What are you using for off-grid internet access?

Re: What are you using for off-grid internet access?

AntronX wrote: »

What is good WiFi signal strength and sniffing program for Ubuntu Linux?

Linux is Linux.

If by "Ubuntu" you actually mean "GUI" then I couldn't tell you. I spend less than half my time in X - I do most of what I do at the command line.

I use airodump-ng or Kismet for signal strength.

I pay 55 a month with unlimited talk text and data with tethering. Its frawg wireless, under ntelos. I think they use the sprint tower here. It is unlimited, if i use a ton of data they lightly throttle, its 3g. I got a wilson sleek booster for a better signal.

We are off grid, also 7 miles from nearby villiage. I had Wild Blue satellite for several years. They were just barely ok. Finally when I wound up with a partner (and she could not live without TV) so we went to Dish, now have 2 satellites in the yard. Internet is $49.00 mo plus all the little add ons. TV brings it up quite a bit so the total is $128.00 month. Service is better than Wild Blue and you can speak to a human and/or get a technician easily.
Understand Sat does not really work with VOIP, so you still have to have your mobile phone.

I am using the Ericson W35 booster with an antenna and it works very well. 35 bucks a month, but all year round whether I use it or not. The Rogers plan I am using has a limit of $100 for 6 or 8 gigs.The sim card can be put in a stick as well if you go eleswhere.
Also gives you wifi.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=ericson+w35&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=JzQEVdGiFrWOsQS-loFA

I can’t wait for the outernet to get going better. It launched Augest 11 of last year. Outernet.is. Check out the video. The guy goes out to the middle of nowhere, puts his dish up and watches a soccer game. Pretty cool. And there is the Lantern which is like the Public Library for FREE. Check it out, it should be available around June or so and crowd source funded. Very cool. Free to use too.

I got a couple of neighbors together where one has DSL and we use 24db antennas from www.simplewifi.com with the usb adapters. One uses their bridge device to distribute throughout their home and they can view youtube videos if there is not too much activity on the others units at the same time. Works out to $12 for each of the three of us per month.

These work line of sight and work well if you keep the signal path clear. We put up a couple sections of 10’ tower to mount antennas on and have dedicated antenna pairs to a dedicated wifi transmitter. More up front cost, but long term it works out pretty cheap.

I am also using a T-mobile hotspot which runs only about $10 a month because it is tagged onto another cell plan, but it doesn’t work too well and not a lot of bandwidth. No youtube.

Later this year I do plan to get an outernet.is dish up and running. After the hardware cost it will be free. Don’t know how much it will cost to get it up and running, but I will post it when I get it going.

Elon Musk is launching 10’s of cube satellites to make this happen. We do live in exciting times.

On this subject we recently moved from a very poor DSL service, to a local wireless isp. The DSL was 6.2kms of copper to the exchance and previously had manaaged 800kb/128kb. Lately was struggling to get 240kb. The wireless isp is locally well regarded, and the service delivering 10Mb/5Mb 15ms ping, reliably thus far, for less money than the DSL. (primowireless.co.nz)

We live on a volcano, and a concave cone is easy to deliver this sort of service. However as we are in a dip they asked us to provide a mast that extended 3m above the rooflne. So that mast is almost 7m long, its 2 inch galv pipe. The day the installer arrived to fit the radio gear (5 giga hz band wifi,POE powered) there was the most dramatic lightening storm ive ever been witness to in all my days. The guy was up a 3m ladder on top of the 3m high roof, when this sudden boom, then flash right after. I saw his arm retract from the mast like he had touched an electric fence. I climbed down, sat on the ground for a bit shaking his arm. He was very lucky not to have fallen (and i am not sure that ladder practice is good)

I asked him what their recomendation about earthing of the mast was, and he wasnt sure.

We waited the storm out before going back up to align the dish antenna. (ubiquity gear). There were three more pretty much direct hits, one in the treeline about 50m away, then two that caused the air inside the house to ionise with a great flash. My wife saw these and thought they were in the general direction of the mast, that corner of the house.

The DSL router died (ironically) i think on the first hit. Wouldnt even boot, thats connected to the copper obviously a long antenna. The other two causalties were minor, the HDMI input on my desktop monitor now does not work, and a LED voltmeter that was monitoring our battery voltage also died. Other than that all the RE gear survived.

So, yeah my plan is to add a dedicated earth stake for the mast, as its not my gear thats atop it, and the mast clearly is attractive to lightning.

where I live, cell phone service was pretty much non-existant till I put an omni directional antenna on the far end of my roof and a Wilson signal booster on the other end of the house in the office. its then connected to an internal antenna in the house. Works great for cell phone service in 3 rooms of the house.

I went through a couple of unhappy years with Hughs customer service and finally just gave up on their equipment. Had Wildblue for about 6 years and the equipment was trouble free and had 15gb of data. About 6 months ago they dropped the service down to 10gb and said their service was going to be slower in my area . I dropped them like a hotpotato. I'm now working off my Verizon cell service with 15gb of data for a shared total data for $100. & it's extremely easy to monitor my useage. It gets real expensive if I wanted to up my data package to 25gb or higher.I purchased a little box from Verizon to boost the data signal, @ $10 a month bit my computer actually works better by using my cell phone as a mobile hotstot and making my own personal wifi. It is what it is & I just have to live with it.

Wow... do you have any SPD's? that gap probably made the lightning find an alternate route to ground..?? your router and the DSL cable? Electric wiring inside the walls? Too hot for me...

yup and a longer contact area up the pole would probably help too, 2 ga also??? It's going to look for the POLR