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Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

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Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#1

Post by coreyp_1 »

* My parents live in a rural area (Texas) just outside the city limits of a city of approx 10K people.

* Their current Internet is a line-of-sight service with an antenna on their roof.

* They pay $65/mo. for ~2.15Mbps Down, 2.25Mbps Up (yes, the #'s are right... I just checked using http://speedtest.att.com/speedtest/)

This is horribly slow! It feels like the ISP is price gouging (increasing 1Mbps up costs an extra $20/mo, IIRC)!

Is there a non commercial way to extend a signal from someone in the center of the town to my parents (my sister's house, for example, approx 2 miles)?

This is not my area of expertise, but I figured that it was worth asking the wisdom of HN for potential ideas/solutions.

[EDIT: fixed newlines for proper paragraph separation]

Re: Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#2

Post by matt_the_bass »

If you have line of site to your sisters house, there are relatively inexpensive technical solution. However to do it leagally, there maybe signifiant municipal regulations that need to be mitigated. Also, most residential broad band contract prohibit sharing of service in that way. You may need to create your own isp. Not impossible but maybe not worth the headache.

Do your parents have cell phone coverage? If so, that might be simpler.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#4

Post by walshemj »

matt_the_bass wrote: post #2

If you have line of site to your sisters house, there are relatively inexpensive technical solution. However to do it leagally, there maybe signifiant municipal regulations that need to be mitigated. Also, most residential broad band contract prohibit sharing of service in that way. You may need to create your own isp. Not impossible but maybe not worth the headache. Do your parents have cell phone coverage? If so, t…

Is that just they ban sharing your credentials with the neighbours.

If you could set up a ptp link (id say Omni on sisters house and a directional one at the parents) as a bridge from parents to sisters house. 2Km with LOS is trivial to achieve.

As your effectively bridging the two houses any host in the parents house would be part of the same network and be seen as such.

As in the US the phone company's responsibility ends at the demarc trying to stop how your internal wiring is configured seems impossible:-)

Re: Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#5

Post by coreyp_1 »

wmf wrote: post #3

Check out Verizon or AT&T fixed wireless; it's basically a LTE router with a large antenna on the outside of the house.

Thanks! I didn't know about these services, but I just checked, and AT&T doesn't provide service here, and I couldn't find anything about Verizon offering service (or not) in my area. I may just walk into a store and ask.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#6

Post by coreyp_1 »

walshemj wrote: post #4
matt_the_bass wrote: post #2

If you have line of site to your sisters house, there are relatively inexpensive technical solution. However to do it leagally, there maybe signifiant municipal regulations that need to be mitigated. Also, most residential broad band contract prohibit sharing of service in that way. You may need to create your own isp. Not impossible but maybe not worth the headache. Do your parents have cell phone coverage? If so, t…

Is that just they ban sharing your credentials with the neighbours. If you could set up a ptp link (id say Omni on sisters house and a directional one at the parents) as a bridge from parents to sisters house. 2Km with LOS is trivial to achieve. As your effectively bridging the two houses any host in the parents house would be part of the same network and be seen as such. As in the US the phone company's responsibili…

There's a tall hill between them, so I'll have to check to see if LOS can be established.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#7

Post by coreyp_1 »

matt_the_bass wrote: post #2

If you have line of site to your sisters house, there are relatively inexpensive technical solution. However to do it leagally, there maybe signifiant municipal regulations that need to be mitigated. Also, most residential broad band contract prohibit sharing of service in that way. You may need to create your own isp. Not impossible but maybe not worth the headache. Do your parents have cell phone coverage? If so, t…

They do have cell coverage, but it's trivial to blow through the data caps ("unlimited" is a lie... they throttle you significantly).

Even if my parents got rid of their $120/mo satellite tv package, they couldn't replace it with a streaming service because of the data costs.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#8

Post by amigoingtodie »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #7
matt_the_bass wrote: post #2

If you have line of site to your sisters house, there are relatively inexpensive technical solution. However to do it leagally, there maybe signifiant municipal regulations that need to be mitigated. Also, most residential broad band contract prohibit sharing of service in that way. You may need to create your own isp. Not impossible but maybe not worth the headache. Do your parents have cell phone coverage? If so, t…

They do have cell coverage, but it's trivial to blow through the data caps ("unlimited" is a lie... they throttle you significantly). Even if my parents got rid of their $120/mo satellite tv package, they couldn't replace it with a streaming service because of the data costs.

Check out 4gantennashop.com.

They offer decent rates for rural LTE with fairly large caps.

Re: Ask HN: What to do about my parent's Internet?

#9

Post by f2n »

matt_the_bass wrote: post #2

If you have line of site to your sisters house, there are relatively inexpensive technical solution. However to do it leagally, there maybe signifiant municipal regulations that need to be mitigated. Also, most residential broad band contract prohibit sharing of service in that way. You may need to create your own isp. Not impossible but maybe not worth the headache. Do your parents have cell phone coverage? If so, t…

>most residential broad band contract prohibit sharing of service in that way

Or just ignore that and don't tell them. as long as you're not doing this as a business or at large scale I couldn't possibly imagine they would notice.

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