On Thu, 19 Dec 2013 11:43:28 -0700, Tony Hwang wrote:

How come you are using radio link. no cable access? You way out
in boon dogs like my cabin? My only access is via satellite there.
It costs a lot so I don't use it.

Hi Tony,

We are in mountains. Our roads are one-lane for miles on end.
Zoning in our area is 40 acres, so, if you have 79 acres, you
can only put one house on it (they don't want more people living
in the mountains - they prefer them all squashed together in
San Jose, which we can "see" (along with the smog above it).

Even though we're few and far between (we can't even see the
neighbor's houses) but we all know each other better than if
we lived in a city.

So we all know what the others have by way of Interner access.
None of us can get DSL because we are something like 30,000
feet from some switching station that we need. It's too far.

None of us can get cable because the poles out here only
have power and telephone. Nothing else is on them.

Luckily, we're high up, so, we have a fantastic view of
the sky. Satellite is no problem. Out here, both Hughes and
Viasat Exeed serve us. But, satellite, in a word, sucks, only
because of bandwidth limits and latencies. Mostly the bandwidth
limits. The speeds are actually pretty good. But, that bandwidth
limit is a killer.

Of course, we could use cellular modems, but, there is a better
solution for us. We use line-of-sight WiFi access points. Since we
can see both sides of Silicon Valley, we could put an antenna
up 30 miles away and see it easily by line of sight. In almost
all directions.

The net is that we all have dish antennas bristling on our roofs.
They point at the local access points.

We have only four WISPs to choose from (that I know of), so,
each of us points to whatever WISP gives us the best deal.

Mine allows me to be unthrottled, which is great because I have
no bandwidth limits and I have no speed limits. If I can get
30Mbps, that's what I get.

My first radio, a Bullet M2, only got about 8Mbps (symmetric).
So I upgraded that to a Nanobridge M2, which got about 10Mbps.
Now with the Rocket M2, I get almost 20Mbps.

So, our investment in radios has a direct relationship to our
Internet speeds. Our "modem" is the radio (aka, the transceiver).

BTW, I'll ask you a question about you cabin in the next post ...