[Hidden-tech] Helping others without broadband

[Mark Bucciarelli]

On Sun, Aug 07, 2005 at 11:51:47AM -0400, Jim Ussailis wrote:

> I see no reason why neighbors couldn't share something like this
> using WiFi stuff. Of course the satellite company wouldn't be overly
> thrilled.

I'm five wireless hops downstream from a 1/2 T1 that is shared by 10
households. The hops go up to 400 feet through foliage (lots of pine)
and add roughly 2ms per hop.

I've been running smokeping on our network and the level of service
is decent, though not ideal. The main problem (I suspect!) is dropped
packets from 2.4 GHz phone interference.  Also, network jitter is so high
VOIP phones are a no go.

A private company would be a preferable solution. I guess I'll have to
wait until Matt runs his fiber into Amherst. (The more DSL business he
gets from Amherst residents, the sooner he will get the fiber there.)

On a related note, can anyone recommend a good Free Software package
for network monitoring? I want to ping each of the 20 routers from the
root router, record all events where packet loss is greater than 50
percent, and send a daily email to the people that own phones that may
have caused the outage.

m