[plug] broadband with linux

[Coral and Ben]

Paul Antoine wrote:
> Coral/Ben:
>> Unfortunately not, the 3 network is limited to perth and the larger 
>> towns like bunbury and albany - although I do check their coverage 
>> fairly regularly to see how far it goes. I think out here (15km south 
>> of narrogin) we can get 'roaming' access to the 3 data network, but 
>> that is charged at a much higher rate and isn't high speed, I might 
>> be wrong - i've looked at a lot of alternatives, none of which were 
>> feasable, in fact we officially don't even get nextG coverage, I have 
>> a car antenna bolted to my tin roof and a long cable that goes from 
>> that to the modem, and even then I only get about 30% signal.
> The long cable will significantly attenuate your signal. If you can 
> place the modem right at the base of the antenna you will get 
> significantly better performance. Naturally you'd need to route power 
> etc. to it, but the result will be a lot faster and more reliable.
It's kind of hard to minimise the length of cable, theres probably about 
4-5m between the best spot for the antenna and the powerpoints in my 
office, even if i had the modem right near the antenna I'd still need to 
have a long usb cable to connect the modem to the computer. Originally I 
had the antenna right outside my computer room window, but there is no 
difference in signal strength either way, maybe because the signal is 
bad right next to my computer room.
>
> Long cable attenuation is avoided in long distance WiFi installations 
> by placing the WiFi router in a weather-proof box at the base of the 
> antenna with power provided up the ethernet cable (PoE.) Perhaps 
> there's a market for a similar solution for rural NextG users :-)  I'd 
> be happy to work on such a thing.
There would be a market if you could convince complacent idiot rednecks 
and that their sattelite broadband is slow and expensive compared to 
wireless, or adsl (which we can't have anyway) but I don't like your 
chances - I live in a one nerd town I'm afraid, and being a she-nerd I 
generally get wholly ignored in the nerding stakes
>> but, I digress...
> Digressions are wonderful... they often lead to expanded thinking, IMHO.
>
> Paul
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