[svlug] Rural Internet connectivity?

[Rafael Skodlar]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 06:55:36PM -0700, DzM wrote:
> 
> Hello all -
> 
> I'm relocating to outside of Napa soon, and am having difficulty in 
> identifying my connectivity options.
> 
> I know that I am unable to get ISP provided WiFi, DSL, Cable, etc. I 
> know that I will need to do VPN work so would like to avoid high 
> latency. I will need to provide connectivity for several NATed machines. 
> A Linux box will act as the gateway/firewall/HTTP cache to the outside 
> world.
> 
> As near as I can tell my options are:
> 
> o 56k dial-up - It's slow, but I know that it'll work.

How about two (or more) phone lines and load balance them? That would be
close to low quality DSL line. Linux could be setup to dial automaticaly
as soon as one line would go down and still provide connectivity over
the second or third one. This would be cheaper than a T1 or fraction of
it and still provide some reliability.

Need to mention that I haven't tried this.

> o DirecWay - Slow up, Fast down, high latency.
> o Fractional (or full) T1 and providing WiFi broadband to neighbors 
> (Anyone have experience with this? Is this totally bogus, or is this 
> something that might not lose me tons of monies?)

If you can split the cost of T1 with neighbours then it's definately
worth a try.

> o Cell-phone wireless network (ala Verizon NationalAccess, which offers 
> better than dial-up speeds, but not by much)
> 
> I'd really appreciate people's thoughts on pros and cons, other options 
> I've overlooked, etc.
> 
> Thanks very much in advance.
> 
> Cheers -
> DzM

-- 
Rafael