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UK diy (uk.d-i-y) For the discussion of all topics related to diy (do-it-yourself) in the UK. All levels of experience and proficency are welcome to join in to ask questions or offer solutions. |
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#41
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Rural broadband speeds
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:10 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:
However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better. I don't like the way ADSL is marketed with the "up to" in a 6pt font or in a footnote against the 8Mbps or 24Mbps in 144pt. Neither does OFCOM and is attempting to do something about it. If it meant that ISPs refused to accept rural connections then the situation would be out in the open!" And there would be no rural broadband at all, just like there is no cable outside urban/medium sized town areas. Solution is to get off your bum and get a community broadband service running. Plenty of experienced help available, good starting point: http://www.broadband-uk.coop/ Fibre DTH is possible, digging up roads is expensive and complicated legally. So you don't dig up the roads but bring the land owners on board to have fibre ducts laid under their land. Commercial contractors charge for digging holes but out in the country there are plenty of people with diggers, get them involved. There may even be some one with kit that can mole the ducts through rather than having to cut 'n cover. Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or more and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical 100Mbps internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services from third party content providers. Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is normally the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre connection these days. How are your local schools connected? Or hospital, is there an e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe line? Maybe the community can piggy back on those connections. -- Cheers Dave. |
#42
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Rural broadband speeds
In article , The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote: Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the time? Very complicated. Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits. And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line. As he was already suggesting. |
#43
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"Peter Scott" wrote in message om... This is not OT. Comms is a DIY matter when, like me, you are trying to improve lamentable speed by filters, wiring etc. .... "I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750 kbit/s.... Better than I do at my business. However, I found that paying for a 5:1 contention ratio made a great improvement to the service. Colin Bignell |
#44
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Rural broadband speeds
Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or more and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical 100Mbps internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services from third party content providers. Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is normally the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre connection these days. How are your local schools connected? Or hospital, is there an e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe line? Maybe the community can piggy back on those connections. Does fibre have to be laid in ducts? I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust? The copper runs are all overhead once the edge of the town is reached about 3km away. Has fibre ever been installed overhead? I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial imperative to get companies to do it. Allowing them to charge normal rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. It all smacks of the English habit of putting up with things. Peter Scott |
#45
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The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote: The Natural Philosopher wrote: wrote: Peter Scott wrote: Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of the time? Very complicated. Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits. And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line. yes, that is what was being suggested. 2 lines achieves upto twice peak and mean data rates. The clever bit is that it doesnt increase ISP subscription costs any. Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this can over double the average speed? No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the meanest of web pages probably is compressed. Yes, but a) further compression is often possible b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically speed up webpage loading Sorry mate, but we tried this way back in the 90's on international links. we got about 10% improvement, at the expense of a doubling in latency. About the only ting that isn't compressed to the hilt these days is usenet and text emails. Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file size by a factor of say 8, make little difference? I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference, and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters. And the taxpayers would get pretty ****ed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps are paid for out of public money. Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole. Get real. This is infrastructure for one person,. or at beast 20-30 people in his location. I was discussing national investment in rural broadband. I would think it clear that this will have a positive impact on british business. Do you not think it would? NT |
#47
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On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:41:43 UTC, wrote:
Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file size by a factor of say 8, make little difference? Because most of them are lossily compressed already? -- The information contained in this post is copyright the poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by http://www.diybanter.com |
#48
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Rural broadband speeds
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:00:25 +0000
The Natural Philosopher wrote: It's entirely - in the limit - down to the length of wire to the exchange. make it shorter, make it fibre, or replace with microwave link, and you can get more speed. All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay. No-one ever asks us if we are willing to pay for it. They just refuse to even offer it. R. |
#49
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On 8 Jan 2009 12:14:42 GMT
Huge wrote: On 2009-01-08, wrote: Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more neighbour's Neighbour? Wossat? The farmer in t'next valley. R. |
#50
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Rural broadband speeds
TheOldFellow gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying: All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay. No-one ever asks us if we are willing to pay for it. They just refuse to even offer it. ********. They "refuse" to offer faster ADSL because of the limits of the technology. They "refuse" to offer cable, because new cable hasn't been laid _anywhere_ in the country for YEARS, because of the back debts from laying the last lot. You've been given links to faster rural broadband options, available today. But they're clearly too expensive for you. Oh, wait, you've claimed that's not the problem. You'll get faster broadband at some stage, when BT's 21CN upgrades get around to you. But that probably won't be fast enough for you, because other people will still have better than you. I bet you're a _nightmare_ whenever a delivery wagon pulls up outside next door, trying to see if they've gone a step ahead of you so you need to go and buy a newer/bigger/faster widget to stay level. |
#51
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Rural broadband speeds
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:24:13 +0000, Peter Scott
wrote: Lets take a parallel example - television reception. It is thought proper that the whole country should get a television signal. Some areas like hilly and coastal regions couldn't do so without local relays serving a small number of people. Do we complain about the extra cost? Many people in rural areas have to club together at their own expense to build a 'self-help' TV relay station. Does the relay user pay a higher licence fee? No, we accept the premise that it is an essential service. I don't accept that it's essential - I don't have a TV set... -- Frank Erskine |
#52
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Rural broadband speeds
On 8 Jan, 18:32, Peter Scott wrote:
Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or more and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical 100Mbps internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services from third party content providers. Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is normally the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre connection these days. How are your local schools connected? Or hospital, is there an e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe line? Maybe the community can piggy back on those connections. Does fibre have to be laid in ducts? I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust? The copper runs are all overhead once the edge of the town is reached about 3km away. Has fibre ever been installed overhead? I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial imperative to get companies to do it. Allowing them to charge normal rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. It all smacks of the English habit of putting up with things. Peter Scott I've just found this on the BBC News website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7817748.stm and would suggest that it is relevent to the discussion. Rob |
#53
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Rural broadband speeds
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 21:27:21 +0000, TheOldFellow
wrote: Neighbour? Wossat? The farmer in t'next valley. "On the other side" Na na na na, Na na na na. Derek |
#54
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Rural broadband speeds
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:46:54 -0800 (PST), wrote:
The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason. For the first page of say a search result but after that there is the "See All" option. What pees me off is sites that don't have that and/or no crumb trail. -- Cheers Dave. |
#55
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Rural broadband speeds
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:32:59 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:
Does fibre have to be laid in ducts? Normally yes. You lay the duct then blow the fibre through. So each end point needs its own duct all the way back to a fibre hub. The fibre itself contains two optical cores and two balancing ones but is still pretty light and feeble. "Duct" might be misleading, AIUI, it's more of a bundle of tubes one for each end point, I believe a 24 tube duct is about 2" dia. I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust? Robustish you can get robust fibre cables but I doubt they come cheap compared to stuff you blow through a duct. Has fibre ever been installed overhead? Attached to the outside of the terraced houses is one of the ways that fibre might be distributed in the town. It would make sense to be able to fly across building gaps rather than go up and down. Putting poles in probably isn't all that cheap, 20 poles per km? Not to mention the visual impact. Not sure BT would let you share theirs. I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial imperative to get companies to do it. With low rural population densities it just isn't going to happen. Even the government are baulking at the cost of a full UK wide "Next Generation" installation, figures of £25bn being bandied about, they might spend £10bn. The big plus is that the government are aware that commercial companies will not cover rural areas and don't want that digital divide to get any wider. I'm confident that money will be available for community based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user subscriptions are pretty much essential. Allowing them to charge normal rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. And getting them to charge an even lower rate is? -- Cheers Dave. |
#56
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Rural broadband speeds
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:53:04 +0000, Owain wrote:
"area of outstanding natural beauty ... not allowed a dish ..." Which AONB? No such restriction here (that I'm aware of). National Parks are different ball game. -- Cheers Dave. |
#57
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In article ,
Bruce wrote: In the meantime, here's a practical alternative: http://www.avcbroadband.com/ Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing if you're patient. Web sites seem to have gone overboard a bit again, however I was at the end of a 512Kb ADSL line ysterday for a bit, and yes, it really felt slow, but it was more than usable with a bit of patience. Big contrast the day before when I did an install that achieved 23Mb/sec on ADSL2+... However that was in the big city (Bristol!) and 0.5Km from the main exchange... The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were willing to share the costs though... Gordon (Living on the edge of Dartmoor in rural Devon, getting 8Mb ADSL |
#58
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On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:57:38 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:
Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing Does that use the satellite for the uplink or do you still need a phone line for that? The satellite only providing the down link? The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were willing to share the costs though... It's certainly an option for the backhaul but you really need one with the uplink on the satellite as well. Satellite doesn't do a lot for latentcy, any gamers would throw a hissy fit. B-) I guess for ordinary browsing you'd get use to the second or so delay from click to anything happening.. -- Cheers Dave. |
#59
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Owain wrote:
Bruce wrote: In the meantime, here's a practical alternative: http://www.avcbroadband.com/ "area of outstanding natural beauty ... not allowed a dish ..." Owain Even one on the ground behind a hedge? That was the solution a neighbour arrived at when challenged by that problem. It was accepted. But I'd guess they could have done that without even being noticed - but they initially asked about putting one on their house. (That would have been on a G2 house in small town - can't remember if it was a conservation area or anything else, but it looked like it) -- Rod Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious onset. Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed. www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org |
#60
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Rural broadband speeds
Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:41:43 UTC, wrote: Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file size by a factor of say 8, make little difference? Because most of them are lossily compressed already? doesnt make any difference to the fact that one can greatly reduce file size by further (lossy) compression NT |
#61
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Rural broadband speeds
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:46:54 -0800 (PST), wrote: The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason. For the first page of say a search result but after that there is the "See All" option. What pees me off is sites that don't have that and/or no crumb trail. Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt. When there is you get to load the page twice - what a waste of time. When there isnt... NT |
#62
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On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 01:59:30 -0800 (PST), wrote:
Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt. Not there for a list with less than 10 items? When there is you get to load the page twice - what a waste of time. True it would be better if you could make it sticky with a cookie or something. -- Cheers Dave. |
#63
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In article et,
Dave Liquorice wrote: On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:57:38 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote: Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing Does that use the satellite for the uplink or do you still need a phone line for that? The satellite only providing the down link? According to the website, it's 2-way. The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were willing to share the costs though... It's certainly an option for the backhaul but you really need one with the uplink on the satellite as well. Satellite doesn't do a lot for latentcy, any gamers would throw a hissy fit. B-) I guess for ordinary browsing you'd get use to the second or so delay from click to anything happening. Yup. Gamers would not be happy, but for people doing businessey type stuff - ie. no games/p2p, big streaming stuff, it looks OK. They even say that VoIP works OK over it. There will be latency, but that's managable, even in VoIP. I used an aramiska link some time back for interactive stuff (ssh) and it was mangable. The latency wan't really noticable for general web browsing or email. Gordon |
#64
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Rural broadband speeds
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:32:59 +0000, Peter Scott wrote: Does fibre have to be laid in ducts? Normally yes. You lay the duct then blow the fibre through. So each end point needs its own duct all the way back to a fibre hub. The fibre itself contains two optical cores and two balancing ones but is still pretty light and feeble. "Duct" might be misleading, AIUI, it's more of a bundle of tubes one for each end point, I believe a 24 tube duct is about 2" dia. I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust? Robustish you can get robust fibre cables but I doubt they come cheap compared to stuff you blow through a duct. Has fibre ever been installed overhead? Attached to the outside of the terraced houses is one of the ways that fibre might be distributed in the town. It would make sense to be able to fly across building gaps rather than go up and down. Putting poles in probably isn't all that cheap, 20 poles per km? Not to mention the visual impact. Not sure BT would let you share theirs. I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial imperative to get companies to do it. With low rural population densities it just isn't going to happen. Even the government are baulking at the cost of a full UK wide "Next Generation" installation, figures of £25bn being bandied about, they might spend £10bn. The big plus is that the government are aware that commercial companies will not cover rural areas and don't want that digital divide to get any wider. I'm confident that money will be available for community based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user subscriptions are pretty much essential. Allowing them to charge normal rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. And getting them to charge an even lower rate is? Thanks for your useful contribution Dave. That's filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge about fibre. If BT were to do the cabling then they would use their own poles of course and they are already there in most places. Satellite is not really the answer. The relatively low speeds and high cost and latency makes them unviable. As you will see from my original posting I don't believe that there is any intention of providing a remotely comparable service outside of towns. I am encouraged that you think there will be money for community enterprises. I later made the point that rural areas subsidise the cities and it is not unreasonable to expect some subsidy in the opposite direction for such as data transmission. This might answer your valid point about maintenance costs not being met by income. We now have a generation that has never known other than Thatcherite 'thinking' about the infinite 'wisdom' of the market. There are areas where the market is inappropriate and this is one of them. Don't get me wrong. I remember the bad old days of waiting six months to get a phone line. Privatising BT was mostly a great idea. But as enormous sums of tax revenue are pumped into rail, a similar case can be made for money to be put into the data system. Indeed more people use the Internet than trains. My point about lower charges for lower speeds was not entirely serious. However whilst suppliers can say 'well they've now got broadband so stop whining' (not mentioning the increasing differential in speeds), the future problems become hidden. Yes there are many inefficient web sites that soak up bandwidth. IT was ever thus. Just take a look at Microsoft's bloatware! Back in the 80s who would have thought that PCs would need to store digital photos each of which would take up more than entire hard disk of 10Mb? Why on earth do we need bus speeds higher than 1MHz? The Internet is a wonderful resource that enables business and draws people together nationally and across the world. It must not be throttled in its application by failure to invest. Peter Scott |
#65
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wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote: On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:46:54 -0800 (PST), wrote: The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason. For the first page of say a search result but after that there is the "See All" option. What pees me off is sites that don't have that and/or no crumb trail. Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt. When there is you get to load the page twice - what a waste of time. When there isnt... NT Only available where there are fewer than, I think, 6 'normal' pages. Hacks me off that even sites that allow a full 'see all' option (or just 'long' pages) frequently cannot remember from one session to another - even when they store cookies anyway. -- Rod Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious onset. Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed. www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org |
#66
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Alan Braggins wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher wrote: wrote: Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the time? Very complicated. Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits. And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line. As he was already suggesting. No he wsn't He was suggesting that te combination of a a twin NIC windows box a neighbour some unspeified distance away was a magic solution for bandwidth. Well it isn't. |
#67
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Peter Scott wrote:
Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or more and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical 100Mbps internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services from third party content providers. Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is normally the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre connection these days. How are your local schools connected? Or hospital, is there an e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe line? Maybe the community can piggy back on those connections. Does fibre have to be laid in ducts? Yes, but they dont have to be underground.Its normally 'blown' dwon plastic tubes. I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust? The copper runs are all overhead once the edge of the town is reached about 3km away. Has fibre ever been installed overhead? I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial imperative to get companies to do it. Allowing them to charge normal rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. It all smacks of the English habit of putting up with things. Peter Scott Trouble with overhead, is that its not as simple to replace a bit of optical fibre that a tree has crashed onto.. Mind you since a fibre is currently capable of about 8Gbps*, you don't need a lot of em. The real issue is taking power down to repeaters and splitters. A whole new architecture is needed. * from memory. |
#68
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Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user subscriptions are pretty much essential. Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else? Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre laying that kills you. |
#69
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wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote: wrote: The Natural Philosopher wrote: wrote: Peter Scott wrote: Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of the time? Very complicated. Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits. And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line. yes, that is what was being suggested. 2 lines achieves upto twice peak and mean data rates. The clever bit is that it doesnt increase ISP subscription costs any. Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this can over double the average speed? No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the meanest of web pages probably is compressed. Yes, but a) further compression is often possible b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically speed up webpage loading Sorry mate, but we tried this way back in the 90's on international links. we got about 10% improvement, at the expense of a doubling in latency. About the only ting that isn't compressed to the hilt these days is usenet and text emails. Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file size by a factor of say 8, make little difference? Images are always compressed. GIF, JPEG, PNG - all compressed to the hilt.If you mean reducing image *size* or *quality*, that's a different matter. Most compresion f data streams is designed to give 100% recovery of the actual raw data: with an overcompressed JPEG you don't get the quality back ever. I did that on the fly to ensure that thumbnails weren't massive pictures displayed small.. I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference, and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters. And the taxpayers would get pretty ****ed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps are paid for out of public money. Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole. Get real. This is infrastructure for one person,. or at beast 20-30 people in his location. I was discussing national investment in rural broadband. I would think it clear that this will have a positive impact on british business. Do you not think it would? Not really, no. Since the numbers of people living at the end of very long lines is rather small. NT |
#70
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wrote:
Bob Eager wrote: On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:41:43 UTC, wrote: Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file size by a factor of say 8, make little difference? Because most of them are lossily compressed already? doesnt make any difference to the fact that one can greatly reduce file size by further (lossy) compression Why not replace all images with a line saying 'here used to be an image here' and be done with it? NT |
#71
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Huge wrote:
On 2009-01-08, wrote: Another thing that can be done is to have the local server cache as much as possible with a big disc, then revisits to pages load real fast, plus all the reused elements of new pages on the same site. I already do this; I run a squid proxy. Perhaps slow rural speeds is a blessing in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated sites. Won't happen. Web sites are designed by gel-haired, oddly bespectacled weirdoes dressed all in black with perfect eyesight and huge monitors connected to their servers with gigabit ethernet. That's why so many of them are crap. Someone pointed me at a "5 a day" video this morning on an HMG website; it's 176Mb. Like I'm going to wait 30 or 40 minutes for *that* to download. I resent that. Apart from the bespectacled weirdo bit. My eyesight is crap and I never wear black, and never use gel. |
#72
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Rural broadband speeds
The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:
Dave Liquorice wrote: I'm confident that money will be available for community based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user subscriptions are pretty much essential. Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else? Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre laying that kills you. What happened to mesh WIFI deployment? I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as needed). If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink. That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including taking a supply. It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be advantageous. Wonder if any village has done this? I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes woks) as signal directors. Cheers Tim |
#73
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Rural broadband speeds
On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:57:38 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:
In article , Bruce wrote: In the meantime, here's a practical alternative: http://www.avcbroadband.com/ Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing if you're patient. Web sites seem to have gone overboard a bit again, however I was at the end of a 512Kb ADSL line ysterday for a bit, and yes, it really felt slow, but it was more than usable with a bit of patience. Prices may have dropped, but have you seen the (frankly unusable) data limits? 1GB before they start to drop your speed from 512Kbit/sec. If you're unhappy with a 750kbit/sec landline speed, then I can't see that a 1Gbyte limit will last long. You certainly couldn't run a web- based business with such a poor and expensive service agreement. |
#74
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Rural broadband speeds
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote: Dave Liquorice wrote: I'm confident that money will be available for community based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user subscriptions are pretty much essential. Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else? Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre laying that kills you. I did this for real some years back. Supported 3 communities in Devon & Cornwall via Wi-Fi. 2 companies went bust trying to make it work. (fortunately I just staff/contractor) I only kept it going with a grant before BT enabled the exchanges... It really wasn't financially viable. Probably still isn't. Our biggest hit was the installation because we did it properly with outdoor kit, proper line of sight and so on. We had to pay farmers, and others for the use of their roof-tops to put the kit on, then getting in a 10Mb backhaul feed wasn't cheap. (Neither was the kit to send that signal 17.5Km via a 5.8Ghz link to the local head ends) You can bodge it with mesh, indoor antennae and so on, but it won't be reliable with no guarantees of service, limited bandwidth, and so on. Ah well, those were the days. Money up-front if I ever had to do it again. Gordon |
#75
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Rural broadband speeds
Tim S wrote:
The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared: Dave Liquorice wrote: I'm confident that money will be available for community based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user subscriptions are pretty much essential. Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else? Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre laying that kills you. What happened to mesh WIFI deployment? Not cost effective versus BT copper basically. If people were prepared to sign up to £30 a month for high speed broadband, many things would be possible. With people offering deals at £15 or less, its not worth raising capital for. Wifi only covers the last couple of hundred yards at best anyway. - you still have top lay fibre or tight beam microwave TO it. And it congests fast. I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as needed). If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink. Yup. Its doable if thats what people want. But you need s strong technically competent local team to do it. That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including taking a supply. You can get anything of BT/ISP's if you pay for it. 2Mbps to your house rock solid 1:1 contention ration and zero throttling..for a mere 12k a year or so. It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be advantageous. Wonder if any village has done this? WE tried, but it was doomed. BT imply saw where the interest was, and broadband enabled the villages that looked like their act was getting together. At silly prices as hey get their backhaul at trade prices.. I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes woks) as signal directors. Woks are good, yes. Cheers Tim |
#76
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Rural broadband speeds
In article ,
Tim S wrote: The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared: Dave Liquorice wrote: I'm confident that money will be available for community based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user subscriptions are pretty much essential. Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else? Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre laying that kills you. What happened to mesh WIFI deployment? I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as needed). And that's the crux of the proble. It was costing us £200+ to do each install and the punters would not pay that. You need people with insurance and ladders - specially if you're going to drill into peoples houses. We used local sky installers and they weren't cheap. Do it yourself, crack some external render/plasterwork and you've suddenly got something more to wory about than just putting a cable through the wall... If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink. And one p2p'er will kill the lot. That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including taking a supply. We got just over 100 people (out of 1800 houses) to put their names on a bit of paper in one town. This was after running an 18-month funded project to raise awareness and research the effects of broadband in a rural community. Then barely 50 committed to the install of £99, which was less than half what it was really costing. Our first customers cheque bounced on us. Then trying to get £25 a month out of them was like pulling swords out of stone )-: On paper, 50 customers at £25 looks good, but the running costs (without staff) were close to £1000 a month - to buy the backhaul, pay for space on the masts and farmers, etc.) It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be advantageous. Wonder if any village has done this? Do yourself a favour and don't do it. I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes woks) as signal directors. You don't need woks - I recently did help a friend in Wales as it happens, to get a link to his neighbour about a mile away - good line of sight at roof-top level using older, but good outdoor kit with flat-plate antennae. (smartBridges kit) The longest wi-fi link we ran was 6.5 miles in Cornwall using a standard 12db omni at the access point and and an 18db grid parabolic antennae at the client end. Good line of sight though - client was uphill from the base. Gordon |
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Rural broadband speeds
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:59:44 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre laying that kills you. IIRC our backhaul (5Mbps symmetrical with allowed bursts to 10Mbps no useage limits) costs 10k+/year for 300 customers. £33/year/customer or two months subs at our top rate. Trouble is most of our subs are at £8/month not £18. After the backhaul cost there is about £30k to pay for the full time admin and network maintenace staff (one of each) plus network maintenance and all the other on going costs like site/office rental, power, marketing, not forgetting a sinking fund to upgrade/replace the network infrastructure after say 5 years. Though with fibre that might not be so pressing, our network is now 6/7 years old based on WiFi and is creaking both from increased traffic levels and equipment failure due to age. Of course if you have people volunteer to do the admin/network maintenance for free from home that helps an awful lot but possibly with quite an impact if the network dies and your volunteer is busy doing their paid day job. The chances are you would get grant funding for the capital outlay associated with digging holes, installing servers, and possibly the first 12 months backhaul costs. What you won't get funding for is all those ongoing costs, like the backhaul after the 1st 12 months... Yes, a "village ISP" is viable, there are plenty of places with such self help systems in place but the economics can be a bit border line. -- Cheers Dave. |
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Rural broadband speeds
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:53:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Trouble with overhead, is that its not as simple to replace a bit of optical fibre that a tree has crashed onto.. If jointing the fibre no, that is a skilled and time consuming process. If the lenghts aren't particulary long it's probably easier to blow the old ones out and new ones in. Mind you since a fibre is currently capable of about 8Gbps*, you don't need a lot of em. DTH needs one fibre cable per home/end point back to a "hub". Another way of distributing the connections is fibre to "good site(s)" then wireless as the final link. You can get reliable wireless stuff these days that doesn't use 2.5GHz (WiFi and loads of other stuff) and will give speeds to a few tens of Mbps over decent distances. Personally I'd want to put in DTH fibre with development grant support. The real issue is taking power down to repeaters and splitters. Find suitable places with mains, install your kit there, give the owners a free connection as payment. -- Cheers Dave. |
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Rural broadband speeds
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:41:51 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:
If BT were to do the cabling then they would use their own poles of course and they are already there in most places. But you'd need to provide the arms and legs of all your customers to pay for it. Anyway I don't think BT would do it. If they are going to fibre an area why do it for some one else when they could do it for themselves and get the income from that work. You do it, own the network and sell capacity to content providers. I am encouraged that you think there will be money for community enterprises. I don't think I know there is money available. What I think is that there is going to be even more money available in the not too distant future. -- Cheers Dave. |
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Rural broadband speeds
On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 12:55:54 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:
And one p2p'er will kill the lot. Yep, when we put our network in there was no bandwidth or useage limit. One or two people then started to hog the bandwidth and effectively denying everyone else access to the internet. We had to introduce a scale of tarrifs with different bandwidth limits, still true unlimited useage though. The longest wi-fi link we ran was 6.5 miles ... We have several backbone links of that length and a couple considerably longer. 24" dishes each end for the long hops, yagis in tubes for shorter ones. -- Cheers Dave. |
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