by about 15 euro per month"

Say that 20 times, and you should be ok.

---

Local file transfer and local gaming would be some uses of a network. So even if the BB thing turns out to not work, we can still practice CoD.
Thanks for all the advice so far, keep it coming!

Blaster99

Giblet wrote:

It wouldn't be 960:1, it would be 58:1

He isn't buying up 48 connections

In reality it's of course a lot worse than you make out. Eircom will deliver 4Mbps on that link, or 2Mbps on a normal ADSL sub. Sharing that 4Mbps among 10 users and you'll be lucky if most users see 1Mbps. If somebody uploads anything the connection is dead for everyone. You'll have to ban and police P2P apps etc, usually the sort of stuff people get an uncapped connection for.

Gone West

nobody will be uploading anything, the users who will be on this network are all local geeks, who know the score with regards to uploading killing off Bandwidth. 1mbit for a tenner a month aint badm, but does any of the mainstream ISPS offer anything greater than 4mbit? (check out my comment on my cable in the USA) As 4 mbit isn't mega fast at all.

Blaster99

Make that €20pm unless you're planning to have 20 users. At €30pm you get real ADSL in Ireland without having to spend €200 on wireless equipment and go through the hassle of bolting stuff to your house and relying on your buddy down the road to run a network for you. Unless you're doing this to serve people who can't get ADSL, it makes no sense. ADSL's reach is about 5km's I think.

Do you have a definitive high site or is this just theory?

gurramok

FuzzyLogic wrote:

ok gurramok. repeat after me.

"Eircom overcharge us by about 20 euros per month, whilst other resellers of eircoms products only overcharge us by about 15 euro per month"

Say that 20 times, and you should be ok.

Problem is that since upgrade to 2mb, i'm on Origin Plus and its €54/mnth with 16gb cap, and Eircoms equivalent is same price with 20gb cap(business plus), where is the value there ?

Webmonkey

Its the average home users they rip off.

Gone West

Blaster: I live about 100M higher than my friends. So they should (in theory anyways) have lOS. We live in the sticks, so we cant get smart. Also, some of the lads are in areas that will never have DSL. I have all the equipment I will need allready. (802.11g AP+router+omni) Ive run a home wierless network for the last 3 years with no downtime, except power cuts.

Gurramok: im talking about a higher-end product than 2 mbit. One with no cap. Sure, all 2 mbit products will be very similar.

**EDIT** just checked it: 47 M higher than most other people.