Sharing BB

Gone West

Our town is getting its exchange enabled next week(whatever that really means)
and I was looking at the price/features of DSL, and I was not that impressed. I can see myself downloading mabye 30 gigs per month, and Im not willing to pay E100 PM. some of my friends locally are in the same boat, so we started discussing building a small 802.11x to share a high-end dsl package. If everybody pays 10-20 PM, we could afford 4mit unlimited cap(or so) as its better value than their basic home package.

My query is this: Will Eircom (UTv, ESAT, etc) let us share this B/B? Will they know if we are sharing it? What can/will they do?

*pologies if this is a little long-winded.

**EDIT: the town is moate

Webmonkey

I don't think there is anything wrong with sharing broadband but re-selling it is another story. If you go ahead with it where will your basestation be (AP located) , will everyone have a Line-Of-Sight to this location (This is vital, if you don't have LOS forget about it)
How far are ye from eachother.

Gone West

I am fairly handy with wireless nets, so building it should not be a problem. The AP will be in the town centre, with a 1.5M cable connecting it to a high gain omni. Others will point directional antenae at the omni. Most people have LOS. Distances are only 100m-600m from the AP.

Has anybody actually done this? Any thoughts?

Webmonkey

I have a 2 mile one running at the moment. What Radio equipment you using?
Is the town centre high from your friends and you as High Gain means a really small vertical beamwidth so be sure you are buying the right antenna. As well as that if theres nobody behind the town centre, consider a sector antenna rather than an omni to reduce noise.
If you are within 2KM i would advise going with a normal antenna rather than highgain. High gain should be for long distances. If people are within 2km of a high gain its going to be hard to get everyone in the 8 - 12degree vert. beamwidth. Hell it could even be less so check the vertical beamwidth. Especially as its an omni and if people are behind you, you will not be able to tilt it much because if you tilt it down in front the back will rise high and you may lose people behind. Just some advice.

Regards,
Donal

Gone West

I'm hearing you webmonkey. When I say high gain, I really mean "slightly high gain"! Yeah I will consider the V beamwidth. I have some topo software that might help me out there. I am basically in the middle, so a sector is out of the question. (Unless I got 2 mabye).

On another note: does anybody know what companies sell backhaul in Ireland?

Webmonkey

No probs Fuzzylog. Good luck with it anyways. Hope someone can help you out with Backhauls but they will be very expensive.

Gone West

yeah I am thinking now that backhaul isnt the way to go. I suppose I'll just have to emigrate to sweeden.

Vikings

Send me a postcard .... at 10mb/s.

Blaster99

There are a few IrishWAN's who use the top end Eircom ADSL package and share it out across the network. Seems to work except that the lack of upload speed is a problem. If somebody uploads a lot it will kill the download performance in a big way.

And if you look at the pricing it makes no sense to pay four times as much to get 4Mbps when everyone can just get a 2Mbps link for €40 or whatever they cost. If you're thinking that the 2Mbps ones are capped, well, if there are few heavy downloaders sharing a 4Mbps line you're not gonna have much in terms of performance in any event. And so far those caps haven't been enforced.

Webmonkey

http://www.netsource.ie/
4mbit line. Uncapped

Gone West

IncredibleBulk: Ill send you a postcard at 100mbit

Webmonkey: Yep, It looks like its going to be netsource that I go with.

Blaster: some of these folks are going to be outside the 2km(or whatever) limit of ADSL, also I know personally everyone that would be connecting to this, and they all know to keep heavy downloads to night time. The ridiculous upload speed is a very valid point though, Ill have to think hard about that.

---

until 2 weeks ago, I was living in phoenix, AZ, USA where 5.5 mbit cable was the bog standard, for $25 per month with absolutely no cap. (I downed 350 gig per month when I was there on average). Its a nice kick in the B**ls to see what Eircon have to offer for E38 per month.

Peanut

If you're only going to be sharing it with up to 10 people let's say then the 256k upload should be fine, although it helps to try to prioritise upload traffic based on port num/application.

Webmonkey

With a bit of bandwidth shaping you should be ok but you will need good router equipment for this. If you want, i can let you know of my router configuration built from independent component.

snappieT

Not so sure how happy €incon will be about this. They'll end up making less money, and god knows that can't happen.

Giblet

This is very dodgy ground...

Moriarty

Sharing the cost of a dsl line is perfectly fine, the providers have said that to a number of irishwan groups. On the other hand, reselling (ie. making a profit) a dsl line is against their T&Cs. Of course they can't tell the difference, but that's how it stands.

Webmonkey

Netsource don't care what you do either even if you do resell as far as i know.

Giblet

I'm sure that if you did it, netsource probably wouldn't know or care, but that doesn't mean that they won't one day decide to act upon it. As Moriarty has said, and as I've seen, people do share BB connections on IrishWAN and sharing the cost of that is generally ok. Who knows the implications of say, charging 20 people 10 euro each to join your network? The provider might find out and be very pissed off that their potential market is being cut by someone sharing their product. I'd also be worried about the QoS you could provide!

Gone West

Moriarity has basically answered it. I have no intention of making profit from this.(not even to cover the hardware costs) It would be just me sharing the b/b and the cost with 5-10 friends. the QoS would be ok, and they would not expect 24/7/365 uptime for a hundred and fifty quid a year. They all currently have dialup as backup anyways.

does unlimited down/up really mean that? I mean if my account collectively down's 200gig per month(worst case scenario) would my ISP start giving me grief?

As someone said: Eircom/etc will be annoyed that they're losing out on revenue. My answer is this

If I upgraded to Broadband, it would actually cost me less per month to use the internet than it does now (dialup- I use about 2 hours per day). So by offering dsl, eircom are losing income and incurring expensive costs unbundling the loop. Most people who upgrade to DSL, AFAICS actually save money,
thus depriving Eircom of revenue.

EDIT** Why arent netsource more popular/mainstream? They offer the cheapest/best value DSL around, am I missing something?

Giblet: If I only charge everyone just enough to cover the broadband, is this still dodgy? Or do you mean dodgy, as in against-the-charter dodgy?

Giblet

I think what you are doing is great, but dodgy as in, I don't know exactly how your provider would react.

snappieT

Fair play if you get it working, but just think...

48:1 contention, 20 people sharing each of the connections, and you suddenly have 960:1 - thats a potential speed of 2bits/sec

Also, there is no such thing as no cap. Its always "within reason". While one person might stretch this "reason", a load of you on one line... I just can't see it working out in reality as it appears on paper.

Giblet

It wouldn't be 960:1, it would be 58:1

He isn't buying up 48 connections

flamegrill

Netsource are popular for a few reasons.

1) They dropped a lot of home customers or forced them onto 1-2mbps packages because they were leeching.

2) they won't sign you up unless you are a registered business or are a sole trader with proof of trading.

Now there are tonnes of ways around this, but mainly people are not bothered.

Paul

gurramok

FuzzyLogic wrote:

EDIT** Why arent netsource more popular/mainstream? They offer the cheapest/best value DSL around, am I missing something?

How are Netsource cheapest ?

I'm on NS and I dont get it!
They are a reseller of Eircoms services for the same price!

Gone West

ok gurramok. repeat after me.

"Eircom overcharge us by about 20 euros per month, whilst other resellers of eircoms products only overcharge us by about 15 euro per month"

Say that 20 times, and you should be ok.

---

Local file transfer and local gaming would be some uses of a network. So even if the BB thing turns out to not work, we can still practice CoD.
Thanks for all the advice so far, keep it coming!

Blaster99

Giblet wrote:

It wouldn't be 960:1, it would be 58:1

He isn't buying up 48 connections

In reality it's of course a lot worse than you make out. Eircom will deliver 4Mbps on that link, or 2Mbps on a normal ADSL sub. Sharing that 4Mbps among 10 users and you'll be lucky if most users see 1Mbps. If somebody uploads anything the connection is dead for everyone. You'll have to ban and police P2P apps etc, usually the sort of stuff people get an uncapped connection for.

Gone West

nobody will be uploading anything, the users who will be on this network are all local geeks, who know the score with regards to uploading killing off Bandwidth. 1mbit for a tenner a month aint badm, but does any of the mainstream ISPS offer anything greater than 4mbit? (check out my comment on my cable in the USA) As 4 mbit isn't mega fast at all.

Blaster99

Make that €20pm unless you're planning to have 20 users. At €30pm you get real ADSL in Ireland without having to spend €200 on wireless equipment and go through the hassle of bolting stuff to your house and relying on your buddy down the road to run a network for you. Unless you're doing this to serve people who can't get ADSL, it makes no sense. ADSL's reach is about 5km's I think.

Do you have a definitive high site or is this just theory?

gurramok

FuzzyLogic wrote:

ok gurramok. repeat after me.

"Eircom overcharge us by about 20 euros per month, whilst other resellers of eircoms products only overcharge us by about 15 euro per month"

Say that 20 times, and you should be ok.

Problem is that since upgrade to 2mb, i'm on Origin Plus and its €54/mnth with 16gb cap, and Eircoms equivalent is same price with 20gb cap(business plus), where is the value there ?

Webmonkey

Its the average home users they rip off.

Gone West

Blaster: I live about 100M higher than my friends. So they should (in theory anyways) have lOS. We live in the sticks, so we cant get smart. Also, some of the lads are in areas that will never have DSL. I have all the equipment I will need allready. (802.11g AP+router+omni) Ive run a home wierless network for the last 3 years with no downtime, except power cuts.

Gurramok: im talking about a higher-end product than 2 mbit. One with no cap. Sure, all 2 mbit products will be very similar.

**EDIT** just checked it: 47 M higher than most other people.

Webmonkey

FuzzyLogic,
You should hold up with this Wifi and don't stop, it's exciting and a learning experience. How boring would it be if all of you just got your own adsl connections, pretty much. You are also making use of your current equipment also. At least with WiFI you learn a lot about networking. In my opinion that's whats most important, not that you get broadband in the end of the day.

Good luck with it and if you need any help i'll try do my best to help you.

Webmonkey.

Peanut

Blaster99 wrote:

In reality it's of course a lot worse than you make out. Eircom will deliver 4Mbps on that link, or 2Mbps on a normal ADSL sub. Sharing that 4Mbps among 10 users and you'll be lucky if most users see 1Mbps. If somebody uploads anything the connection is dead for everyone. You'll have to ban and police P2P apps etc, usually the sort of stuff people get an uncapped connection for.

Nah it's not usually that bad, even with p2p, as long as it's not excessive.
A 48:1 contention ratio does not mean that you might have speeds of 2Mbit/48 sometimes, it's not implemented as simply as that.

Also I don't think Eircom really care what you are doing with it unless you are going way above the cap on a capped package. They've got bigger things to worry about.

By the way, 802.11g is pretty sucky for any sort of long distance connections, e.g. over 1 or 2 km maybe. .11b is usually better, and you can get a lot better .11b customer-premises equipment.

Webmonkey

Peanut wrote:

By the way, 802.11g is pretty sucky for any sort of long distance connections, e.g. over 1 or 2 km maybe. .11b is usually better, and you can get a lot better .11b customer-premises equipment.

You're right there. 11g is more of a bandwidth carrier but it should still do the trick.

Gone West

Webmonkey wrote:

FuzzyLogic,
You should hold up with this Wifi and don't stop, it's exciting and a learning experience. How boring would it be if all of you just got your own adsl connections, pretty much. You are also making use of your current equipment also. At least with WiFI you learn a lot about networking. In my opinion that's whats most important, not that you get broadband in the end of the day.

Good luck with it and if you need any help i'll try do my best to help you.

Webmonkey.

Thats exactly my mentaility. I'm going to go ahead with this. Hopefully the monopoly will have unbundled our exchange by next week, and I can go live.
I'll start up a new thread in a few weeks with my (obligatory) questions and problems that I've encountered. Thanks for the advice and suggestions, folks. I'll keep you posted on what goes wrong.

neon_glows

2 Questions, setting this up sounds so interesting i may do it myself, id have different intentions though to fuzzylogic, not to make money but to get myself a better uncapped internet connection and to enjoy the learing experience.

I live in a small town and i know loads of ppl who havent broadband as its to expensive for them, if i could get a 4meg connection uncapped i would share it with maybe 7 households who would be lite users (so i can go download mad). Id charge them maybe 20euro each, thats 140 euro a month which is the cost of the connection. (Halk price of eircom).

Now me two Questions are,

a) the equipment needed to set up a wireless internet network between 7 households within 1 km of each other how much would this cost to buy the hardware.

b) Does anyone know of any software that i can use to limit everyone to a certain connection. (See i could give myself a 1meg connection and share the other 3meg between 7 houses which works out at worst 438kbs connection if we were all online at same time and give myself an upload of 80kbs and share the other 174kbs between 7 house which would be 24kbs upload for them if we were all online at anyone time)

Gone West

Neon_glows: Hey read my posts! I said specifically that I would only only charge to cover the cost of the actual broadband. I wouldn't have any notion of making money off this. So my plan is pretty much the exact same as yours.

Your questions, though are very good. I'm not sure is what software there is to limit the line speed to certain computers. I'm sure that If I used an old linux or win box as a firewall, I could limit certain IP's to certain speeds. But I would prefer to limit the speeds through the actual AP/Router's web interface. Anybody know if that's possible
?

Now: question 2: You will need a very decent AP (a wifi hub) probably 120 for a good one. Then you will need an omnidirectional antanea (about 30 yoyos). Antenae choice depends to whether the other people are spread around you, or are you in the center of everybody. You will want to start small, at first just use the network for your own personal use. Then add 1 other user every few days/week and see how it goes from there.

I do agree that this will be a great learning experience (even if everything goes belly-up). Especially as this is the kind of area where I want to work when I finish my education.

Blaster99

The normal way to do this is to put a Proxim Orinoco PCMCIA card in a Linux box and connect the Orinoco to an omni. The thing that perhaps most people don't realise is that the radio in most wireless equipment is poor, but there a few products out there that for some reason have good radios. The Proxim Orinoco is one. You need one of the older versions of it, though, they're not all good. I can't remember the spec off hand. I'm sure there are plenty articles about it online.

Once you're running Linux you can do all sorts of shaping as well, even though that sometimes doesn't work out quite as well as one would wish.

The same thing pretty much applies to the client end. They need a decent radio and an aerial, so they can't use any ol' AP. The Linksys WET11 used to be a good CPE, to my knowledge the only Linksys product with a good radio, but they've replaced the radio with some junk in later versions. Again, an Orinoco will do the trick. You need to ensure that the clients use good quality kit because client comms problems will kill the performance for everyone. You can also look forward to problems like hidden nodes, where a heavy user can essentially block out everyone else who's trying to access the service. This is not a theoretical problem, I've seen it happen.

I'd say someone like oscarBravo could spend a few minutes on this and explain the ins and outs. The smart thing to do is to go for an install that's proven. The IrishWAN guys can tell you what to do as well. I don't know if the DublinWAN is still in existence, but they used to have a pretty decent site on this stuff.

You should be able to get about a 10km range if you do this right.

neon_glows

Sorry fuzzy didnt mean to suggest that your trying to make money of it, merely was trying to get it accross that it wouldnt be my intention, just how id worded it came across wrong.

Okay since early today and seeing your post i did some research and its starting to get me very interested. Im still a little baffled but getting more educated as i go along, is it possible you could PM me your msn address and maybe we could chat, swap info and generally help each other.

I plan on definately doing this by summer, for the moment i may try WLAN myself and a mate apprx 600ft away from each other using an antenna and 2xAP's i presume? we can see each others houses from my roof i reckon but he may have to mount an antenna aswell or his ap on his roof for LOS.

Gone West

Sure neon. Where are you based, just out of interest? You probably wont need 2 aps to connect to your mate. Just mess round with what you have and see if you can make a link. I'll lend you my precious pringles cantenna!(google it if you dont know what im talking about).

My advice is read up on everything you can online, there are some really good sites out there about wifi. The O'reilly book "Building wireless community networks" is great as well. Try wardriving if you have the equipment also!

Sorry I dont use MSN anymore, I was in the states for a few months and i've migrated to AIM. My AIM name is peter0jv

Peanut

For client installations (client in terms of they're the people connecting to the access point), try to avoid using any co-ax if at all possible. Unless you're really stuck for cash, you're far better off going for an integrated antenna/wireless unit, with either ethernet or USB cable coming out of it.

There's some on http://www.wi-pipe.net/, also omniserv-inc.com used to stock the osbridge range but their site appears to be down at the moment.

Webmonkey

Wi-Pipe have good USB ones alright. They handy for a single computer connecting but when its a whole network connecting then it can get a little more complicated.
As for routing software, I am actually using STAROS (www.staros.com) as an operating system on a 64mb confact flash card. It's excellent software and it's what most of the Irishwan guys are using.

If anyone wants to PM me too i'll be willing to help them.
my msn is in my profile too but i amn't on that often.

Webmonkey

Gone West

I'll PM you when I start this thing (won't be until may). Hopefully I can get a link going without too many problems, but we'll see.