Running DSL Lines

HammerFour · Aug 25, 2005

You might also consider selling internet access to anyone with line of sight to your home...a basic WISP ( wireless isp ) setup is pretty cheap and from what I know easy to set up.

I have considered doing something similar here to get away from Direcway, for example bringing in a full or fractional t-1, setting up an antenna and an access control server, finding some clients, putting up the client side antenna, etc.

I guess I am to much of a chicken to venture out into my own business that way, sigh.

ratter · Aug 25, 2005

( Thank you Mike.

I did check on the fractional pricing and it slid down to as low as $400 per month. I'm going to see if there is a way for us to test a lower bandwidth here at our home office to see if there is much of a difference.

My wife is on Lotus Notes/Sametime, which is quite the hog. (Which is whre the tractors come in!) She does get a bit touchy when running an international conference call and I step in to download some huge thing.

The 'selling bandwidth' doesn't exactly make sense. What's the difference between me running an office with 100 people sitting at desks compared to running an ISP with 12 subscribers?

A couple of other ideas came to us last night, for anyone kind of following this. We actually have 4 living structrues on our 10 acre parcel. 2 of them are rented. So there is potential to sell high speed connections to our tenants. There is potential for us to actually RENT office space, with high speed connectivity. And finally we could create an internet cafe type arrangement where school kids could come over to use the equipment on an adhoc basis, paying hourly or monthly fees.

These are all arrangements that we would try to work with the local folks out there who might be in similar conditions as us.

Thanks again. )

Those are great ideas that you have there, regarding setting up an office space or i-cafe type arrangement. Especially if the other nearest such space to you is a 30 min. commute, your neighbors might appreciate it. People like you and me are proof that a need does exist. I'm not sure how prevalent that need is, but it certainly exists.

I'm not sure I understand your question about selling bandwidth to 12 users vs. 100 office workers? Are you asking why they might be different? If so, one example - in an office, you have a good idea what people need with regards to connectivity and can plan accordingly. With an ISP, unless you put protections in place, one punk kid can suck up all your bandwidth by trading music and running gaming servers 24/7.

I certainly wouldn't want to discourage anyone from wanting to bring high-speed to the country folk (lord knows I coulda used some help a couple months ago!! still annoyed that our WISP guy wouldn't return my calls....) BUT, like any other kind of business venture, there's probably more to it than initially meets the eye.

Some examples:

- Hardware considerations - what do you need to actually physically share the bandwidth. How will you limit the bandwidth used per user? In other words, what will your network look like and what kind of capabilities will it have.

-End user service agreement - what kind of limitations are you going to put on your users and what kind of services are you going to provide for them (might come back to #1, if you would like to offer email or web hosting or other services that people are used to getting from an ISP these days.)

- Who's going to do the install/setup/consulation for your users?

- How do you protect yourself from liability if someone on your network is doing something illegal?

Those are just some tip-of-the-iceberg kind of things to think about...

====

Any business venture aside, look into a router for your own personal use that has "QoS" features. This will allow you to prioritize activities (via which port they use, or which computer the traffic is coming from) so that your downloading won't interrupt your wife's web seminar, for example.

SLOBuds · Aug 25, 2005

I was wondering about how to do the QoS features.

The other issues can indeed be tricky and require a lot of thought before taking those actions. Many things happen on an 'informal' basis out in my part of the country. Not to say that our friendly neighbor kids are totally unable to 'experiment'.

Regarding the ISP issues, I would rather have an ISP take part of my bandwidth and THEY handle the registrations and legal aspects. If that is possible. My role would be to receive a portion of their revenue based on signups.

Not that it would be quite as simple as that, but that is what I would rather do.

What I would really really like to happen is to get the phone company to lay WHATEVER it takes to get a simple DSL out here. Then I would subscribe along with anyone else who cared to. I would be willing to fund part (maybe all) of the charge to run the line.

If laying DSL is a $10,000 number, you can see that it doesn't take long of me dropping $600 per month to pay that $10,000. Plus I know that I can get some neighbors to kick in a bit.

Problem is that I don't know whether we're looking at a $10,000 number, or a $1,000,000 number.

And I don't understand why one person is willing to nail wires onto telephone lines, and another person isn't willing to do that. The T1 guys are willing to quote a fixed price on a fixed throughput, for wires that have to be run 15 miles. Why can't I get the DSL guys to run a different wire 15 miles? Or the cable guys to run a different wire 15 miles? On my nickel?

All these folks have to string wires. Meaning, long spools of wires, maybe signal boosters every x feet, a bunch of nails, some paperwork with whoever owns the poles, and a service agreement with me for x number of years.

Ah, the mysteries of electrons.

ratter · Aug 25, 2005

( I was wondering about how to do the QoS features.

The other issues can indeed be tricky and require a lot of thought before taking those actions. Many things happen on an 'informal' basis out in my part of the country. Not to say that our friendly neighbor kids are totally unable to 'experiment'.

Regarding the ISP issues, I would rather have an ISP take part of my bandwidth and THEY handle the registrations and legal aspects. If that is possible. My role would be to receive a portion of their revenue based on signups.

Not that it would be quite as simple as that, but that is what I would rather do.

What I would really really like to happen is to get the phone company to lay WHATEVER it takes to get a simple DSL out here. Then I would subscribe along with anyone else who cared to. I would be willing to fund part (maybe all) of the charge to run the line.

If laying DSL is a $10,000 number, you can see that it doesn't take long of me dropping $600 per month to pay that $10,000. Plus I know that I can get some neighbors to kick in a bit.

Problem is that I don't know whether we're looking at a $10,000 number, or a $1,000,000 number.

And I don't understand why one person is willing to nail wires onto telephone lines, and another person isn't willing to do that. The T1 guys are willing to quote a fixed price on a fixed throughput, for wires that have to be run 15 miles. Why can't I get the DSL guys to run a different wire 15 miles? Or the cable guys to run a different wire 15 miles? On my nickel?

All these folks have to string wires. Meaning, long spools of wires, maybe signal boosters every x feet, a bunch of nails, some paperwork with whoever owns the poles, and a service agreement with me for x number of years.

Ah, the mysteries of electrons. )

Yep, I hear ya. I know that DSL varies from the others somewhat...it's not a matter of running the lines...the phone lines are already run...it's a matter of installing the necessary equipment at a switch location that's very near to the customer (within 3 miles, although I think new technologies may have increased that distance. As opposed to a T1 that requires equipment on both ends, but doesn't have that same short-distance requirement between the two ends, so one "hub" can serve a much greater area). I live just outside of a village of probably several hundred people. Verizon hasn't deemed that location worthy of upgrading the equipment to handle DSL - the Verizon installer told me as much. So that might be some indication of the cost of it. Or maybe they're planning on skipping it and just going with fiber someday. (I'll believe it when I see it.) That's my understanding anyway.

I think I mentioned earlier that I paid $2300 to have the cable company run a line. I think it was a ripoff because they literally just "nailed cable to the pole" so to speak and two guys were done with that part of the work in one morning. It didn't require any kind of infrastructure upgrade on their part. Luckily, they didn't know that I would've gladly paid $10k! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The cheapo Linksys wireless router that we use at home to split our connection amongst a few computers has some QoS features built into it. I think it ran about $80 at Best Buy.

SLOBuds · Aug 26, 2005

Another 2 days of trying to move an immovable object.

Cable is a definite 'no'. The company doesn't plan to string wires for one person. Even if that person is willing to finance part of the string.

I did speak with someone who provides wireless services. It sounded interesting and having potential, but it also requires line of sight and any new towers need to be financially promising. That is more or less problematic in my case. But I think we will talk some more. The wireless technology allegedly is unaffected by weather, has negligible latency, and bandwidth up to 3 meg. A 24" antaenna.

So we'll see.

Everyone is willing to get T1 to me for somewhere around $600 per month.

As a side note, I also negotiated with my DSL provider for increased bandwidth at the same price. The industry is going through price competitions - so it may be worth your while to call them for a chat. In my case they moved a 386k line up to a 1.5/3.0 meg line for $36 - just $4 less than what I pay now.

You just have to ask. And I have heard that other people have negotiated better deals than that - but I'm a pussycat when it comes to negotiations.

Back on topic. I will post updates to this thread as I find out more information regarding the wireless setup, assuming that the conversation continues. If there are any other options that pop up I will post that info as well.

DougM · Aug 28, 2005

Question??/

IS it true that Time Warner has purchased Adelphia??

DougM

OkeeDon · Aug 28, 2005

Partly true. Adelphia was in bankruptcy. Time Warner and Comcast have each purchased a portion of Adelphia and have split it up based on what made the best sense considering where their existing markets lie. In our area, Adelphia served the southern end of our county and a couple of counties further south; Comcast served the northern end of our county and a couple of counties further north. Time Warner is not anywhere nearby. So, Comcast is ending up with our part of Adelphia.

I'm not sure how far along they are; I know it's been approved by the bankruptcy court and that all the negotiations over the split up are over. But, the Comcast name has not yet been applied to Adelphia, here.

heehaw · Aug 29, 2005

the 600 a month is a bargain from what i have installed: the shortest T1 i have ever ordered was about 1500ft and it was about the price of yours, the next was a 20 mile line and it started out at $850 and recently went to $1200; some telecos won't install a partial T1: which is what we have in this area: its the full T1 or nothing: if yours will, you could get a 256k line instead of the T1 and save some money and i doubt you would notice the speed difference.
heehaw

SLOBuds · Aug 29, 2005

I talked to quite a few resellers over the past couple of days. When I told them it was 15 miles to my property in the country, none of them blinked. And believe me, this was a question I asked over and over again because in my mind I can not see how they will get THAT job done for THAT much money.

There are apparently different flavors of these resellers. I was able to receive a fractional quote, but I also talk to people who would not split the bandwidth at all. The people who would not split the bandwidth cautioned me regarding those who would - saying that the splitting folks will sell your excess bandwidth and will not be able to guarantee throughput.

This kind of made sense to me.

SLOBuds · Aug 31, 2005

I have been talking with these people who are wireless providers:

http://www.impulse.net/

They have deployed a proprietary wireless out towards our way. The down side is that they are a small company. The upside is that they are a small company - and willing to talk with me about installing additional antanneas (on my nickel) to reach my site.

The system has virtually no latency, high bandwidth (up to 6 meg both ways if you want to pay), and has minimal impact from weather conditions.

I feel a bit encouraged this morning.

So I would need line of site to one of their repeaters. They are open to discussion regarding me financing additional repeaters, which some times is a cheap thing and some times is on the expensive side. We traded coordinates of where my house is, and where his current repeaters are. Then we talk later.

The person who I spoke with also had some reality-speak with me, regarding what the phone company is willing to do and what it is not willing to do. At least in my part of the country.

He told me that all T1 providers (wholesalers?) will tell you that you can have T1 installed anywhere. But the reality is that you will not know until you place the order, and the phone company then physically checks to see how far your drop is from their existing service.

Apparently there are some laws or regulations which lead you to believe that the phone companies are mandated to get connectivity to anyone. But they actually have some type of right of refusal which they invoke in given circumstances.

And on the OTHER hand, you really do not know, as a consumer, whether a line has been physically run out in your neck of the woods before. Or partially run. It takes a person to go snooping around.

In our case the practice of SBC is that they will not do any snooping until you place the order. Then you don't know how good or bad things are until they get there and call you back with the news. Some times it results in a refusal. Some times it results in 'mileage' surcharges.

Interesting.