Internet in the sticks

[Chris]

Hey thanks all for the comments. The basic X10, which is pretty cheap with no phone interface is about $25.00 and the switchable plug or switch is about another $25.00. With this one would be able to set up a remote start/stop on a two wire gen start system. This could be useful for those who don't have start/stop control wire going between house and gen shed. With some thought it could work.

Chris

[rbodell]

I live off grid. I have a land line with dsl about 3 miles down the shore, at neighbours house. Access point with a grid type directional antenna pointed to my house with a similar grid directional antenna pointed to the access point. A wireless bridge at my end, hooked up to a router for my computers. I have line of site between the two sites. Also a ALCON remote phone for the land line (Phone). The ALCON has been giving problems. I think bad antennas. (Salty air). Internet works great as long as the DSL is up.
Vonage and or Magic Jack internet phones work reasonably well most times. The land line service is government owned and goes down all the time. Phone workers don't care too much. They gota job, but don't work too hard. My system is probably illegal. The phone guys don't mind cause they can't provide me with direct land line service.  I don't complain too much cause they will probably shut me down if I do. Hey it's better in the Bahamas.

Chris

I was concerned when my ISP installed my DSL since I do not pay for a landline phone service. I asked what would happen if there was a problem with the line and they said the phone company would fix it. Of course I am not in the Bahamas but I imagine things work the same there.

[SteveU.]

Good Morning All
Living out in the sticks I had been getting mailed offers for HughsNet Gen Four Satellite internet service.
Not getting offers for the newer HughsNet Gen Five Satellite internet service.
Anybody usding?
What has been your experiences?
Thanks
J-I-C Steve Unruh

[sailawayrb]

Wow, old thread...

These days we like at our remote place full time.  There's no cell coverage, cable, TV/radio reception where we live.  We have been using Wild Blue Excede satellite for our Internet for about three years.  It works fine for streaming Netflix and such.  We use Ooma over the Internet for our phone and security system.  Works great.

[BruceM]

I didn't realize you could do phone via satellite due to the latency. I assume it's still about 1 second?  22000 miles up and down takes some time.

[mobile_bob]

Hey Rob (sailawayrb) long time no see! or hear, or is it "read"?

so how are you and the better half doing these days, iirc you guys setup down in oregon somewhere out in the
puckerbrush?

good to see you about.

bob g

[sailawayrb]

Hi Bob, Bruce,

Yes Bob, I have been quite busy with things and I haven't had much time to visit the Listeroid forums and such.  I retired from Boeing a couple years now and have been doing Borst Engineering & Construction stuff full-time at semi-retired pace...  

www.BorstEngineeringConstruction.com

Boeing decided to move my group from Seattle to SoCal so that enabled me to get a good severance package and leave earlier than I likely would have otherwise.  So Gayle and I moved to our southern OR property full time and we are enjoying all it has to offer...especially the fly fishing, abundant wildlife and sparseness of people...  We are staunch environmentalists and we worked with Water Watch to get the last two dams removed on Evans Creek several miles downstream from us.  These dams had ceased being used for anything many years ago and didn't provide adequate fish bypass.  We are now just starting to see Salmon and Steelhead in the sections of Evans Creek and Spignet Creek which flow through our property.  There is more info and videos of the dam removal on the Affiliates tab of my company website.  So we are quite excited about this development...  

We lived in our 800 sf mobile home the first year while I built our shop/garage with guest quarters last year.  We are now living in our 400 sf guest quarters (and use the 1400 sf garage/shop area for our office space and kitchen).  I am presently building our 2400 sf house which will take about 18-24 months to complete as I am doing nearly everything myself at a fairly relaxed pace like I did the garage/shop building.  All these single level buildings are of course a passive solar cooling/heating design with hydronic floor heating and are constructed using ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms) and of material to be as fire-resistant as possible.  The house will also have a masonry heater too.  I brought 600A grid power into the garage/shop building and did the electrical panels such that this grid power, generator power (and future hydro and solar power) can be easily transferred from the garage/shop to all the buildings on the property.  So really the perfect lifestyle for us and a great "retirement" project for me that will last for several more years.  And our Listeroid generator still serves us very well on its portable resilient mount stand...

Bruce, we have not found the latency to be a problem at all for using our Ooma or for using our cell phones in Wi-Fi mode to make/receive phone calls.  There is a slight noticeable delay, but it's not a problem...and having essentially free phone service is also nice.  However, I suspect the latency would be problematic for computer gaming.

Bob

[SteveU.]

Thanks Bob/Rob for the recommendation.
And the personal update.
One often wonders . . . where did they all sail off too??
Regards
J-I-C Steve Unruh

[sailawayrb]

Just thought I should update this old topic...

We got SpaceX Starlink this past weekend.  Currently seeing 140M down and 20M up with 30ms latency.  Got Starlink connected to our Ubiquity UniFi LAN and it is beyond impressive...especially when I recall how we started out here with a telephone landline cable modem...   

[Tom Reed]

What's that costing you? We're on a wifi system that works reasonably well, but it's not that fast.

[sailawayrb]

Currently free for me.  Normally costs $500 for equipment and $99/month.  It should reach 1G later this year with less latency and they will be launching 10G satellites later this year or early next year.

[playdiesel]

I do not consider my area the sticks but we are rural. We have no cable and don't even have DSL access so our choices are phone modem, Hugh's or 4G data.  We don't use enough to justify spending big bucks for internet and currently use a combination of 4g and Hugh's sattelite which sucks on its best day and goes down from there, I think my original 3.2 phone modem was faster. We get by but will be happy when I see the high speed guys putting a cable down our road!

[sailawayrb]

Yes, HughesNet truly sucks...lousy performance and far worse customer support...  After a couple years of landline cable modem, we had Wild Blue for a couple years (it eventually became ViaSat) and then HughesNet for a couple years.  After a month or so of HughesNet service, we couldn't get more than 5M down and HughesNet wouldn't make any effort to fix it...until after you actually cancelled their service.  We have had ViaSat for several years and get 48M down, 5.5M up and 860ms latency...which other than the high latency, is quite good and enables streaming HD.  Even VOIP works okay with this high latency, just not gaming.

[Tom Reed]

I do not consider my area the sticks but we are rural. We have no cable and don't even have DSL access so our choices are phone modem, Hugh's or 4G data.  We don't use enough to justify spending big bucks for internet and currently use a combination of 4g and Hugh's sattelite which sucks on its best day and goes down from there, I think my original 3.2 phone modem was faster. We get by but will be happy when I see the high speed guys putting a cable down our road!

That better be a fiber optic cable. We are on an old stage coach road (Black Bart used to hold up stage coaches on) that's still dirt for the last mile to our house. However there's fiber in the road. I made an attempt to connect to it, however it seems to be the major under sea cable to HI so no go.