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#580584 12-Feb-2012 20:29

@yorick
I have sent you a message, as I may be able to help you with some options in the area.

Thanks
Fraser

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yorick

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#580633 12-Feb-2012 23:55

codyc1515: 6km is not the limit for getting DSL on, anyone that tells you that is lieing as I had ours checked by Orcon and it's 7.5km from the exchange. I get 2Mbps down/0.6Mbps up. We had to push for three months to get it put on but we did get it in the end. I'm with Vodafone. Your mileage may vary.

There are a lot of other variables, copper or fibre, ours is copper all the way, the age of the copper, how many joins in the copper. (I know for instance that when the did an overlay on the road out of town, the contractors cut the cable three times.) Even on dialup I get 22k on a good day. Loading a page on geekzone can take more than 5 minutes. Page loads I measure by FCG, (Free Cell Games) Geekzone is a 3 FCG site. A google page is generally 1. Google+ is a 10 to 15 FCG but most times it just times out.

I've had Chorus out and checked our lines into the house. I test for connection at the distributor, the jack that the cable hits first as it comes into the house. 6 ks is nominal travel distance, the cable may actually go further. I've been harassing people ever since broadband was possible, dunno how long, I've lost count, quite a few years.

Cheers
GL

codyc1515

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#580634 12-Feb-2012 23:57

yorick:
codyc1515: 6km is not the limit for getting DSL on, anyone that tells you that is lieing as I had ours checked by Orcon and it's 7.5km from the exchange. I get 2Mbps down/0.6Mbps up. We had to push for three months to get it put on but we did get it in the end. I'm with Vodafone. Your mileage may vary.

There are a lot of other variables, copper or fibre, ours is copper all the way, the age of the copper, how many joins in the copper. (I know for instance that when the did an overlay on the road out of town, the contractors cut the cable three times.) Even on dialup I get 22k on a good day. Loading a page on geekzone can take more than 5 minutes. Page loads I measure by FCG, (Free Cell Games) Geekzone is a 3 FCG site. A google page is generally 1. Google+ is a 10 to 15 FCG but most times it just times out.

I've had Chorus out and checked our lines into the house. I test for connection at the distributor, the jack that the cable hits first as it comes into the house. 6 ks is nominal travel distance, the cable may actually go further. I've been harassing people ever since broadband was possible, dunno how long, I've lost count, quite a few years.

Cheers
GL

So enquire with someone, e.g. Orcon, and ask them to do a feasibility test. They may also tell you the distance to the exchange.

yorick

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#580635 13-Feb-2012 00:03

sbiddle: Mobile broadband is clearly your best option right now, you really just need to spend a few hundred $ on proper hardware and externally mounted aerial to make this work.

Many thanks for your input guys, nearest cell tower is a telecom one and I can just about get line of site from an aerial on my workshop. So given the consensus, I rung Telecom today and they're sending me the kit on appro, minus the Aerial which I'll have to get separate. Hopefully it'll be pretty easy to sort and we will be in business.

Cheers
and thanks

Yo

yorick

36 posts

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#580636 13-Feb-2012 00:11

codyc1515:
So enquire with someone, e.g. Orcon, and ask them to do a feasibility test. They may also tell you the distance to the exchange.

As I said, I've been doing it for years, ISPs don't want to know country services. I've asked everyone, always very nicely, Telecom, Clear, Slingshot, Ihug, vodafone. I had to tell the Orcon guy where Tokoroa was, he didn't seem terribly interested, surprisingly I didn't go back to them! ;/

Maybe I should have been an arsehole, I might have got a response, the nice guy approach certainly didn't work.

Cheers
Yo

swalker5872

60 posts

Master Geek

#580646 13-Feb-2012 02:17

Be really interested in what your eventual outcome is in getting broadband via Telecom mobile, there are so many out there who continue to be focussed on landline broadband they forget their other options with technology having moved on.
One thing, which you probably are already aware of, be careful of the auto updates for programmes as that will chew through your data allowances like no ones business. Sometimes an idea to take the laptop into town (assuiming you have laptop) and pop into an internet cafe or similar before you let all them happen. Also use a reasonable data monitor on connected devices so you know where you are at.
By the tone of this thread you are tech savvy but always good for any future reader that they remember these sort of things as don't want bill shock if on a monthly billing cycle.

DonGould

3892 posts

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#580676 13-Feb-2012 09:16

yorick:
codyc1515:
So enquire with someone, e.g. Orcon, and ask them to do a feasibility test. They may also tell you the distance to the exchange.

As I said, I've been doing it for years, ISPs don't want to know country services. I've asked everyone, always very nicely, Telecom, Clear, Slingshot, Ihug, vodafone. I had to tell the Orcon guy where Tokoroa was, he didn't seem terribly interested, surprisingly I didn't go back to them! ;/

Maybe I should have been an arsehole, I might have got a response, the nice guy approach certainly didn't work.

Cheers
Yo

Oh come on... My ISP sent their call center over seas. They have the service running past my door that I want to run my business yet don't have staff that even seem to know what it is, their usage systems seem to break, their staff don't talk to each other internally or if they do, seem to hate each each other, their owners regard the place as something that's 'run at arms length' and that's just the tip of the ice burg.

The technology exists today to get great broadband in to rural areas today. If you want great service then work with the WISP guys and your community and just make it happen.

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yorick

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#580724 13-Feb-2012 10:32

swalker5872: Be really interested in what your eventual outcome is in getting broadband via Telecom mobile, there are so many out there who continue to be focussed on landline broadband they forget their other options with technology having moved on.
One thing, which you probably are already aware of, be careful of the auto updates for programmes as that will chew through your data allowances like no ones business. Sometimes an idea to take the laptop into town (assuiming you have laptop) and pop into an internet cafe or similar before you let all them happen. Also use a reasonable data monitor on connected devices so you know where you are at.
By the tone of this thread you are tech savvy but always good for any future reader that they remember these sort of things as don't want bill shock if on a monthly billing cycle.

Indeed, I use OpenSUSE Linux so the auto update and the phoning home isn't a problem and although I have an XP partition on one machine and a Win 7 instance in a VM, neither are let anywhere near the interwebby and I rarely use them.

(Actually it was the XP partition that brought all this on again. I upgraded the box that this partition was in. New MB, new optical drive, new HDs, all geared to building a machine that was to be as quiet as my laptop. The XP partition is on a 80 gig IDE drive. I do OpenOffice.org training for Enterprise, so I need it for the odd support query as, obviously, most of my clients run OOo on windows. Once the upgrade was done, I booted the XP partition to check all was OK. It popped up a message to say sommat about hardware changes and reactivation. Sooooo you of course know what happens next :D, I shrug and say yea must do that at some point. Of course I forgot about it for about two weeks and when I did go in, it refused to open without activation. Not a problem I thought!..... heh! Tui moment. You guessed it, the dial-up activation kept timing out, hence..... )

I will be interested in seeing how it all works. One of the issues I had with the Vodem was trying to get the thing to work with Linux. There were tutorials out there but they were mostly geared to Ubuntu and basically I really couldn't be fagged. I ended up using it all up via the Win7 partition on my laptop. However when Mauricio pointed at a 3G router, that waved a green flag, a router would have it's own OS and therefore be independent of my Desktop. Works for me, I just have to get over the security concerns I have with wireless.

RunningMan

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#580732 13-Feb-2012 10:36

yorick:, I just have to get over the security concerns I have with wireless.

Are you talking WiFi or 3G concerns?

If it's WiFi, either go for WPA2, or use a wired 3G router.

If it's 3G security, johnr's the expert ;-)

codyc1515

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#580766 13-Feb-2012 11:29

RunningMan:
yorick:, I just have to get over the security concerns I have with wireless.

Are you talking WiFi or 3G concerns?

If it's WiFi, either go for WPA2, or use a wired 3G router.

If it's 3G security, johnr's the expert ;-)

Both technologies can be cracked (WPA2 & 3G) given enough time.

jonb

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#580770 13-Feb-2012 11:37

codyc1515:
RunningMan:
yorick:, I just have to get over the security concerns I have with wireless.

Are you talking WiFi or 3G concerns?

If it's WiFi, either go for WPA2, or use a wired 3G router.

If it's 3G security, johnr's the expert ;-)

Both technologies can be cracked (WPA2 & 3G) given enough time.

I wouldn't worry about wireless security.

The 3g wifi routers have LAN ports, so you can keed your house wi-fi free if you want

But seriously, there won't be many people doing drive-by wifi snooping in the middle of the boonies.

yorick

36 posts

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#580835 13-Feb-2012 13:17

DonGould:
The technology exists today to get great broadband in to rural areas today. If you want great service then work with the WISP guys and your community and just make it happen.

Oh indeed, in fact, Tokoroa was one of the first to have a local WISP back in 2004. I think there was one in the Wairarapa before us. The local council poured a lot of money into it, provided infrastructure and so forth.
http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/how-to/sneaking-around
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/philippa-stevenson/news/article.cfm?a_id=9&objectid=3539558

Community got behind it, unfortunately it was not a happy marriage between the council and Rural Networks and it all turned to custard, council took over the infrastructure and set up an NGO to run it then that sold to Borg WiFi and he shut it down and anyway I couldn't get it because of line of sight issues, but I tried all sorts believe me. I had to have an office in town just for the BB. Very expensive broadband connection when you have to basically rent a room to park your modem! :)

BarTender

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#580851 13-Feb-2012 13:43

Let us know how you get on..

I have a spare Sierra 885 + Wifi router that I would be happy to sell at cost as I don't really use it all that much. But the Telecom are probably sending you a Netcomm MyZone.

Then you could go out and get an Antenna off trademe like this and get the TS9 connector to connect into the Sierra data card which should do the business nicely. I'm not specifically recommending that trader, they just look like they are in the mobile broadband yagi business.

raytaylor

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#581003 13-Feb-2012 19:09

I wonder how much of the BORG equipment is still in place or if it has been pulled down.

The $10k figure is a little on the light side.
I would be thinking closer to $20k if the relay sites were mains powered already.

I was recently part of a project near Geraldine in the south island where the guy setting it up spent well in excess of $40k

Ray Taylor

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