[HECnet] Here there be dragons...

[John Yaldwyn]

Good luck with your project Mark.

I didn't mention that one advantage of sharing is the cost split. The 1Gbps fibre connection is reasonably expensive at $110 per month but split three ways that's cheaper than any other plan and of course way faster. It's not so much the actual speed as the low latency. With ADSL the latency was around 20ms, the rural 700MHz LTE was about 30 ms, satellite is off the chart at 300ms or so, but the fiber was <1ms with some additional delays from the Ubiquity link and Cisco switch bring it to <2ms at my PC (all ping times measured to the same ping host).

The latency is important because while you might think that's not much of a delay for a web page, it actually all adds up because one web page often involves dozens of DNS resolution requests and HTTP gets and so the latency times rapidly add up to slow the loading.

A nice letter to candidate locations setting out what you're trying to achieve might work, give it a go! 

You might want to look for some low cost public liability insurance to reassure anyone you co-locate with. I carry $2m of such insurance in case stock wanders on the road or someone hurts themselves on our property. It's quite cheap insurance compared to house insurance.

73, John
ZL4JY

> On 6/09/2020, at 08:33, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Sep 5, 2020, at 1:13 PM, John Yaldwyn <jy at xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Mike,
>> 
>> I live in a rural area here in New Zealand.
>> 
>> The best internet on offer is 5Mbps/500kbps ADSL, slow satellite with horrendous latency, or rural broadband on 700 MHz LTE.
> 
> Your internet options are slightly better than mine... best ADSL I could get is about 3Mbps down, with frequent service interruptions and poor customer support! I connect over a cellular tether, but all three major carriers here have poor cellular coverage in my area. My connectivity is sometimes fast, but very unreliable.
> 
> 
>> To solve the Internet problem I found a friend about 6 miles away in the local village area that could get fibre. We set him up with shiny new Gbps service and run a dual polarised 5.8 GHz link with 2' dishes that gives me 400 Mbps downloads and a 1ms typical ping times. 
> 
> I'm trying to come up with a similar scheme. The trouble so far is finding an accomplice with a clear line of sight and good internet service. I'm considering sending letters to random strangers in a nearby neighborhood that has cable service. The nearest home with modern internet access is a mere 540 meters from my house.
> 
> My parents have similarly poor internet options, and they live 3 miles away with a clear line of sight. Once we get better connectivity at either home, we'll put in a microwave link so we can share it. If I could come up with a business plan that lets me go into business for myself instead of being a wage slave, you can bet that my company would be located somewhere with a clear line of sight to either my home or my parents' home. I've identified three candidate business parks in Riverside.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
> http://www.nf6x.net/
>